Customer Experience: 7 traps to AVOID

Up to eighty nine percent (89%) of your Customers can switch to your competition, unless you provide a service they expect from you. Before you shrug it off and say, “this doesn’t apply to me”, let me share with you results of a research study done by Customer Experience Impact  (CEI). According to the study, only 1% of Customers think that Companies actually fullfill their needs.

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In this episode, you'll be able to learn : 

• What's the deal with customer experience and why it matters.
• what traps you should watch out for,
• if it’s true or not that you have to spend a ton of money to provide unforgettable experiences for your Customers.

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Customer Experience has become a term so popular that many people even consider it as a revelation or innovation, it’s almost as if this term was discovered in the last few decades. Before it got popular, sales people didn’t even consider offering their customers the potential of positive experiences because they didn’t know it was even possible.

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To make a long story short: now Customer Experience is in fashion, but it wasn’t always the case, it was just obvious, and something even unnamed. 

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So fast forward to the present, this little thing even has it’s own abbreviation as CX, has been shown to be invaluable and understood by the best in the industry - so let’s break it down - what’s the deal with Customer Experience? 

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There are a ton of definitions: from cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses, to branding and syntetic, and finally, emotional ones. If you’re interested in broadening your knowledge.

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For now, let’s move on and leave the academic definitions for the comment section down below. I’d like to quote words of Maya Angelou, a writer, poet, director, dancer, historian, and activist. Maya Angelou said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

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Personally, I think that this is the essence of Customer Experience and it’s main value. Additionally, the results of research also confirm it. According to McKinsey, the degree of satisfaction in shopping experiences are 70% influenced by how the customers feel. 

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If you enjoy numbers and statistics, that will truly help you develop your business, subscribe to this channel and I’ll connect you to some hard data on regular basis! 

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So, to shortly sum up where we’re at so far: the goal of Customer Experience is provoking emotions and creating positive experiences, that the next time they hear the name of your company, they will be ready and primed to buy. 

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Does it sound like a dream? I’m going to break down 7 traps over the next few moments that if you’re able to overcome, you’ll be able to put the customer experience dream into motion.

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Trap nr 1 - Strategy

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So, you know that strategy is critical; I bet you even made some notes in a notebook in the past, but let’s be honest: Strategy as a concept isn’t something that you will present in your next meeting when you’re asked about your next steps in regard to the Customer Experience field for the next quarter. 

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Let me take a moment to cheer you up - most companies these days don’t have a clear goal, or an action strategy for Customer Experience, because honestly, where do you start? It’s terrifying! 

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Putting together a carefully analyzed action strategy allows you to use your strengths and will be something that brings you closer to your dream goal of and brand value. 

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If we think about strategy as a plan of moving from point A to point B, we need a map to know exactly where we’re standing at now - point A (an audit conducted now), and where our goal is to get to - point B (visualization of the perfect Customer Experience). 

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Apart from our goals and estimating verifiable and measurable effects, strategy should contain a complex “travel map” or even thinking about it like a modern treasure map, taking customers along the path.

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Let’s call it a Customer Journey map. It points very precisely to points of contact, so called: touchpoints - that is: places where you can get in touch or connect with your customer. These are places where you will be able to answer his/her questions, guide him/her through hard processes, or thank him/her for visiting your website.

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Now, you’re probably thinking that the strategy must be an extremely extensive document. Don’t worry though, strategy is not some master thesis to be reviewed by a board or a group of advisors -  it’s just supposed to serve you. Your strategy might as well take up just one page of paper. The whole goal is to help develop your business. 

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Trap nr 2 - Strategy 

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Yes, you’ve heard it right. It’s not a mistake. With having a strategy comes another risky trap - lack of systematic actualization and verification of already achieved goals. Remember that a strategy you once implemented won’t work forever.  Technology, shopping habits, law, or trends are constantly undergoing some changes. These are the factors that have an impact on planning actions in Customer Experience field, so they need to be properly customized. 

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Trap nr 3 - The wrong way of thinking about your customers’ needs 

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You’re probably thinking: “but Mike, who could possibly know better than me, what are my Customers needs?” The quick answer: your Customers. 

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A lot of Companies fall into the trap of looking at their Customers’ experiences from “inside their own org,” they don’t even try to put themselves in their potential target audience and their existing Customers’ shoes. 

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If you want to manage positive experiences  - and what I mean by managing as planning, making decisions, organizing, leading (this comes back to managing and controlling a team), first of all you must understand your Customer. 

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To plan your actions, you need to know who they are aimed at, what problems they are supposed to solve, and what needs they should address. 

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One of the common questions is “How do I understand my Customers if there are so many of them?” At this point, it’s important to have determined your “persona” based on your ideal customer, plus it is as important to continue to update it along with the ongoing business growth and your new Customer data aquisition. 

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If you’ve already determined your ideal customer, now is the moment to dig it out of in the abyss of your company documents and put it to use. If you don’t have it, then you need to first do some homework. 

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Trap nr 4 - “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”

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I hope you’re already making some mental notes, and if you plan to visit back to the Martech well done channel, I’m sure you’ll hear this quote by Peter Drucker a few more times. The easiest way to find out if your Customers are satisfied with your service is… ask them. The most popular and used Customer satisfaction measurement model is NPS, otherwise known as the Net Promoter Score. 

