As we saw in last week’s blog the customer experience is a determining factor of how customers rate your business and is essential to grow your business. The better the customer experience, the more loyal they will be to your brand and the more they will promote it.
To ensure the best possible customer experience you firstly need to know and understand your individual customer needs and expectations. Secondly, map your customer journey so you can tune your communications adequately to these specific needs depending on the stage in which the customer finds himself throughout the customer journey. A (potential) customer at the brink of buying your products will most likely be looking for different information than a customer who has been using your products for quite some time but might need specific maintenance guidelines.
So syncing your communications with your customer journey starts with using correct data. Unfortunately a lot of organizations fail to even get these basics right. Every year since his wife gave birth to his son, our CTO David has been receiving emails from his health insurance fund informing him about breastfeeding and pregnancy ailments. Something’s off here. First of all, the department that sends out these emails should know that he’s a man. Secondly, he has been receiving this kind of emails for the past four years. His son is 3,5 now. They should know this as well.
Customer journey consistency
Although the need for information, guidelines and overall communications might change for customers in different parts of the customer journey, it’s important that you as a business ensure that the customer journey remains consistent. A customer decides to rely on your services based on a certain first positive impression you left and it’s extremely unpleasing to see that impression fade as the customer journey worsens.
Take a look at this boring invoice. Can you guess from which premium coffee brand this is? When you’ve seen the quality brochures and a handsome movie star suavely whisper “… , what else?” on TV, you know this invoice is a far cry from your initial customer expectations. Post-purchase service communications are often generated through legacy back office systems, but it’s doubtful that the style of this invoice represents the brand as it was intended by marketing.
When you aim for customer loyalty and customer retention, this is a real no-go if you wish to build a predictable and satisfactory customer experience as well as a fine reputation for your brand over a longer period of time.
As we saw in last week’s blog the customer experience is a determining factor of how customers rate your business and is essential to grow your business. The better the customer experience, the more loyal they will be to your brand and the more they will promote it.
To ensure the best possible customer experience you firstly need to know and understand your individual customer needs and expectations. Secondly, map your customer journey so you can tune your communications adequately to these specific needs depending on the stage in which the customer finds himself throughout the customer journey. A (potential) customer at the brink of buying your products will most likely be looking for different information than a customer who has been using your products for quite some time but might need specific maintenance guidelines.
So syncing your communications with your customer journey starts with using correct data. Unfortunately a lot of organizations fail to even get these basics right. Every year since his wife gave birth to his son, our CTO David has been receiving emails from his health insurance fund informing him about breastfeeding and pregnancy ailments. Something’s off here. First of all, the department that sends out these emails should know that he’s a man. Secondly, he has been receiving this kind of emails for the past four years. His son is 3,5 now. They should know this as well.
Customer journey consistency
Although the need for information, guidelines and overall communications might change for customers in different parts of the customer journey, it’s important that you as a business ensure that the customer journey remains consistent. A customer decides to rely on your services based on a certain first positive impression you left and it’s extremely unpleasing to see that impression fade as the customer journey worsens.
Take a look at this boring invoice. Can you guess from which premium coffee brand this is? When you’ve seen the quality brochures and a handsome movie star suavely whisper “… , what else?” on TV, you know this invoice is a far cry from your initial customer expectations. Post-purchase service communications are often generated through legacy back office systems, but it’s doubtful that the style of this invoice represents the brand as it was intended by marketing.
When you aim for customer loyalty and customer retention, this is a real no-go if you wish to build a predictable and satisfactory customer experience as well as a fine reputation for your brand over a longer period of time.