I was at a meeting with some senior management professionals of an organization to discuss their rapidly dropping satisfaction ratings and spiralling customer attrition. They were looking for a way to give their customer a great experience.
A great experience?! Woah! Hold it right there! You cannot measure ‘customer experience’ by individual big euphoric events.
I realised they hadn’t got the true understanding of the term ‘customer experience’. This possibly could also be the case with a lot of other service professionals that are under pressure to control customer attrition and are on the lookout for those big moments that can be chalked down to ‘giving the customer a great experience’. To the group I was with, I walked them through the concept.
Every experience in life is really made up of a whole host of relative smaller instances that stay vivid in your mind. The swarm of these little images is what really forms the whole picture of that experience.
Take your child, for example. It is not only the birth that you recall as your most vivid memory. Instead, it is the many related little instances about them as they grow – their little arms raised to be carried at the curb, cute ways of pronouncing words, spinning a yarn about almost everything, subtle changes in personality over the years till all of a sudden they are a grown person with a mind and opinion, all their own.
Or, think back to that job you vied for and got. Your memory of it will be the many little instances connected to it – the joy of telling someone special, the excitement of meeting your new colleagues, the enthusiasm you felt at work and the pleasure of going to that workplace every day.
Experience in life is always a collage of many little instances.
As is the experience for your customer during their life-cycle with your business.
They vaguely remember the actual transaction of buying the product. But they remember every occurrence associated with the product. The instances of trying to figure out how the product works, calling the help desk and interacting with the service team, keeping a record of the warranty, the number of times a service personnel has visited or the numerous calls to the help desk. They remember all of these little instances. And these little instances make for their overall experience with your business.
So, stop trying to figure out on how to give the customer a huge fabulous experience. It doesn’t work that way.
Just keep the little ones flowing, proactively and with precision. The cost, time and effort to delivery these instances are all part of a regular day’s productive work. No additional cost incurred, no additional resources utilized.
The customer is happy to receive all these little instances of great service, that go to shape their experience with your business.
As for you. You can look back all surprised and exclaim in an awestruck tone, “I did that!?! Wow!”
