The Art of the Customer Experience
When talking about the customer experience, there’s one word in particular that should come to mind: feelings. After all, that’s what it revolves around– how you make your customers or clients feel before, during, and after working with you.
But because the experience is based around feelings, that raises a ton of questions. How can you track feelings as a measurable KPI? What parts of your process should you focus on to invoke those positive feelings? Why the heck is all of this so important to begin with?
Keep reading for the answers to all of your questions as it relates to the art of the customer or client experience!
The Definition of Customer or Client Experience
The actual definition of the customer or client experience is the sum of all interactions a customer has with you, from the first impression of your business to the final goodbye. It involves every single stage of the customer or client journey, even from the very first time they stumble across your social media or website. Basically, you want to think of all the different channels, and outlets prospective customers and clients have access to and might interact with you, and focus on the experience they get from all of those things.
Understand What Components Contribute to the Experience
There are 4 main components that contribute to how customers feel when they interact with them:
Information about your business anywhere
People involved with your company
Your services
Customer and client touchpoints
INFORMATION
If you’re able to anticipate and answer questions in one form or another, then you’re already off to a great start. This could mean creating an FAQ page on your website or having an FAQ section at the bottom of almost every page, through your posts on social media, a blog post, in your client proposals or services and pricing guide, ensuring you’re answering common questions through your sales page or ads copy, etc.
PEOPLE INVOLVED WITH YOUR COMPANY
If you’ve hired contractors or employees that deal with the bulk of the client-facing part of your business, it’s important that they’re up to speed on your business morale and equipped with the tools that make it easy for them to provide a great experience from their interactions with the client. We recommend helping them create email templates or scripts for common replies from customers or clients.
YOUR SERVICES
The services you offer should solve a problem for clients and should meet their needs and expectations. If you’re offering or wanting to offer a High-Touch Signature Service™, then your service should solve the whole problem. You should be able to evaluate what services are necessary and what services are extra and not needed to get the end result the client wants. We help our clients craft, price, and package their High-Touch Signature Service™ inside The Incubator!
CUSTOMER AND CLIENT TOUCHPOINTS
This is basically every way that a customer or client can possibly interact with you– social media, website, ads, email, etc. Touchpoints play a huge role in your client experience because this is usually where first impressions are made.
How to Create a Premium Customer or Client Experience
Now let’s talk about crafting the experience (after all, it is an art!) and all the different, tangible things to look out for throughout the customer journey.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Really think about the tone you set from your presence on your touchpoint channels. You only have a matter of seconds to really grab someone’s attention and make a positive first impression. This means your marketing message should be clear and concise, and your branding is consistent across all channels.
When it comes to your website, it’s important that it’s easy to navigate. Don’t leave out the mobile display when double checking your website– a bad mobile experience can do damage to your brand, especially when 52% of all internet traffic now comes from mobile alone.
THE INQUIRY PROCESS
If you have a contact form on your website, for example, and it states a timeframe in which they can expect a response from you, always follow through on that promise– the sooner, the better. Speaking of contact forms, be sure to include as much information as you’ll need to make an informed decision on whether this client will be the right fit to move forward with or not. Collecting this information beforehand makes for a smoother, quicker conversation in your inbox and/or during the discovery call.
Inside The Incubator, we provide our clients lead capture form templates for Dubsado, teach them how to create workflows to automate the entire inquiry process, including multiple workflows for approving or denying leads, and we outline all canned emails to write so that all they have to do is add a little personalization.
THE ONBOARDING PROCESS
You want to make onboarding as easy as possible for clients. This means having a streamlined way of sending their proposal, contract, and invoice, and getting those to them in a timely manner (If you guessed that we teach our clients how to do this as well, you’d be correct). If it’s possible to send them during the same day, that would be great. However, always communicate when they can expect something, and then follow through.
WHILE WORKING TOGETHER
Say it with us: Communication is key. Keep your client informed throughout every step of the process. Over-communicate if need be. It’s better to have a client tell you, “Please stop emailing me so much, I don’t need to know everything that’s happening”, than “Why haven’t I heard from you in a week?!”
Stick to the deadlines you’ve set for projects or tasks, and exceed them when you can. If a client says to have something to them by Friday, aim for Wednesday if possible.
THE OFFBOARDING PROCESS
How can you extend the experience even after they’ve signed off? Some super simple ways you can accomplish this are by:
Sending a handwritten thank you note
Sending a small gift card
Sending a celebratory card for their birthday or important milestones
Sending a check-in email after 3-6 months
These are small actions that can really make a lasting impact on your clients because it shows that you care about them. Heck, they may even come back later to work with you again, and they’re more likely to recommend you to friends in their circle.
How to Measure Feelings as a KPI
Like we said earlier, it probably seems impossible to use feelings as a trackable metric. However, that’s where feedback forms and testimonials come into play! If you aren’t already asking clients for testimonials after you finish working with them, it’s time to start ASAP. Not only will this give you measurable results from your clients, but you’ll also have great marketing material.
GUIDING CLIENT TESTIMONIALS
When left up to their own devices, unless a client has tons of experience writing powerful testimonials for other service providers, it’s important (and can be a great help to them) to provide questions that will get them thinking in the right direction. Ask specific questions in addition to a long answer question where they can write their testimonial. You really want them to dig deep and uncover how the whole experience really changed their life or business for the better. Some examples include:
What was your life/business like before working with me? (i.e. What problems were you facing?)
What is your life/business like since working with me?
What made [your business name] initially stand out to you?
What made you happiest during your time working with me?
Was there anything that exceeded your expectations?
How would you describe your experience working with me to someone else?
The last question is really important because it switches their mindset from just writing kind words about you to putting them in the shoes of how potential clients would see your business based on their words. Don’t forget to also ask questions that will help you know what you should improve in your business, too.
This may have seemed like a lot to take in about the customer and client experience, but the key is remembering how every part of your business will make your customers and clients feel. Feelings are the main driving force behind the decisions we make, so we definitely want to make sure that prospects and clients feel good, to say the least, when they experience any part of our brand.
Inside The Incubator, we teach The Art and the Architecture of the Client Experience, so our clients can really dig deep and uncover the intentions and feelings they want to invoke with their experience. This helps them much more easily create the tangible pieces of their process that will add to the experience and make their clients feel especially happy. We encourage you to go ahead and apply here, then DM us on Instagram @bossproject telling us you applied!
