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Business Monitor


Check out marketing’s latest


buzz-term


Customer experience (CX) is marketing’s latest buzz-term that is getting the trade excited.


Marketing expert Paul Clapham explains further.


Y


ou may be allowed the cynical view that such enthusiasms tend to have the lifespan of an insect. This one promises to be different because it has already shown some success. It comes from America but apparently we Brits are considered rather good at it.


So in practice what do those two words mean? It is a recognition that there are a lot of points of contact between a business and its customers and that they all matter. These so-called touch-points (who comes up with these horrible terms?) include not just sales messages in their various forms but how the phone is answered, tone of voice on the website, how clean is the delivery van, how conveniently are products packed when delivered and so on.


The good news is that in the vast majority of cases improving the customer experience doesnʼt cost a bean – take the above examples as instances. Itʼs more about doing things that bit better and, above all, with a focus on what will make the customer happier and more loyal, readier to buy again.


How do you make it work?


First up, senior management must buy into the principles of customer experience or it will be still-born. There is no chance of staff embracing the idea if the MD is less than a cheerleader for it.


Next, promoting the idea internally should be part of someoneʼs job. It neednʼt be time-consuming. A resource for the person charged with this would be the online UK Customer Experience magazine. It would supply success stories and new ideas to


| 22 | June 2017


share internally. It could also be a source of new business, as in, ʻwe too are actively improving customer experienceʼ. Nothing beats being in the same gang. Make an honest assessment of how you fulfil all those points of contact. I wonʼt presume to tell you the ʻrightʼ way to do it, because each business has a different style which can be reflected in those contacts. I would, however, recommend aiming for consistency, e.g. you are always ultra-reactive or always ultra professional or whatever you pride yourselves on. Then do your best to improve any areas of weakness. Next talk to your customers. What do you do well? Are there any areas theyʼd improve? More generally, what do suppliers they like do well? (These can be from any business sector). Perhaps most important, is there anything that really bugs them? I bet there is. Share the findings internally. That should be all of it, not just the nice bits. This you should stress absolutely is not to apportion praise or blame but in order to improve. I predict that staff will be surprised by both perceived strengths and weaknesses. Set yourselves targets for improvement.


Thatʼs easy to write but can be devilishly tricky to do since a target inherently presumes numbers, whereas improved customer experience is qualitative not quantitative. Still, you could commit to wash the van every working day. You could commit to answering the phone after no more than four rings. I predict you could come up with a few others. One comment I read several times on the issue of targets was, ʻdonʼt just aim to match your competitorsʼ. I disagree. Unless itʼs equally a weakness for them,


matching them in specific areas will up your game and you can subsequently aim to beat them. Get staff involved. They are exposed to the customer experience principle in their daily lives (they may not be conscious of it). Get them to share their thoughts with you. It may need some coaxing – people can be very diffident, but when they see one idea used, they will get enthusiastic. Ideally, you would motivate staff to get onboard with your customer experience programme. The best reward in this is happy customers saying they are, so again thereʼs no cost. Nonetheless it might be virtuous to build in a tangible reward – something simple like a meal at a restaurant or pub you have supplied with uniform. Keep it in the family! A key benefit in the customer experience business principle is a recognition that it is a lot easier to lose a customer or a good prospect than it is to win one. Equally, the cost of preventing that loss is small next to the cost of finding the new one. Each time you improve a customerʼs experience, no matter how minor, you have also improved your business pipeline potential. Finally, monitor and measure the programme. The monitoring is straightforward if you have clarified the measures. Turnover and profit are of course key indicators of business success. It might be better to apply practical day-to- day measures: how many enquiries; how many repeat enquiries; how many referrals; how many existing clients trading up.


Those sorts of improvements are typical for companies which make the most of customer experience and they work their way into the bottom line fast.


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