Home sweet home

In recent months I have finally paid off my mortgage and for the first time in 25 or so years I own outright every single brick, roof tile and breeze block. It is a great feeling knowing that you are no longer out at work to feed that particular monkey. And if you are not yet there I hope that it will not be too long before you too are in this position.

And I hope that when you get there your mortgage lender understands the principles of a great customer experience better than mine did.

It was not that they made life especially hard when it came to obtaining and completing the necessary paperwork. Indeed for a large business they were actually quite efficient. And I am sure that they did everything they were supposed to do right.

But the customer journey they had designed no doubt to be as efficient as possible, really failed to grasp the significance and emotionality of what was to me a major life event. And this is where those who designed this particular experience went wrong.

Would it have hurt them to enclose with the paperwork  a nice letter acknowledging the significance of this event; thanking me for being privileged to be part of this journey with me;  and wishing me all the best in the next stage of my journey through life?

I have spoken before about the need for marketing folk to experience the customer experience if they want to understand the frustrations, and hopefully the joys, that customers will endure and sometimes enjoy when doing business with your business.

But there is a lot more we can and should do if we want to develop and put in place mind blowingly great and truly differentiating customer experiences.

Now many people may think that it is only entertainment type businesses or those in say the leisure and hospitality industry who need to fuss about the customer experience. Wrong. In my opinion whatever the service or the product a customer is buying or receiving, that customer will have an experience of some sort and all service encounters in all businesses provide an opportunity for emotional engagement, however mundane the product or service might be. Repaying a mortgage is hardly a Disneyworld experience, is it?

So no matter your industry or sector, you should concern yourself with the customer experience and if you work in marketing, you ought to obsess about this whether you work in financial services or retail; automotive or FMCG; education or hospitality; and even, especially, the public sector.

I would like to suggest that anyone thinking about the customer experience should consider three broad principles. 

Move from operational service quality to customer perceived quality. Too many businesses emphasise and maybe over emphasise operational service quality. This needs to be balanced by the need to examine and think about how the service being delivered is perceived by the customer. Operational service quality, delivering the service to specification every time, is a great way to regularise the service experience cost efficiently but might not be so great for the customer. I am sure that in my case the operational service quality was high in that the service was delivered to specification with calls and letters being answered within set timescales and the like but the experience still left me with a hollow feeling. More should be done to understand the quality as perceived by me.

Look beyond the basics.  It goes without saying that anyone with a passion for improving the customer experience will identify the touch points that matter along the customer corridor and remove foul ups and snarls in this area. But we must do more. Delivering on these foundational experiences, the minimum standard customers expect in their everyday contact with a brand, does not define it or differentiate the brand. This is merely an essential building block, and if not present, will turn customers away. But instead we must look beyond the basics to deliver true delight and a unique brand experience. We must find and develop the differentiating experiences which have the potential to separate the brand from competitors and signature experiences which are essential to defining the brand uniquely and which only your brand can do and can become known for.

Map emotions not just behaviours. Too often we limit analysis of the customer journey to how our business behaves across and through the customer corridor and we compare this to how the customer wants us to behave to provide a detailed customer journey map through this corridor identifying improvement opportunities as we go.  Usually these maps will focus on things like reliability, responsiveness, accessibility and problem solving.  But how often do we plot out or obtain data on how the customer is feeling at each stage of the journey through the customer journey, how the customer wants to feel and even how we want the customer to feel? This might not come easy to businesses used to thinking rationally and making decisions based on hard facts and solid data but emotion mapping through the customer corridor is as essential as behavioural mapping. If my mortgage lender had thought harder about how they wanted me to feel or indeed was feeling, I am sure they would have developed and delivered a more emotional and a better experience

Great customer experiences don’t just happen. They are carefully designed and beautifully constructed. And I do wish more businesses would think more about this. After all they owe it to their customers.

How do you go about building a great customer experience in your business? What factors do you consider?

All thoughts welcome.