Building a memorable customer experience

Delivering a memorable customer experience is the foundation for customer loyalty.

Customers remember what happened during their experience with you, your employees, your website, your company but above all they remember how they felt: did they feel listened to ? abandoned ? overwhelmed ? at ease ? at home ? like a number ?

The first step is to define how you want your customers to feel in their relationship with your company: find 5 or 6 words or phrases that describe that customer experience, find a few pictures that sums it up.

For example, I want my customers to feel treated like a person, as part of my family, in a warm and professional way that allows them to understand what’s going on in their retail experience with my company.

The second step is to design how to establish the relationship with the customer so that they will feel  your unique customer experience.

There are 5 elements that must be considered:

  • Your physical and virtual retail location: your shop, showroom, website, office, the background behind you on your PC screen
  • Your people: who is in contact with your customers
  • Your products and services: what you are selling and how they are set up
  • Your business processes: are they focused on your company needs or on the customer needs ?
  • Your general image: do all the elements work together in synergy ?

Let’s use your products and services as an example, put yourself in the customer’s shoes, here are a few questions you could ask yourself to make sure that your products and services make your customers feel according to the experience previously described :

  • Are the products and services presented so that the customer can see them as set up especially and uniquely for him/her as a person ? or are you applying standard rules “one size fits all “ ?
  • Are the products and services presented using a language familiar to the customer, or with industry specific jargon ?
  • Do your products and service look / sound / feel warm and professional ?
  • How easy it is for the customer to interact with your products and services before purchasing them, so that the customers feel in control, have a good understanding of what it will be like to own your products and use your services ?

These questions should then be applied to all the elements of the customer retail experience (retail location, people, processes, general image).

This approach will help you design a customer experience that your customer will remember because you made him/her feel in a special and unique way, connected to the way he/she is.

P.S.: contact us for ideas on how to design the experience of your specific customers.