The Top 6 Components of a Customer’s Experience with Your Business
Customer loyalty is your organization’s strongest asset. Regarding business priorities, your overarching focus must be on how you are going to make Customer Experience your distinct competitive advantage. Before you can move forward with creating a strategy for your marketing plan, however, your leadership team needs to give your company’s Customer Experience a checkup to recognize your strengths, identify your weaknesses, and determine what will lead to the highest level of Customer satisfaction.
Create Customer Evangelists with Six Components
In order to create brand loyalty and Customer evangelists, you must continually evaluate your company’s Customer Experience and operate at the highest level in six distinct areas of business. So, what are these key components?
Physical: The Brick-and-Mortar Segment of Your Operation
These are the physical elements that are more permanent or long-term, that cannot be changed daily yet which have a huge impact upon customer perceptions of your brand, and potentially, customer lifetime.
Setting: The Controllable Environment You Create Daily
As Disney says, “Everything speaks.” This company regularly reminds its theme park employees that everything from the doorknobs to the dining rooms sends a message to the guest. Every single facet of Disney’s entire journey, from the largest to the smallest, needs to add up to an enjoyable experience, one that will create happy customers, grow its customer base, and even exceed customer expectations. This larger-than-life company is also brilliant in the basics. As marketing strategies go, Disney clearly has one of the most successful.
Your own business setting also communicates a message about what you can provide your Customers. This isn’t always visual. It may be the music your customers hear when they call and are placed on hold – who hasn’t had a bad experience listening to a company’s cringeworthy choice of hold music? Or maybe it’s the uplifting mood your website creates. The setting is an integral part of the entire customer journey, revealing the characteristics of your business as they appeal to the five senses of your Customer: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. And in order to create loyal customers, it must be a consistent experience. Not a single customer touchpoint can be left to chance.
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Functional: The Ease of Doing Business with You
This component includes your return policies, hours of operations, and other factors. Functionality has nothing to do with direct contact via human interactions, and actions such as being pleasant or saying please or thank you.
Technical: Staff Expertise across Personal Roles, Company Systems, and Equipment
Refers to factors such as the product and job knowledge of those working in your contact center. Again, this has nothing to do with whether your customer support agents are nice. But it does have a lot to do with a seamless experience, especially since not all Customer segments are tech savvy and depend on your team for this or other specialized support.
Operational: Actions Behind the Scenes Before, During, and After a Customer’s Experience
Think of your team members’ actions as creating the unseen foundation of positive customer experiences. These actions assist in the day-to-day transactions with Customers, the tasks, compliances, and duties of our jobs.
Hospitality: Delightful Interactions Between Team Members and Customers
It is those personalized direct experiences that can leave the delightfully surprised Customer with that “WOW!” feeling, like they’ve received the best service ever, which often results in their sharing positive feedback on customer satisfaction surveys. Experiential actions create a superior customer experience and are the reasons they return, refer others, and become brand evangelists. These actions include Secret Service, personalization, and anticipating Customer needs and should be integral parts of your Customer Service Training.
The Customer eXperience Executive Academy (CXEA) – One of the fastest growing C-level positions is the CXE – Customer eXperience Executive, also known as the CCO – Chief Customer Officer, or the CXO – Chief Xperience Officer. The CXEA is designed to prepare leaders like yourself for a new level of leadership. Enroll in the CXE Academy today and learn how to:
- Adapt The DiJulius Group’s trademarked X Commandments methodology and tailor it to your business
- Start a Customer Service Revolution in your organization
- Transform and improve the six components of your Customers’ experience
- Create a strong Service Vision that instills purpose in your employees
- Enrollment is now open. Apply here.