I’m in the market for a new car so I decided to visit the nearby dealership during my lunch break. Perhaps not surprisingly, fifteen minutes after walking into the dealership I left in disbelief at the terrible customer experience they had given me. As I was driving away, I thought of the similarities between my experience at the car dealership and the customer experience in other industries. What follows are the lessons from today’s ordeal:
Consumers expect more from their vendors! Companies like Zappos, who went from startup to $1 billion in 10 years, have proven that a superior customer experience can and will impact your bottom line (come listen to Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, speak at the industry’s largest VOC event). When was the last time you asked your customers what they expect from you and how you were doing in those areas?
Know your customer! The car dealer tried hard to get me to buy a car I didn’t want. He didn’t know my needs because he never asked. How well do you really know your customer? How do your products/solutions impact their world? How does that differ by segment?
Take control of the customer experience! If you don’t proactively design your customer experience, one will be provided for you. How easy is it to buy your product or service? Is your customer’s experience littered with overly complicated phone trees, slow response times, or unknowledgeable staff? Have you mapped out your customer’s experience and do you thoroughly understand all of the points of contact with your typical customer?
Gone are the days of merely losing a single customer because of a bad experience. Studies show that today’s consumer would have posted negative comments about that dealership on Facebook, chat rooms, and Twitter before they ever left the parking lot. That post would have been read by potentially thousands like people in a similar demographic. Research also shows the cost of acquiring a new customer to be 10x that of keeping an existing customer happy.
If you would like to learn more about designing a better customer experience, join us on February 23, 2012 for a complimentary webcast in which customer experience experts Kerry Bodine of Forrester Research and Andrew McInnes of Allegiance will speak to the ways organizations are driving business outcomes through customer feedback and re-designing their customer experience.
