Premium or forgettable?
It’s no secret that word of mouth comes from exceptional customer experience. Surely, you don’t recommend things to your friends which are “just okay” or “alright, I guess”.
What kind of recommendation is that?
So in order to get your customers to rave about your product or service to their friends, family, colleagues, blog readers, etc. you need to not be forgettable. Actually, you need to do even better than that: You have to deliver a premium experience every time.
The difference between a premium experience and one you forget about is the difference between successful word of mouth that builds your business year on year versus just keeping your head above water no matter how good your actual product is.
The good news is that most businesses aren’t willing to go the extra mile. They’re content to sit in the “average-to-good” Customer Experience Zone, making it much easier for you to give your customers the premium experience they crave.
Here are a few examples of premium versus forgettable customer experience:
1. Minimising inconvenience
Take an auto-repair shop. Which of these is the premium experience and which one is forgettable?
a. While your car is being fixed, you’re given a late-model loan car which is actually better than your own.
b. While your 6-Series BMW is being fixed, you’re given a Ford Focus with 110,000 miles on the clock.
2. Quality versus quantity
Let’s take smartphones as an example:
a. Beautifully packaged, pristine new iPhone with a few high quality bundled apps.
b. Android phone with custom carrier UI and three dozen bundled trial apps, most suck, and the others are spam-ware.
3. Respecting your time
Delivery windows are something that make me crazy. Consider these two:
a. Having your new refrigerator delivered and installed exactly within the 30-minute window you were given.
b. Being told by a customer support person in a remote call centre that delivery times are some time between 7am and 4pm. Just wait for them.
These kinds of premium experiences are not accidental. They’re precisely the things that will make your business stand out from your competitors. You’ll have happier customers and you’ll get more referrals.
How can you apply this to your business over the year ahead? Make a list of things that are currently under par or just average. Then work out how you can make them exceptional, premium experiences that your customers will rave about.
Your comments are very welcome.
– Josh
P.S. Above all else, meet your brand promises. If you don’t get that right, everything else is just window-dressing. For instance, we say “Landing Pages in 60 Seconds”… and we mean it. If it actually took 20 minutes, people would call us out. So focus on the core things first. Make the customer experience in those areas 100% premium. Even if you do just that, you’ll be a step ahead of some of your competitors!