Emotions by design

If you have customers, you are already providing them with a customer experience. If you are not taking steps to make sure that you are in control of this experience, it is most probably an indifferent or, even worse, a negative one. Having said this, there are serendipitous cases of excellent service that apparently just happens. In such cases the reason is usually a conscientious employee with a talent for communication and customer service. I use the term talent because in these instances it is more likely than not that the employee has not been trained. Rest assured: consistently positive customer experience does not just happen. Ever. Which brings us to the oxymoron of the customer experience. Although customer experience is by nature emotional, it is process driven. Great customer experience is the result of careful design. It is the outcome of processes executed with near religious zeal. A characteristic of robust processes is that they leave nothing to chance and have built-in controls. This is the basis of great customer experience and most certainly the main ingredient of a branded experience.

Let me take a minute to define great customer experience. It is never good practice to start designing something using vague terms and criteria. A great customer experience is the experience received by any given customer that will elevate their frame of mind, during any moment of truth, so that they will not only feel better than they did before living it but will enthusiastically recount the details of the experience to others for a prolonged period of time. Still vague? It is the experience that will compel any given customer, at any given moment of truth to respond in the most positive way possible to any accepted test, survey or other tool designed to measure customer engagement. So in the case of, say, the Net Promoter Score, that would be a 10!

If you are not able to recount the steps you are taking to control your customers' experience, start work on them today.

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