If sales is part of your business, you probably think that much of what you do is already centered around customers – but is the customer’s perspective included in the development of your company?
Working with customer journeys and customer experience is a big marketing task and not all companies have the same opportunities to succeed. It’s not about the size of your business or what industry you operate in, but rather how you prioritise customer experience and whether you manage to engage your staff in the long-term work that is required.
You may already be doing customer surveys, checking satisfaction after delivery and completion of support requests, or creating personalised, measurable sales campaigns. Great, then you get numbers that you can measure against indexes or other goals. But – what do you really know about the customer’s feelings when they engage with your company in different ways? Emotions are important because they control what customers say about you to others, which affects your success.
How does it feel for the customer to…
- visit your website
- meet a sales person
- visit your premises
- get a delivery
- contact support?
And so on. You have the luxury of being able to influence the situations above, but others are harder to handle.
What impressions of the company do your customers get from each other, when competitors describe you, when reading comments shared on social media, when they meet your partners – or in contexts that you haven’t even thought of yet.
What can you do to influence this? It’s about not limiting yourself to single campaigns and simple surveys (even if they serve a purpose) but rather finding out what the customer feels at different points of contact with your business, over time.
Not until then will you be able to identify areas for improvement and develop your business from the customer’s perspective, which is always a winning path. The result is satisfied and loyal customers who actually care about what you are doing.
