Customer experiences make or break businesses. If customers are served in bad or
mediocre way, they won’t have any reasons to engage with that business again unless
it’s convenient. However, those companies that are able to produce remarkable
experiences, every time, are the ones who get the same clients coming back over and
over again. Usually with their friends, too! Here are three key principles that you
can apply to your own company to ensure remarkable customer experiences.
Principle #1: Be The Best Company You Can Be
Customer will notice if you don’t care about them. They will also notice if you
could improve on some matters. Many times leaders are the last ones to realise that
something is wrong, usually clients have know those things for a long time and some
employees too. So, to be the best company you can be, there are several simple
things that can be improved to make the company more exciting for clients.
You can be more welcoming. Make them feel like home. Also you can be genuine. There
is no point in flattering, but genuine praises are always welcome. Have everyone in
your business be involved with your clients. Make sure they are not just there, but
they are also present. Good rule to remember is to be considerate; it will take you
far when something goes wrong.
Think about all the things that your company needs to improve to be the best
company you can be!
Principle 2#: Create Purposeful Customer Experiences
Remarkable customer experiences won’t happen by accident. They are created
purposefully. This means that you need to understand the customer journey (from the
customer’s perspective) as well as your internal workings on how the experiences are
produced (that is the processes). When you align customer journeys to your business
processes you will see how those customer experienced are produced in your company.
Map both customer journeys and internal processes and align them to each
other!
Principle 3#: Delight Your Customers With Positive Surprises
When was the last time you received a positive surprise from someone that delighted
you?
Customers will expect to receive the value you have promised them. And that’s all
right. But what you need to do is to go beyond their expectations and to delight
them with surprises that add value to their lives.
For example, when you take your car into service, you expect to get it back
serviced. What could be some extra little thing you give to your customers to
delight them? One for sure is to fix if you find something else wrong too and even
better if that doesn’t occur extra costs to your client. Another example could be to
return the car cleaned both outside and inside.
It is difficult to say what works for which customer in each situation. Therefore it
is important that your employees have empathy on the customers and they are
empowered to take action when appropriate. Those surprises need to come from the
heart.
Think about situations where you could delight your customers in a genuine
way!
SUMMARY
There are three key principles in turning mediocre customer experiences into
remarkable ones. First principle is Be The Best Company You Can Be. That means to
find those areas where your business can be aligned to customers even better.
Principle 2 is to Create Purposeful Customer Experiences, which means that
remarkable customer experiences are created, bot made by accident. The third
principle is to Delight Your Customers With Positive Surprises. That is to give
something extra that turns ordinary into extra ordinary.
What will do today to create remarkable customer experiences in your company?
By Janne Ohtonen, EPM Channel Contributor.
Janne believes that the most dramatic changes to organisations effectiveness and performance comes through an alignment of customer experience to business processes, enterprise architecture and innovation. He has delivered tens of challenging change programs, with double-digit performance enhancement in many of them. He holds three university degrees and am about to finish a Ph.D. in BPM. Janne has contributed to a number of scientific research papers including developing organisation’s business process management capabilities and enterprise architecture. His approaches are acknowledged as thought leadership and used in a number of organisations today. Janne Ohtonen is a regular contributor all over the world to C-level roundtables, MBA courses and international conferences as keynote speaker. He also delivers workshops in Customer Experience Management, BPM, principles of leadership, innovation and change. See Janne’s articles on EPM Channel here.