Critical Intersection: Your Customer's Experience

The best way to visualize the importance of the customer's experience is the intersection of four roads at a traffic circle.

Preconception Road

The feeder road to this intersection is the customer's preconception of what they will experience when they arrive at your business. Expectations are set by your advertising, by word of mouth, and by investigation through websites and online reviews. Prior to arrival, the customer already has an opinion about you, and an expectation.

Disappointment Drive

Then, customers enter your business, where you act as a traffic cop. Immediately, customers will compare their expectation with actual experience. Because businesses usually hype themselves, customers often enter with anticipation and excitement. Unfortunately, the world of preconception and the actual experience rarely match. Thus, the customer looks for the earliest possible exit from the experience. How can you avoid this early exit?

Loyalty Lane

The answer is to map an experience that is aligned with the customer's preconception. An experience that is designed to deliver on your brand promise. Take the focus off product and price. From start to finish, use a customer experience map to create an experience that builds intimacy through a relationship. This single act can yield amazing results. The number one factor of loyalty is the experience people have with your business. Delivering a carefully planned experience earns trust and creates loyalty.

Evangelism Expressway

But what if your deliver an experience that is startlingly remarkable? One that is so far above what is expected? In Creating Customer Evangelists, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba say that when customers are truly thrilled about their experience with your product or service, they will become outspoken "evangelists" for your company. The way to thrill and surprise your customers is create magic spots in the experience. Those are those special, memorable moments which can later be re-called and re-told. Magic spots raise the level of your experience from above average to remarkable. They also earn you customer evangelism.

Mapping out a remarkable customer experience that delivers on your brand promise does three things: It reduces customer churn, increases repeat business, and generates word of mouth.

Use these free tools and tutorials to map a remarkable customer experience:
The Customer Experience Theme
The Customer Experience Map

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