Everyday we face hundreds of choices. It gets complicated. And this is why we create habitual behaviour — whether it is to take the same route to work, whether we put on our underwear before our sock everyday, or simply the same breakfast. It makes our life easier and we can go onto autopilot.
Consumer Decision Making Shortcuts
When there is no autopilot system, these choice get a bit to hectic. We look for the mental shortcuts that will make our decision making process easier. Its why we use the peer review system so often. For example,
- If a hundred people say its good, we will try it.
- If a blogger has a 100 000 RSS readers we follow them.
- If some one we respect loves that product or service, we will give it a try.
The examples go on and you can see many from your own life.
The Customer Experience Triggers the Shortcuts
People will review your brand based on how it makes them feel and the experience that they get out of it. It really is that simple.
The customer experience is the crucial trigger that helps people to define the shortcut and is one reason why it is so important. It drives the decision making shortcut and is why it cannot be left to chance.
The Customer Experience is your New Product and Service
Many marketers and business owners will spend a lot of time looking at the products and services and how they need to be positioned. They look at the brand pyramids and define the features and benefits and hope that they hit the bulls eye. Buckets of money is thrown out in the hope that this works and that the feedback is a major spike in sales.
Yet when your product is perceived as just another commodity then there is very little hope. The ability to differentiate your self is almost impossible. This is what competition does.
Yet each commodity will create a different experience. If you can get your customer experience to be different and totally relevant to your target profile. This will get in front of the competition but you will stay ahead of the game.
How Do You Create the Customer Experience
It is very easy to go on how you need to create the experience that your customer loves. But how do you do it. How do you make sure everyone “gets it”, buys into the process and loves what you doing. How do you manage change and your customers evolving needs.
There is a a very structural and here is a brief outline:
- You look at how your customer experiences your organization as they move from pre-purchase, into the purchase stage and finally the post-purchase stage.
- You break this down into more detail touch points within each stage. For example a pre touch point experience might be a sales call and the website experience.
- You then dig into the key drivers in each stage and how your staff impacts each stage — even if they do not deal with the customer directly.
- You then look at your processes and systems and then restructure them so that the customer wins with an experience and you win financially.
The hard part is to throw out the holy cows and the need to be right. You also have to get past the idea that this is how you have always done it. If the customer experience sucks it does not matter how you have always done it.
Maybe most of all this right requires some honest hard work . If you want to see some of the trends for Customer Experience in 2011 check out the Forrester’s 2011 Customer Experience Predictions
About Michael Cowen
