5 Easy Steps Towards Customer Experience Optimisation
The world of customer experience is changing. Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, helps put this change into perspective:
“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 people. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 people”
Customers have access to numerous online and offline channels and they are not afraid to let the world know if an experience hasn’t lived up to their expectations. According to a study by Walker, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator in 2020. There has never been a more important time to take control of your customer experience.
Given the lack of time and resources across organisations, customer experience often drops down the priority list.
The following five step guide has been put together for time conscious corporates that are looking to put a stronger focus on customer experience.
Before any changes are made to a customer journey it is essential to look at the big picture. Put aside an hour and map out your key customer journeys. Keep it simple - focus on one or two key customer types. For instance, if you are selling a physical product you may map out one journey for a retailer and another journey for an individual who purchases online.
I often see companies make the mistake of only focusing on the obvious customer touch points (such as interactions during purchase). Don’t be one of them. Make sure to look at the complete customer lifecycle, from awareness (how do your customers find out about you?) all the way to post-purchase (what happens after the customer has bought your product?). Check out this article I wrote recently highlighting For further detail on this, refer to my recent article highlighting four leading brands that look at the complete customer lifecycle.
By preparing this high level view, improvement opportunities in your existing customer journeys will become much more apparent.
A startup has the benefit of having a more intimate relationship with customers than a larger organisation so you need to work to engage with and develop closer relationships with customers in order to generate the insights you’ll need to optimise their experience. If you happen to be working on a new product for a large organisation, your early adopters will be your most valuable asset. Gain a better understanding of your business by sending a simple survey to your customers for some feedback or even try identifying a handful of customers to have a quick conversation with.
During their early days, Airbnb invested significant time interviewing users in NYC to better understand their needs and wants. Paul Graham, a leading Venture Capitalist, shared a fascinating email exchange he had with another VC about investing in Airbnb in 2009. During the emails Paul emphasises that it was a “very good sign that these guys were actually on the ground in NYC hunting down (and understanding) their users”.
Avoid falling into the trap of only making changes to the customer journey when you receive a negative email from a customer - be proactive and gain feedback before it even gets to that point. You would be surprised how many early adopters actually want to help you hone your customer experience, particularly as it benefits them.
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The WorkFlow podcast is hosted by Steve Glaveski with a mission to help you unlock your potential to do more great work in far less time, whether you're working as part of a team or flying solo, and to set you up for a richer life.
To help you avoid stepping into these all too common pitfalls, we’ve reflected on our five years as an organization working on corporate innovation programs across the globe, and have prepared 100 DOs and DON’Ts.
