Does Your Customer Experience Need a Lifeline?

Or does it need CPR to bring it back to life?

When it comes to business and brand attraction, get comfortable with the phrase “It’s not about me”. When it comes to building your brand and attracting customers it is all about them – the customer – and how they perceive your business … even before they do one cent worth of business with you. They want to know what you have to offer them and what experiences you are going to give them.

In today’s digital age, the attention span of a potential customer is shrinking … and shrinking … and shrinking. So much in fact that you must create a memorable experience with them that starts with their first click of the mouse onto your website or from the moment that you hand them your business card.

And… to keep your current customers happy and have your company at the forefront of their minds when they need your products or services, you have to keep them happy by giving them an exceptional customer experience through each form of engagement. Create an experience that will grab their attention, have them stay, and best yet compel them to bring their friends along for the experience.

Making this proposition even more complex is the fact that the digital world is changing constantly. I am often asked, “How do you create a top notch experience, and how do you grow what you are building to attract customers within an ever-shifting digital landscape?”.

Your customer experience starts with a first glance. Make sure to give them an experience to remember.

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A Mid-Year Checkup can help breathe some life into your plan and help you assess the wellness of your Customer Experience (CX)

Assess your customer experience strategy at least every 6 months and make adjustments as needed. Included below are some helpful tips:

• Take a look at your online and offline marketing to assess what is and isn’t working.
• Review all branded pieces and assess whether it represents your company and has client attracting strategies.
• Identify quick fixes to improve your businesses customer experience for both current and potential customers.
• Evaluate gaps in your customer experience processes or strategies that need shifting, and develop an implementation plan to make improvements.
• Evaluate what is bringing in revenue and what is not.
• Evaluate the alignment within your business strategy.

Review Your Customer Engagement Health

Below are a list of considerations to help you stay on track with your Customer Engagement Health assessment:

Know Your Customer.

• Do you have a customer persona(s) for your ideal customer? If so, have you reviewed this persona?
• Does your customer persona(s) need to be revised?
• If you have multiple personas, which one is most valuable?

Evaluate Your Ideal Customer Personas:

• Is this persona a buyer?
• What are their biggest pains, motivators, goals or needs?
• What resources or information do they need from your company to make informed buying decisions?
• What thoughts or feelings do they have about you?
• What outcomes does your buying customer expect from you after they have purchased your product or offering?
• Where are they hanging out online and offline where they will see your information?
• How do they think, feel or act and how can you influence this buyer to buy from you?
• Why should they buy from you over your competitor?

Examine Your Customer’s Journey To Find You:

• Do you track how your customer found you (a customer journey map)?
• What touch points (interactions with your business) are making the biggest impact?
• What touch points need to be revised, added or removed to best match your ideal customer’s journey map?
• How easy do you make it for your customers to stay connected with you and move through post purchase phases until they make another purchase (e.g., the retention, loyalty and advocacy of a customer’s journey)
• Do you regularly stay engaged with your customers?
• Are your customers staying engaged with you?
• Do you measure changes in your ideal customers buying patterns? Do you know if these trend on track or do you need to make changes?

Find The Missing Links

Once you have gathered accurate information for your customer personas, evaluate how your customers are finding you, and note which online and offline marketing pieces are missing, as it is imperative to take a look from the customers view – “The Voice Of The Customer” (VoC). Are your customers having a hard time navigating your website, and are you getting calls from your online and offline marketing efforts? Are your customers getting to “Yes” easily, or do you need to do a lot of explaining about your products, offerings and outcomes? From your customer’s view, ask yourself…

• Does my website have too many hoops to jump through to find out information about all of my product or service offerings?
• Do I make it easy for customers to make a purchase from my website?
• Do I make it easy for customers to find out more information about my company on our website, social media, advertising and marketing?
• Am I listening to what my clients are asking for and keeping up with changes in branding and marketing?
• Do I know where my customers are hanging out online and offline?
• Am I making it easy for customers to provide feedback to me?
• When my customers provide feedback, where does the feedback go? How does this feedback get incorporated into your Customer Experience processes?

Take Action

After performing your assessment, put the information you gathered into actionable insights and data that can help you improve your overall customer experience. Make a plan with your team or a brand or marketing strategist to plan and put into action steps to improves your customer experience. After all, do not forget the phrase, “it is not about you” – it is about your customers – making them happy, having them purchase more products and referring you to their friends.

Happy customers will make for a happy business life.