WOW Customer Experience

When I spoke last month at the Ingram Micro SMBA Invitational there was a talk by Justin Crotty, their Vice President of Services. He spoke about providing a great customer experience.

As leaders we need to be pushing LOI: Live It - Observe It - Improve It constantly to make our customer experience surpass our competitors.

Justin used an example of a wedding cake that sells for $5,000. Now does the person buying the cake ask to see the bill of materials to make the cake so they make certain the baker is not marking-up the cake too much? Of course not! The customer's concern is the experience and a great experience with the cake - great look, taste and freshness - justifies the cost.

He also talked about BMW. Although many people will argue a Beamer is a better car, in reality it is the experience of owning a BMW that keeps their sales and margins high.

Why don't we do that more often in our business? Why do we focus on price? It is simple really. We cannot adequately justify a higher price based on demonstrable ROI and a superior customer experience.

How can you significantly improve your customer experience? The same way you eat an elephant: One LOI step at a time. Why not start today?

Meeting Ideas

WOW Customer Experience is about leadership fully committing your organization to creating and consistently delivering a superior experience when your customers use your products and/or services.

Here are some potential questions for your next staff meeting to determine how you can improve your customer experience:

• What are the ten most common ways we fail to meet our customers' expectations?

• What are the ten most common ways our competitors deliver a great customer experience?

• What are the ten most creative ways any company in any industry are providing a superior customer experience?

• Looking at these lists what are ten ways we can improve our customer experience, listed in order of priority, weighted for importance, and estimate the time and cost it would take to implement each action item.

• Everybody take this data and think about it for a month. Each week we will discuss this again as part of our meeting. We want new ideas to consider and better ways to implement the ideas we have already listed. The company will recognize anyone who supplies one or more new or improved ideas with a gift from your Wish List - EVERY WEEK. Let's do this, people! (If you don't know what I mean by Wish List, then email me.)