Your customer journey is very interaction with you.

Exceeding Customer Expectations

Why do you think your customers choose you? Do you know? This is something every business needs to know, understand and act on continuously. With an ever-changing marketplace, the way you do business today — the experience you provide — may not be enough to retain those same customers in the future. This is why you need to see how your people and systems work together to create an experience that exceeds expectations.

The customer experience begins from the moment they discover you. The relationship you begin to build starts with impressions (marketing system) and then continues as they engage with you (sales system) and finally as you deliver (delivery system) your product or service. You must nurture and build the relationship all along the way.

And if you do business face to face, then how your people engage with them (management system) also impacts the overall experience. You must leave no stone unturned when assessing the experience and how it can be enhanced to exceed expectations. The fact is customers will only choose to do business with you repeatedly if you provide an exceptional customer experience from beginning to end. You must meet their perceived needs, as well as surprise and delight them.

Your customers are continually making choices between your products and services and those of your competitors. Consciously and unconsciously, they make choices between doing business with you, or engaging in alternative uses of their money, time, and attention. A new offer can arrive in their email or appear via an advertisement or talking with a friend. So even when customers aren’t looking to make a purchase or consciously paying attention to your products, they’re receiving information and making observations that continually shift their preferences between you and your competitors.

Do this customer centricity survey to see how customer centric you are as a company.

How well do you listen to your customers. Download the cheat sheet and find out!

Listen to this video where I interview Bernd Schmitt about Happy Customers and discover about why customer centricity is so important.