How to use the customer experience to enhance your sales opportunities in 2024.
By Pete Mercer
What are people going to remember most about your organization?
Is it the product you sell? It might be special to you, but there’s a good chance that someone else has something that’s just as good (if not better.)
Is it the price point? That’s a big deal for a lot of people, but you might find that the right circumstances could keep customers around at a higher price point.
What about the experience? Selling an experience that people will remember is a powerful way to ensure that you retain your customers, while helping you to build better relationships with new ones.
The customer experience is a critical part of the success of your organization – knowing what it is, how to use it, and how to improve it. When you neglect the health and status of your customer experience, it will negatively impact your relationship with your customers and, ultimately, your bottom line.
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.
The future of the customer experience
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?”
The leaky bucket
Gingiss has this sort of central theory for when customers are leaving and not telling you why – the leaky bucket theory. This idea posits that businesses will go to great lengths to bring in new customers at the expense of their existing customers, often resulting in losing the existing customers. Shouldn’t the same effort that is being made to attract new customers be used to retain the current customers?
Essentially, these customers are leaving without telling you why. According to Gingiss, businesses should not be afraid of the kinds of customers that will leave complaints. “Complaints usually come from people who care. They care enough to complain. What they really want is for you to fix their problems so that they can continue to do business with you. If we don’t pay attention to that, then people will start to look for another option.”
Without seeing it happen, the leaky bucket can have a quick and devastating effect on your organization. Before you know it, the entire foundation that you have built with the customers over the years will be gone while you’re trying to court a new batch of customers. The important thing to understand is that those customers have helped you build your business – without them, your organization wouldn’t be where it is today.
Diagnosing the leaky bucket can be tricky, especially if your organization has put more focus on the new customers. Essentially, it comes down to identifying your retention rates, which is how many of your customers stay with you year after year, or month after month.
How to get the customer experience right
Clearly, the customer’s experience is a critical component to the success of your organization. It can be a delicate balancing act to get it right, but it is worth the investment of time and resources. It all comes down to understanding how important the customer journey is and what their experience is like when engaging with your team.
For Gingiss, the companies that are getting the customer experience right understand how important it is. “Customer experience is becoming the last true differentiator. It’s never a good idea to compete on price because it’s a race to the bottom. I think the ones that understand that then lean into experience and try to find little opportunities that make people feel appreciated and that they’re not being taken for granted – those are the things that stick with people.”
At the end of the day, you need to understand the challenges your customers are facing by seeing what they see. Ask yourself questions like: Does your team respond promptly to questions from your customers? If your team needs time to figure out the answer, are they following up with clear communications? Is your website easy to navigate? Do your products have clearly defined parameters and descriptions?
Once you start to ask yourself these kinds of questions, it will all start to fall into place. Gingiss said, “If you look at every business problem through the lens of the customer, you will make better business decisions. You will make decisions that make your company money, while also serving the customer. The ones that get customer experience wrong focus on revenue without paying attention to the customer.”
About Dan Gingiss: For 20+ years, Dan led teams in customer experience, marketing, and customer service. He learned by doing, whether it was building a customer-centric culture or developing the leadership skills to get the most of employees. He became known as an outside-the-box thinker and the boss that everyone wanted to work for.
Today, Dan combines his professional experience at brands like Discover, McDonald’s and Humana with tons of real-life examples from B2C and B2B companies of all sizes to recommend actionable, profitable CX solutions. To learn more, visit dangingiss.com
Sidebar:
Understand their challenges
To better gauge what is keeping your customers up at night, ask yourself questions like:
- Does your team respond promptly to questions from your customers?
- If your team needs time to figure out the answer, are they following up with clear communications?
- Is your website easy to navigate?
- Do your products have clearly defined parameters and descriptions?