Tag: Customer experience management

How to define the customer experience (CX)

small business restaurant franchise

What exactly is customer experience (CX) and why is it so important?

Customer experience is the sum of all experiences a customer has with your business, either during one transaction or over the lifetime of your relationship. Customers receive some kind of experience when dealing with your business, ranging from negative to positive. A company’s ability to deliver a positive experience each and every time that someone does business with it sets that company apart from its competitors in the customer’s eyes. Research shows that customers do business with companies they like, so the more positive experiences a customer has with your business, the more they’ll continue to do business with you — in essence, your customer develops brand loyalty, and brand loyalty translates into dollars.

How to define the customer experience

To define your customer experience, it’s important that you know what your customers want and need. How do you know what their experience should be like if you’ve not asked them what they want from you and your business? What pains are you solving for them? Primary market research should be conducted early on with your target market to make sure you know what customers are looking for, what their pain is, what’s missing, and where you can fill a gap in the marketplace. Once you have an understanding of what your customers need, you can visualize the best ways to satisfy those needs through customer experience. Start by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes – revisit our earlier posts about the Empathy Map here and here to get started.

Delivering what customers want

Of course, designing a great customer experience is only the first part — you must actually deliver on that experience, and then measure your CX satisfaction to make sure you’re delivering a great CX for your customers. Then you must ask the customer if they had the experience you wanted them to have. A Harvard Business School study of large companies in the US found that over 70% of business executives believed their companies delivered on their customer experience design. But when the researchers asked the customers of those businesses, the story was quite different. Only 8% of customers felt they had the experience they were looking for. Yikes!

Why the difference? Sounds like the big companies weren’t communicating with their customers — either they were designing the wrong customer experience, or they weren’t delivering the experience properly. In any case, the customer walks away with a less than positive impression and the business loses future sales potential.

How can you deliver the customer experience that’ll inspire loyalty? Let us know in the comments!

Share this post:

Operations process for service vs product businesses

Last week we talked about an operations process – namely, what it was. As you may have guessed, the operations process of product and service businesses differ in a few important ways.

Operations process for service vs product businesses

In last week’s post, we looked at the operations process for a flower shop. The owner Lauren’s main “output” is flowers, a product. But what if your business is, for example, a consulting business – a service?

Inconsistency of output

The first major difference is that services have the possibility of inconsistency of output with a service. We’ve all had a bad haircut – perhaps the stylist didn’t have much experience, knowledge or skill, was just having a bad day, or truly wasn’t cut out (sorry) for this line of work. The result? A hood, scarf, paper bag until your hair grows back – a bad customer experience. It’s very challenging in a service business to make sure that each and every customer experience is the same. All the more reason to carefully and thoroughly train your staff and hold them accountable for producing the standard of excellence in service delivery that you’ve set for your business.

Service intangibility

Another difference between product and service operation processes is that customers can’t see, touch, feel, evaluate, or experience the service prior to it being produced. This is known as service intangibility. With a product, you can pick it up, roll it around, evaluate it, decide if you like it before you buy it. You can’t check out that new ‘do, however, until it’s too late. Thanks to website technology, new hairstyle websites allow you to upload a photo of yourself and drag and drop different hairstyles onto your head in the photograph – a “try before you buy” approach. This reduces the intangibility of services, and helps service businesses achieve the right customer experience.

The problem of inventory

Unlike product companies, service businesses don’t carry inventory. You can’t put a haircut on a shelf and hope it will finally sell tomorrow. Service businesses must learn to level out demand during off-peak hours to maximize the efficiency of their operations. For example, if a hair salon noticed that very few customers came in for a haircut between 9:00am and 11:00am, the shop could offer “early bird” discounts or senior’s discounts to encourage those who might be more available to travel to the salon at that time of day.

Inseparability of services

In a product business, the manufacture of the product was likely performed somewhere else, by someone else. With a service business, the service provider is the business. The hairstylist who performs haircuts really is the business. It won’t matter much to you, walking out with a paper bag over your head after a bad haircut, that the receptionist was friendly, that the coffee was good, or that there was lots of parking. The impact of incompetent or rude service providers is felt directly by the customer. You may not get a second chance with customer experience.

