Differentiate Your Business with Customer Experience

So how do you ensure that your customer interface is superior? By focusing on superior customer service. Not only do the people who interact with customers have to be aware of the need for friendly and helpful interactions with each and every customer, owners and managers need to develop the infrastructure and provide the resources needed for these superior interactions to take place. Through promotion you present the messaging that reminds customers of the superior service they receive every time they interact with your business, whether that interaction is in person, over the phone, or by electronic media, internet, email and social media.

What you should be doing with each interaction is creating that emotional bond with the customer or potential customer.  The emotional bond is a powerful differentiator that, while it is difficult to do well, has long-term positive effects when it is done well.

To differentiate your business from others through this strategy you must know your customers.  Who are your current customers and what has engaged them and created loyalty to your business in them. You must know what is important to them, their individual values, aspirations and social interests. You have to put the time in to know them as individuals. What are your brand values and can or will your customers respond to them. What do your customers hold dear? Do their interested an passions coincide with yours. It could be the environment, family, lifestyle, social- responsiveness or other things.

One of the ways to do this is to find out more about your customers by asking them questions and paying attention to the answers After your have the answers, segment your customer records by these things that are important to them, what they want. You cannot build anything but a generic experience with the one-size or brand-fits-all approach to your customers.  They are not all alike and neither do they want to be dumped into a collective box.

You can measure the success by the customers’ ability to brag about the experience. You know you are doing well when customers talk about how they were treated and being the first one of their friends to know about the business and recommend it to others. Remember that when people brag about your products or business, it’s not about you, it is about them, how cool they are, how smart and how sophisticated for choosing your products and your business.

So give some thought about what you can do to encourage everyone in your business to aspire to create the best customer experience they can. Help your employees do this by giving the resources, encouragement and backing to do so.