LOSING THE CUSTOMER IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
I believe that to succeed, you need to become your customer to experience your customer’s experience.
“It’s All About The Customer.” This simple but often overlooked mantra IS what will define your start-ups success. From the first word in your business plan, put yourself and your team in your customers shoes; learn who they are, respect their time, their privacy and especially their intelligence.
And please, if you sell socks online, remember that, well, they are socks. Why do I keep talking about socks? I recently bought a pair online and began to receive a relentless number of unwanted emails that went like this:
- Welcome to our community. (I bought a pair of socks!)
- We haven’t heard from you. (because I bought a pair of socks)
- We miss you.
- What can we do to bring you back?
And my favorite:
- Breaking up is hard to do. (Ok- You can have the socks back)
Customer experience. We all have our pet peeves and I will share my top 5, but these examples are meant to demonstrate that somewhere along the way, these companies forgot to remember their customer.
5 EXAMPLES OF LOSING THE CUSTOMER IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
- Don’t make it impossible to log into my account if you are not my bank: If your site is going to require me to create a password with a specific combination of digits, please remind me of this when I enter an incorrect password. Just a simple “Remember: we require a password with a minimum of 8 characters,4 lower case, 2 upper case not next to each other, at least 1 number and 2 symbols that don’t include *^”. Which is why my most common password is ‘forgot password’.
- Don’t make me give up what privacy I have left to share an article: Imitation may be the best form of flattery but why would I give the Harvard Business Review permission to “post updates, make comments and like posts as you”? All this because I wanted to share an article? I expect more from Harvard.
- I’ll give you my feedback but I do have a life: Collecting customer feedback is a necessary evil, but surveys should not take longer than a college graduation commencement address. I went to my drugstore and when I got home saw an email asking me to take a brief survey. Brief? I stopped after page 12.
PS: Don’t send me reminders to take a survey I never agreed to take. I don’t need any more guilt. I have kids.
- Pop-Ups, like toddlers on an airplane are cute…..up to a point: I was trying to read an interesting article but stopped after I was interrupted by 2 pop-ups, a banner than took over the page, 2 requests to chat and (my favorite) a large sign up to join their community. Community? I want to read an article and learn about your company. Invite me in gently.
- Love means never having to say you’re sorry. When I deal with your customer service, stop telling me you’re’ sorry. You’re not. You know it and I know it so stop saying it. Because my only reaction when I hear your customer service rep telling me that they’re sorry is my being sorry I did business with your company.
Do you know why Doctor’s offices have uncomfortable chairs, golf and sailing magazines that are 5 years old and always seem to have Channel 7 blaring? Because physicians never sit in a medical waiting room.
As you plan, as you design, as you build, as you sell, stop at every step and experience your customer’s experience.