If you’re planning to run a service business, you’ll need to bear these differences in mind. As you review your customer experience and operations process models, think about how will you handle intangibility, inconsistency, lack of inventory, and inseparability of services. Think about how you will handle these differences, while ensuring that your customer experience is the best it can be.

Our word of advice – always put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Will it make sense to the customer? What would the customer think? WWTCT?

 

Share this post:

Define your customer experience

Running a small business is more than just selling to customers in exchange for their money – much more. The experience the customer has when dealing with you has the power to make or break your small business’ reputation.

Customer experience can occur either during one transaction or over the lifetime of a customer’s relationship with your business, ranging from negative to positive. Your business’ ability to deliver a positive customer experience each and every time really sets you apart in their eyes. Research shows that customers do business with companies they like, something you have already experienced. How many times have you returned to a business where you felt welcomed, respected and taken care of – in other words, where you showed loyalty? On the flip side, how many people have you told about a business that treated you poorly? We’re betting you didn’t recommend that business to your friends.

How to define your customer experience

As a small business owner, defining your customer experience – knowing what they want and need – is important. The best way to do this? Go straight to the source, as early on as you can. Primary market research should be conducted with your target market to make sure you know what customers are looking for, what they’re not looking for, and what gap in the marketplace you can fill. Once you have a clear picture of what your customers want, you can plan out the best ways to give them the best customer experience.

Start by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. If you were your customer, how would you want be treated? What would you want to be told? How would you want your product or service to be seen each and every time? What would you want to hear if you phoned with a question? How could you be satisfied if you were unhappy? Figure out what all these diverse experiences should look and feel like.

How to deliver a great customer experience

Now that you’ve defined your small business’ customer experience, you can go forth and deliver it. However, the fun doesn’t stop there! To make sure you really are getting it right, ask your customer how their experience was.

A Harvard Business School study of big American companies found that more than 80% of executives believed that their companies delivered on their customer experience design. But when the researchers asked those business’ customers, the outcome was not quite as rosy. Only 8% of customers felt they had the experience they were looking for. What explains the huge discrepancy? To us, it sounds like the big companies weren’t communicating with their customers. Either they were designing the wrong customer experience, or they weren’t delivering the experience properly. In either case, the customer walked away with a negative impression of the business, and the business potentially loses out on future sales – think back again to how many of your friends you’ve told about a bad customer experience. The popularity of review sites like Yelp is proof that the customer experience is a powerful thing.

Once a customer experience has been designed, it’s important that your small business delivers this experience each and every time. Empower your entire team – no matter how large or small – to deliver on a positive customer experience and to really make sure it sticks. And don’t forget to follow up, to make sure your efforts aren’t falling flat.

Share this post:

CRM software is not created equal

When it comes to customer relationship management – or CRM – you need to be organized and on the ball. In this day and age, we turn to technology solutions more often to help us in our businesses. At GoForth Institute, we love technology, but can’t stress enough how important it is to plan first, implement technology second. And not just any technology – the right technology for your needs.

A few years ago, Computerworld published a great article about choosing the right CRM software for your small business. The article asked small business owners exactly why we use the CRM software we do – is it because your business has always used it? Did you get a discount from a salesperson? Is it the one your competitors use? Ask these questions about any other system or process your business has and you can see why they aren’t necessarily the best reasons for making a small business decision.

So – how do you choose the right CRM software for your small business? All software is not created equal. The article stresses the importance of finding CRM software that works for your business, not making your business work for your software. Take the time to understand what exactly your small business needs out of customer relationship management software. Do you need email newsletter dissemination? Does it need to be web-based? Are sales reports necessary? Once you’ve narrowed down your choices to one or two, take advantage of trial periods to test out your software. And we recommend walking away if there is no trial period available – investing in your business should always be done with as much information as possible.

The Computerworld article has a list of great questions to ask CRM software vendors – titled “Grilling Your CRM Vendor” (figuratively, not literally).  Click here and scroll down to the bottom of the article. These are valuable answers to have in choosing the right customer relationship management software for your business. Knowledge is power. Happy hunting!

Share this post: