Building Positive Customer Experiences

How well does your organizsation actually design, develop and create the kind of positive customer experiences that differentiate your organisation from your competitors? Does your current strategy incorporate anything about managing the customer’s experience……from the customer’s point of view?

Traditional ways for organisations to differentiate themselves are becoming harder and harder. Price, quality, accessibility, delivery, product features and many other facets of business have all been squeezed, redeveloped, improved and modified time and time again to try to get the edge on the competitors. The result of all of this is what is being termed ‘blight of the bland’. Customer satisfaction, because the way it is approached by most companies’ is ‘flat lining’ – the score, across a range of industries, has been found to be very similar. The graph below represents the average total customer satisfaction scores by industry. The score itself is not important but the obvious ‘similarity of the scores’, as represented by the red line are.

This ‘flat lining’ presents opportunities for companies who can further enrich and enhance their customer experiences; it will enable them to stand out from their competitors and positively affect customer loyalty.

SRD Group, like leading experts Colin Shaw and John Ivens (Beyond Philosophy), believe that it will be the building of ‘GREAT customer experiences’ that will differentiate companies and increase growth and long term loyalty in the future. Growing GREAT customer experiences is the next big battleground for differentiation! An emotionally and physically enriched positive customer experience can provide you with a competitive edge and encourage greater reciprocal value for you and your customer.

A customer experience is the outcome of a combination of two levels of interaction; the Business Level and the Emotional Level. Both levels require a certain point of expectation to be reached in order to provide a great customer experience. The more these expectations are exceeded on both levels, the greater the customer experience. The majority of organisations, however, have focused heavily on the Business Level and have ignored, or not yet realised, the negative impact that ignoring the Emotional Level can have on the customer experience and therefore retention and loyalty. By the same token, if an organisation has focused very heavily on the Emotional Level and ignored the Business Level the same negative consequences will result – a customer experience imbalance.

If one significantly outweighs the other, the result is a tenuous relationship that is open for exploitation by your competitors and there is always room for improvement on either levels even when they appear more equally balanced. Continuous improvement is a "must do" on both levels.

A positive customer experience is a relatively well balanced combination of the Business and the Emotional Levels where points of expectation on both levels are constantly met and very often exceeded, as measured by the customer at the moment of contact.

Some Concepts Surrounding the Customer Experience

• Business and Emotional Levels exist prior to, during and after every contact.
• A physically and emotionally enriched total customer experience can provide reciprocal value to you and your customer; encourage greater loyalty and provide the competitive edge.
• Companies should plan to make customers feel some particular positive emotions whilst remaining flexible enough to deliver uncovered emotional expectations.
• Delivering total positive customer experiences requires buy-in and understanding from all members of staff and leadership and sponsorship from senior management. It also requires them to put themselves in the customer’s shoes.
• Delivering a positive customer experience should be a cornerstone of your strategy and must be considered before any initiatives are undertaken either internally or externally, and then as an ongoing strategy.
• Delivering positive customer experiences is about generating revenue and can reduce costs.
• Every interaction provides an opportunity to enrich customer experiences.
• A customer experience can start before the customer or their need has been identified, and can end well after the product or service has been purchased/delivered.
• A customer experience is a dynamic rather than a static construct. As each expectation is exceeded, the bar raises for the next experience.
• The last experience determines future actions.
• Delivering positive customer experiences requires constant feedback and evaluation from a customer perspective. This should take both internal and external evaluation.

An example of an evaluation of a customer experience from an internal perspective is the Regent of Auckland Hotel which was New Zealand’s first truly customer focused hotel. In its early days, the staff would experience "Operation Strawberries" after their initial 10 part induction program. The concept was that you couldn’t fully describe an experience (such as a bowl of sweet strawberries) without actually taste experiencing it. So staff got to stay a night in the hotel and enjoy a meal in the restaurant and room service so they could experience what it was like to be a guest who came into contact with most front line areas of the hotel. They were asked to ensure they made several calls and requests through Housekeeping, Reception, Room Service etc, then make comment and feedback on their stay. Being able to describe the comfortable king size beds, the swimming pool location, or the ‘welcome tea’ received upon check in to guests was from experience, not what they’d been told. Likewise, a waiter who can describe dishes he/she has tasted will probably sell them rather than one he has "heard is good".

From the point of view of customer experiences positively impacting customer loyalty, most companies often only focus on meeting the expectations from a Business Level which results only in satisfaction. If they were able to elicit ‘the feel good factors’ by introducing more emotional elements into their customers experience and they aimed to exceed the expectations both at a Business Level and Emotional Level, the closer they would get to the emotion of ‘delight’ which is more likely to engender high levels of loyalty.

Generally, companies will always look to improve the Business Level (physical performance elements) in order to win more business - this is usually a cycle of continuous improvement. However, this alone will not be enough; the Emotional Level of the equation has to be considered.

Human beings are considered to be, by and large, very emotional creatures. Emotions effect and in many cases, govern many of our decisions and behaviours, including who we do or do not do business with and hence the emotional elements of the customer experience must also be understood so that positive emotions are felt by the customer after each moment of contact.

In most cases, research, both formal and anecdotal, indicates that it is the 'who' and 'how' you were dealt with that makes for a great customer experience. It wasn't the 'what' - the product or associated service.

Generally, companies have many types of contact with clients and prospects, and customer expectations are both built upon and measured at these moments of contact. Generic conditioning has led to expectations being set even prior to any contact being made with an organisation.

In SRD Group’s experience and particularly as a result of our customer relationship management consulting, we believe that many businesses assume what the customers expectations are, rather than finding out what they really are. This is also further degenerated by making the assumption that all customers have the same expectations. They do not! Some are higher than you are able to deliver, some lower, and some that are not even in the ballpark.

To build customer loyalty it is important for an organisation to consider all of their moments of contact, both current and future and how they may negatively or positively affect the expectations of their clients. Getting to grips with individual expectations is a very difficult task to achieve, but we must be skilled enough to recognise differences and flexible enough to create consistently positive experiences for each customer.

As a human’s brain is made of two spheres, one fundamentally designed for logic and the other for emotions, if companies continue to focus efforts just on the physical elements (logic) of a customer experience they are in effect ignoring 50% of the customer’s brain (emotions) and arguably the key decision maker in a world that is largely commoditised!

SRD Group can help organisations by raising the awareness and understanding of the need for both a Business and Emotional Level of focus for positive customer experiences. We can also help develop strategies and initiatives that will grow positive customer experiences.

For further information contact:

Neil Stewart, Managing Director