April 15, 2024 – Repertoire Magazine recently spoke with customer experience expert Dan Gingiss about what customer experience is and how businesses can provide a better experience going forward. Gingiss is the CEO (Chief Experience Officer) at The Experience Maker, an organization that is devoted to helping other businesses shape their sales and marketing tactics to create better experiences for their customers.
Gingiss looks at customer experience as how the customer feels about every interaction they have with a brand – whether it’s something they get in the mail, a billboard they pass, or even visiting a physical location. He said, “Our overall customer experience is the collection of all those interactions. While customer service is one element of customer experience, it’s an element that we almost hope that we never have to use or experience because if the customer experience is perfect, then we never need customer service.”
Of course, there are no companies without a customer service department – no one is perfect. Even so, Gingiss said, “There is lots of data to support that customers who have had an issue that is resolved to be more loyal than customers that never had an issue in the first place. I think the reason for that is because when we spend our hard-earned money with organizations, we want to make sure that company has our back.”
Moving forward, organizations must be careful about using tools like artificial intelligence in interactions with customers. The biggest change from 2023 to 2024 in customer experience is the impact of AI. “The real question is how do we use it for good and avoid trying to use it to eliminate human interaction, because so much of the customer experience is about the human interaction,” Gingiss said.
An easy example to consider is the food service industry. When you walk into a fast-food spot, there’s someone standing behind the counter who is either smiling and happy to see you or seemingly irritated that you walked through the door. Human interactions, positive or negative, have a huge impact on how people feel about the whole brand, not just one location.
“Human interactions are always going to remain important. How does AI help supplement that and help the humans in the organization be better?”
Read more in the latest issue of Repertoire Magazine.