Stop trying to satisfy your customers

Long-term customer loyalty is the result of consistently delivering experiences which delight customers by exceeding their expectations. If lifetime customer value matters to your business, aiming for customer satisfaction is setting the bar too low.

Effective customer experience management (CXM) is the most impactful driver of customer retention across retail and service industries. Marketing, sales and customer service teams the world over have grown obsessed with their customer’s data; they’ll spend weeks pouring over analytics, reviews, survey results and satisfaction monitors for even the smallest insights into what could be done to satisfy customers.

Why then, despite the best-laid plans of strategists and CMOs, are modern consumers becoming less loyal to the brands they engage with? Trends in customer satisfaction data show that consumers across the board are becoming less likely to re-engage or repurchase, less likely to recommend brands to the people around them, and far more likely to detract after just a single negative or frustrating experience.

In the digital realm, it makes sense that some business leaders have felt blindsided by these shifting tides of consumer expectations. If your business sells things online, customers aren’t just assessing the quality of your experiences against your closest industry competitors – they're judging your checkout experience against the last time they ordered from Amazon. Is that a fair fight? Of course not. But is it winnable? Absolutely.

Amazon’s website is an enormous digital warehouse built to sell just about everything. It does an excellent job at just that, but plenty of people find that the site feels vacuous or overwhelming. Its utter lack of personality is enough to put some shoppers off entirely. Consumers will notice when your experiences aren’t able to meet the minimum levels of functionality and responsiveness they have come to expect from other providers, but they will also notice when you innovate on proven formulas and tailor experiences specially for them.

The evolving expectations customers bring to the table based on third-party engagement are a double-edged sword; they pose a massive risk to businesses unable to stay in tune with the needs, ambitions, expectations and pain points their customers share; but to the proactive businesses that maintain a strong connection with customers through effective CXM, each measurable shift in customer expectations or behaviours is a potential opportunity to be leveraged.

The building blocks of customer delight

Curating delightful experiences that generate trust, loyalty, word-of-mouth and customer retention requires a creative approach to CX design and management, centered around the following key objectives.

1.   Maintain a positive emotional valence

The emotional responses customers have at each stage of a customer journey impact their motivation to make it to the next step. Confusion and frustration can be mitigated through clear expectation setting. If a customer’s time or effort is needed to progress, tell them how much. If you ask them to provide information, be clear about why you need it and how you plan to keep it safe. When customers complete steps which require significant effort, find ways to reward them.

2.   Create interpersonal interactions

Customers value having a human to help them solve their problem. Automated communication flows, chatbots and emerging AI solutions are extremely efficient due to their consistency and scale. Implemented well, these tools enhance and build upon the interpersonal experiences staff build with customers rather than replace them entirely.

3.   Demonstrate successful problem-solving

When customers come to a business with a problem, they are sensitive to the timeliness and clarity of the response and diagnosis, and the competence displayed through the solutions offered. When you help customers overcome a problem, celebrating alongside them can inspire confidence and build trust.

4.   Engage the customer’s senses

We live in an attention economy that makes it difficult for businesses to communicate or engage in ways that leave lasting impressions. Approaching the design of physical and digital experiences from a multi-sensory perspective leads to more responsive designs, intuitive wayfinding and navigation, and will unearth opportunities to create memorable interactions that leave lasting impressions.

5.   Time events thoughtfully

It’s a cliché for a reason: timing is everything. Bombarding customers with communications or experiences they aren’t primed for can have the same negative impact as leaving them hanging while they wait for you to respond. Take care to curate journeys which nurture your relationship with customers on a timeline that suits them, while ensuring that you have mechanisms in place to trigger urgent communications when relevant circumstances or opportunities arise.

6.   Give customers control and agency

Empower customers by giving them a sense of control while navigating the experiences you offer. Provide enough choices to enable meaningful decision-making without overwhelming customers with options. Wherever possible, provide contextual cues to inform customer engagement and ensure they understand the impacts of each decision and action.