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It's All About the Customer Experience

Written by: David Liddell

Article Overview: Are you provding excellent customer service? Is the customer experience deteriorating within your company? Read and find a few steps in improving customers' experience.

It's All About the Customer Experience

Buying a new car (or used car for that matter) falls into the "necessary evil" category for me. I try to avoid the experience but, as it happens, we are due for a new car this year. This led me and my wife to a local car dealer last week after plenty of research and weeks of eying likely candidates while hitting the roads and highways. My wife narrowed it down to two that she thought would suite her needs best after a very deliberate process of elimination. Now, you would think I would learn from my years of buying and leasing cars to expect the worst but unfortunately my memory failed me. We had the greatest plan - get in and get out with minimal pain and limited effort. We walked into the showroom with that "we are here to buy a car" look on our faces and, sure enough, we are asked if we need help. So far - so good, no high pressure and the salesperson was very willing to let us test drive a car. Fortunately, this dealer represented both manufacturers of the cars on our short list so we were able to test drive the other car on the same visit. Life is good; one visit, two test drives later, and we've made a selection. At this point, I am thinking - we are going to set a personal best..... Not so fast!

In my experience, this is where the customer experience starts to deteriorate for most cars dealers. We've all been there - you've gone down the list of options, determined the manufacturers suggested retail price (MSRP), and the question comes out - "what monthly payment are you trying to reach?" This is a perfectly legitimate question except for the next step when the salesperson "needs to speak to the manager". Now, I don't blame the salesperson because this is how they have been trained to sell - so we move on after my response - "the lowest possible", with a smile on my face. We are still on pace to make this a reasonably quick experience. But wait.....there's more......

With today's available technology, any reasonable person would think that this should take no time at all but the visit to the sales manager's office (in this case, an elevated cubical in the middle of the showroom) was a thirty minute waiting game for us. Granted, patience is a virtue, but from our perspective they were wasting our time. We choose to leave without buying a car, which could have easily happened that day, with the agreement that we would call us a call. In the end, we did buy the car from that dealer but it was well over a week later.

This may be the way the game is played but there are plenty of risks - we could have become frustrated and moved to different dealer (that almost happened). We will not recommend this dealer to another person and, worst case, any commentary share regarding our experience will be mostly negative.

The take away from this should have you thinking about your customers' experience. Do you know how they feel about working with your company and willingness to say good things? You may think you do but, using the example above, the dealer feels we are pleased because we ultimately bought the car from them however our experience tells a different story.

Leaders in today's rapidly changing business world have determined that there is more to success than catchy advertising campaigns. Whether it's a business, a professional practice, a health care facility, or a government agency, success comes to organizations that are dedicated to looking after their customers. Quality alone isn't enough.

Here are the steps to improving your customers' experience:

Discover customer expectations - ask them.

Recognize the customer experience.

Define a vision for exceptional customer service.

Enhance customer service associates' skills.

Develop customer service coaching techniques for your managers

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Article Tags: customer experience, excellent customer service, rapidly changing business



Related Forum Posts
Re: Two Useful Books To Help You Focus On The CLIENT - Hi David, To add to your thread, I'd like to recommend Jonathan Tisch's "Chocolates On The Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience". Tisch's book includes content on "Welcoming Customers", "The New Art of Customization", "The Challenges of Customer Diversity" and "Offering Something Extra to Your Customers" to name a few.
My reading log - Hi OmnivoreInk, Before starting my business, I read the following books as research: -"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki -"The AdSense Code" by Joel Comm -"Don't Think Pink" and "Mind Your X's and Y's" by Lisa Johnson And since then I've continued my "research" by reading (in this order): -"Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross -"For One More Day" by Mitch Albom -"The Twits" by Roald Dahl -"Little Black Book of Connections" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne -"The Profitable Retailer" by Doug Fleener -"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell -"Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis -"Little Green Book of Getting Your Way" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling And I'm currently reading and am in the process of finishing the following: -"There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking" by Jeanette and Roy Henderson -"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell -"The Book of Tells" by Peter Collett -"Little Red Book of Sales Answers" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience" by Jonathan M. Tisch -"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron -"The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey
Re: Are you going to use Facebook Timeline? - Hi apu, I Recently used Facebook Timelines, actually it seems like a Facebook blog which makes profile page more attractive but i don't think it will help in internet marketing because it also slow the speed of Facebook Page. Share your Experience!
Picking a corporate lawyer - Hi Everyone, I was just curious to know what's the most important criteria a small business owner should look at when choosing a corporate lawyer? -Cost/hr? -Location? -Reputation/Referral? -Experience? -Personality? How did you pick your lawyer? And what's a fair price to pay per hour? Thanks
Re: Paypal process $315 million in payments per day. - I agree with you David, their Customer relations suck. This mean other payment systems like 2CO and WORLDPAY should work on their customers relations to take more slice of the market.


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