Remembering and Enhancing the Whole Customer Experience

Many times in the past I have written articles harping on the importance of having a strong front line of highly trained and professional customer representatives, and while this is a major part of a company’s connection with the customer, it should not be the only focus. While this may be the most obvious and direct connection with the customer, it is important to remember that there are many other factors that directly affect your customer’s experience, and these must be given equal attention.

Aside from the direct connection between a CSR and the customer, and making sure that everything goes smoothly and satisfactorily for that part of the equation, it is also important to review all of the steps it takes for a customer to reach that point of contact with the CSR and beyond.  Adam Toporek of Customers That Stick lays out a related story, stating that it can start with a coupon or advertised special. From coupon to post sale follow-up, that is the whole customer experience. Any bumps along the road during that experience become part of the grade for your whole customer experience. If a customer runs into a problem with placing their order online, that is a strike against the experience. If they cannot easily find a way to reach out to the company to seek help with the order, that is a strike. If they call and then have to wait on the line a long time before reaching a CSR, there is a strike. If the CSR cannot quickly resolve the issue, or has to get a manager to approve, you can see how the experience can be for the customer overall.

While in the end, the customer gets what they started out wanting, the road to reach it was plagued with many possible pot holes, and so the customer may walk away with a tarnished view of the company overall. As Adam states it in the aforementioned article, “As the scenario above illustrates, a customer’s impression of a company is not determined by the customer service department alone but by every touchpoint in the customer experience. Customer Experience Enhancement (CEE) is about understanding that customer’s judge companies based on the sum total of their interaction with the company and the brand.”

In a separate article from the same source, Adam discusses 15 Minutes to a Fresh Look at Your Customer Experience, instructing how you can take a very quick birds-eye view of your customer’s experience by doing a customer experience audit. This is done by simply sitting down and becoming the customer for a moment. Consider all of the steps the customer may potentially take to get through a sale, from the advertisement, through the ordering/sales process, through the finish of the sale, and even taking into consideration any potential for the need of follow up support contact after the sale. Trace through the steps, and then analyze the whole system for any obvious weak spots that need improved. After such an exercise, you will hopefully discover if there are any areas along the way that need improvement, and that is where you start the focus.

The knowledge of additional issues can also be acquired by offering an easy way for customers to give feedback, and this should always be available to them. Of course, you must be sure to read and heed those customer comments if you wish to truly improve the whole customer experience.

So, while the focus of customer service tends to be more centered on the actually person-to-person experience of actually providing service, the whole experience involves so much more. All of the steps require just as much of your attention in order to assure that from start to finish, the customer experience is a smooth, professional, and satisfactory one.

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