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Be reliable
Do what you say as you say every time

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It seems a little thing on the surface. After ringing up your purchase at My Fit Foods, the person behind the counter carries your purchase to the door, many times even to the car. It’s surprising because it’s a level of service you don’t expect. That’s customer delight.

In this age of self-serve everything, encountering service once taken for granted is delightful. What’s equally remarkable is the consistency of this customer experience at every My Fit Foods location I’ve visited. “It’s something we’re known for,” says Store Manager Jason Smith.

Advertising brings in prospects. Service creates customers. Customer delight builds loyalty. Does your team reliably delight customers? That’s why reliability is one The Ten BE’s of Better Branding.

What customer experience does your brand deliver?

The marketing of your company shifts into high gear when customers walk in. Advertising attracts, but whether your branding wins or loses is measured by a customer’s tangible experience. Optimizing that moment of truth is is a matter of understanding the variables and managing them.

In retail, customer experience happens at the store. Service businesses, on the other hand, bring it to the customer. In the final installment of our conversation, Mike Dandridge, author of The One-Year Business Turnaround, shares how his Customer Experience Factor applies to service businesses.

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Click here for part one of our conversation covering the basics of customer experience. Click here for part two of our conversation including specific examples.

As with retail, seeing the experience through the service customer’s eyes first points you in the right direction.

Why better stripes build better branding

Pesky details are what separate branding monsters from the also-rans. It’s not one big thing, but a bazillion little things. Mike Dandridge, author of The One-Year Business Turnaround. , says it’s actually about 100 things.

Through his research, Mike has established the 100 specific touch-points affecting your business’ Customer Experience Factor. Through his objective measurement, Mike isolates areas in your business where a little adjustment can make a big difference.

Last week, Mike explained the basic principles of the Customer Experience Factor. This week, he shares specific examples of where something as simple as the striping in your parking lot can have a big impact on your branding and customer experience.  (click the white arrow twice to play)

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Next week, Mike shares how the Customer Experience Factor also applies to service businesses where the experience occurs in the customer’s home. Mike will be in Houston speaking at a breakfast being hosted by Wizard of Ads Gulf Coast. Space is limited. So, contact me now if you’d like to attend.

How much is customer experience costing you?

How your customer experiences your business is the acid-test of your advertising and marketing. Whether it happens in your store, or in their home, in an instant your branding pays off or goes up in flames. The Customer Experience Factor may hold the key to optimizing what happens when your customers have a tangible experience of with your company.

Mike Dandridge is author of The One-Year Business Turnaround. It’s the story of his experience leveraging the Customer Experience Factor to take a business he ran from $3 million in total annual revenue to a million dollars a month. And, he did that in one year.

Now, Mike has created The Customer Experience Factor, a tool that provides an objective measurement of how well businesses manage the critical moment of customer contact. Mike shares some insights into optimizing your customers’ experience in a conversation with had recently.

How did he do it?

Listen to part one of my three-part conversation with Mike. In this segment, Mike lays out the basics of CEF. The remaining two segments will appear next week. (Double-click the arrow to play the interview)

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Partial transcript:

What is the Customer Experience Factor?

“The Customer Experience is almost self-explanatory.  It’s really defined by how the customer feels and thinks and feels in response during and after a business transaction. Now, the Customer Experience FACTOR is simply the measurement of that experience.

We all have a kind of mental scale as customers; a measurement we use when we go into a business. Whether it’s a restaurant, or we’re buying something. We grade the performance of that business. So, that’s what the Customer Experience Factor is.

If a customer comes into your store, and they have the same exact experience they expected and leaves, it’s just a neutral experience. But, if they go in and they’re blown away, then that raises the needle on The Customer Experience Factor.

On the other end, if they come in and they have a really disappointing experience, that’s going to tip it the other way. And, those are the ones that usually cause people to talk and tell their friends about their bad experiences”

I imagine a negative score has a lot more carry power than a positive one.

“Certainly is. Unfortunately, that’s how we are.”

Most people probably take it for granted when they walk into, say, a Starbucks. You know exactly what you’re going to experience when you walk in, that same arrogant disregard behind the counter.

(chuckles) “Well, the expression was, “we have the best service in town.” And, everyone says that. If your competitor is saying the same thing as you are, someone’s lying. Not everyone has the best service.

So, it’s really broadened into not so much the words you speak as the actions you take. You used the Starbucks example, a good way to give an illustration of the way we measure an experience.

I was out of town and needed a toothbrush. So, I went to Target. And, when I went in, I had preconceived expectations of what I was going to experience based on all the other times I’d gone into Target. And, it was exactly the same. I walked in. There’s a guy at the door to greet me. He hands me a basket. There was someone walking the aisles to show me where the toothbrushes are. Checked out, paid the price I expected and left.

It was just an ordinary experience. Now, in Target’s defense, it was, of course, a wonderful experience. But, you see, they’ve raised the bar on their service to such an extent that you expect that. So, you’re not surprised.  You’re not overwhelmed. You’re not going to tell your friends about it.

The challenge for businesses is, how do you keep exceeding your own setting of the bar. But, most people don’t have the problem Target has. Most people have the problem of just delivering a compelling customer experience to begin with.”

I was checking out at Wal-Mart one time. The woman at the register said, “did you find everything you were looking for?” I told her, “No. I was actually looking for that WalMart that I see on TV with the people who are ready to help me.

“Yeah. I think we’re all looking for that.”

NEXT TIME: Learn some of the 100 elements used in the Customer Experience Factor.

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