Customer Experience Manifesto

Deliver the Brand, Create Memories

After you have completed work building an awesome brand, the customer experience is your most important marketing function. So as we begin our customer experience project during the 2nd quarter here on The Marketing Spot Blog, let’s lay the foundation. Here’s why this important, and here’s what we want to accomplish.

The Customer Experience Sets the Stage

It tells the brand new customer whether you are for real, or if you’re just another fibber. Before customers walk through your door, they have developed a preconception about your business. That preconception is based on many different things: your advertising, your website, your store front, word of mouth about your business. It’s important for you to meet or exceed those preconceptions. If you do, you set the stage for a prosperous relationship. If you fail to live up to those preconceptions, the relationship gets off to a rocky start, and customers don’t really trust you. The customer experience either meets or dashes expectations about your business.

The Customer Experience Determines Loyalty

The number one reason why people will, or will not, do business with you again is the experience they have with you. It’s not your prices, it’s not your service, it’s the total experience. That’s not to say price and service aren’t important, but “low-prices, great-services” businesses are on every street corner. What customers are hungry for is an experience that justifies their time and money. Few businesses offer that experience. Deliver a remarkable customer experience and you will earn customer loyalty.

The Customer Experience Sparks Word of Mouth

People talk about prices a lot. That’s mainly because businesses give them nothing else to talk about. But a great customer experience creates conversation about your business. And customers want to talk about you. People like finding cool places and telling their friends about it. A remarkable customer experience is the spark of word of mouth.

The Customer Experience is Brand Delivery

As one entrepreneur told me, “this is where the rubber meets the road.” Meaning: where the brand and the customer meet. The customer experience is not a series of unrelated good ideas thrown together, it is a careful orchestration of brand delivery. That makes creating the experience easier, because you don’t have to wonder what goes in it. Simply deliver your brand promise in an interesting and memorable way. The customer experience is really a brand experience.

The Customer Experience is Mapped Out

A remarkable customer experience is not something that just happens, it is thoughtfully and carefully planned. Use the Customer Experience Map to create a cohesive and coherent brand experience, framed by your brand. It takes chance out of equation. Consistently great customer experiences don’t occur by chance, they are carefully planned. Treat your customers to a remarkable experience by carefully planning it advance of their arrival.

The Customer Experience Creates Memories

When people talk about their experiences, they don’t speak in abstractions. If you ask, “So how did you did you like Magic Fingers Day Spa?” The response is not, “Their service was attentive and the people are friendly.” People talk about their experiences in specifics. Those specifics are the memories you give them during the experience. You should create branded memories in the experience to give your customers something specific to talk about. A remarkable customer experience creates memories.

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