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NPS is based on an easy question: “Would you recommend an example store to your friends?” Customers provide an answer on a scale from 1 to 10, where the lowest score indicates the lowest probability of the shop’s recommendation verses the highest rating which correlates to the highest probability. 

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Based on the answers, the customers are assigned to one of the three different groups - the first are “promoters” (these customers who left a rating either 9 or 10), “neutral” (7 & 8), and then the “detractors” (between 1 and 6). 

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There’s a little math involved, but to get the final NPS result, we will need to subtract the percentage of “detractors"” from the percentage of “promoters”. (A quick NPS example would be that 70% are promoters, 10% are detractors and 20% are neutral, and thus your NPS would be 70-10=60. ) The final NPS score will be a value from -100 to 100. 

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With the NPS method, you will not only check an average satisfaction level of your Customers, but also you will reiceive honest feedback, if you decide to ask some extra questions. 

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Another measurement model that you can use is CES, which stands for Customer Effort Score. CES allows you to estimate how much effort it takes to use a product or service, and how high the probability is, that your Customers will keep paying for it. 

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To calculate CES, you will need to ask your Customers to rate their experiences during using the product or service on a scale from 1 to 7, from “very hard” to “very easy”. 

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Remember that your Customer’s perspectives on certain issues may differ from your own.

• You see a product, but your Customer may only see the value the product may bring into their life.

• You see a price, but your Customer sees a cost they need to pay to receive the value. 
• You wonder where you can sell your product, while the Customer wonders if it can be obtained in an easy and convenient way. 
• You are thinking about promotion, but what will reach the Customer is communication, specific message they will hear and understand. 

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Trap nr 5 - Trying to automate everything 

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Even though on the Martech Well Done channel we talk a lot about Marketing Automation, you should remember that you simply can’t automate everything. 

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Using a Marketing Automation system, if you own one in combination with a CDP, is going to support your processes, helping you with gathering data and delivering appropriate messages to your Customers at the right time. However, you need to remember that it is people that stand behind a content preparation as well as design, set up and optimization of automation paths.

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Trap nr 6 - let’s just make it through to the sale 

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Let’s imagine you mae the sale, and you’re excited, and maybe celebrating! It’s time to party and then to chill out, right? After the sale, you think that you’re done building out this whole Customer Experience. 

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Unfortunately, creating positive customer experiences doesn’t only end at the selling stage. The truth is, it is a never ending story that includes the different stages of the customer journey that the Customer needs to go through: the stages before making a purchase, the selling stage, and also the stages that come after making a transfer and receiving a product.

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After all, your goal is to have as many loyal and returning customers as possible. It is the dream goal, right? 

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If the quality of experiences is so important that up to 81% of Customers are ready to pay more, increasing customer experience will only bring an increase to their satisfaction. 

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Trap nr 7 - I need to spend fortune to make my customers happy

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Does building positive experiences cost a lot? The answer is a little more unclear. 

Customer Experience is everywhere: in every brand presentation, you read about it in newspapers, recommended videos pop up on your Youtube, and even your Marketing team talks about it in the company kitchen. You might feel so bombarded by this topic so that you might be even scared it will take on human form and jump out of your fridge. 

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Let’s take it easy. I am sure you’ve implemented some procedures before. I am not going to believe you if you tell me that you haven’t had a chat on your website or social media, or that your salesmen have been told to be rude and not helpful to your Clients in stationary stores.

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Today, Customer Experience is strongly associated with all Data Managment Systems and Automation Systems. And yes, implementation of a tool, such as Marketing Automation or Customer Data Platform, indicates expenses, but the return on implementation comes sooner than you might think.

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Research conducted by State of CX Managment shows that 73% of companies with CX above the average show better financial performance. On the opposite, the group of companies that are less pro-client are only 44%.

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In the end, I’d like to leave you with a short story. This is a story about the holidays of a stuffed animal, called Joshie. 

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An American businessman, Chris Hurn, and his family were spending their holidays at the Ritz Carlton in Florida. When they came back home after a few days, they unpacked their luggage and figured out that their child’s stuffed giraffe was missing. 

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Chris, as an experienced father, prevented a “crisis” and stopped his kids crying noting that, “Joshie stayed at the hotel because she’d wanted to have longer holidays.” The next day, he called the hotel and asked the staff to send back the toy and help him make his story more believable.

When Joshie arrived home alive and well a few days later, she had an unusual holiday souvenir with her - an entire album of photos. The stuffed giraffe visited the SPA, spent some time getting a massage, traveled the entire hotel on a trolley, plus there was an organized party with other stuffed animals, and it even had the opportunity to see what work in the hotel looks like, even supervising everything from the gatehouse.

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Did Ritz spend millions in this situation? No, maybe some small cost. After all, for a few moments, a couple of employees were running around the hotel taking pictures with and of the stuffed toy. 

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Will Chris come back to Ritz after this experience? With a huge probability: yes. Moreover, he will tell this story to his friends and strangers (he shared it on YouTube), creating in them positive connotations with Ritz brand. 

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Be like Ritz… provide unforgettable experiences in a classy way! To find out more on how to do that, make sure you subscribe to the Martech Well done channel!