The Tale of Two Customer Journeys

aka – how to build a business which lasts, by putting customer care at its heart

This is the tale of two customer journeys, and whether doing business with you is painful or pleasurable?

Let me share these two different experiences I had recently.

The first one was when I was going through the process of applying for grants and loans for my two daughters who are going off to university this year. We were doing this through Student Finance Wales, and like most application forms these days, you can apply online. But when we started the process, we very quickly hit a problem. Their online system doesn’t recognize twins.

(Yes…even though a supercomputer can simulate 13 Billion Years of cosmic evolution, the Student Finance Wales system can’t handle the thorny issue of applications from twins!)

A finance fiasco

So because I’ve got twins, we were unable to use the online system to apply for their student finance. A task which started as something which should have been relatively straightforward then turned into a real palaver. It meant I had to drive into town to get the 40-page form printed out. Then after filling it out, I then had to go back into town to send it by registered post so it didn’t get lost. And the annoying thing about this experience was that there was nothing on their website when we first started applying that said they couldn’t process online applications from twins. It was only during a phone call about something different that they mentioned in passing I would have to apply offline.

My first experience with Student Finance Wales wasn’t a great one. To be fair, the people on the helpline were very helpful. But their overall process was not great. I felt like hard work. What should have been something fairly quick, became complicated, and time-consuming, and caused me aggro.

A charm of vacuums

By comparison, let me tell you about our vacuum cleaner. We live on a farm, and we’ve got three dogs. So our house gets messy.  Recently, our Henry Hoover died, so I decided to buy a cordless GTech vacuum cleaner instead. I did it from their online shop, and the process was all very smooth. No problems there. But a month after I purchased this new vacuum cleaner, it broke. The handle got stuck, and I could no longer use it.

Having had so many poor experiences of customer care when I’ve bought other things online, I was really dreading trying to solve this problem. I assumed that when I rang up, I wouldn’t be able to speak to a human. And then I’d have the hassle of having to take into town to return it via post for them to fix it. I was dreading it. But instead, what happened was an absolute pleasure. I rang up their customer care line and got straight through to a human being, which is unusual these days.

It turned out the issue was a known fault, and she immediately set me up to have a free replacement part sent as soon as possible. And she assured me it would come with easy to follow instructions to fit the spare part, which would completely solve the problem. She also promised that she would send a follow-up email to check that everything was okay once I received the new part and to check I’d managed to fit it properly.

So this the contrast of these two experiences I had as a customer was stark, especially because they both happened within about a week of each other.

It got me thinking about the application of this for business as a whole because successful companies understand that EVERY point of a customer’s journey with you matters.

I work with a lot of business owners writing copy for their front end funnels to help generate new leads. They often think that the secret to growing their business is all about getting new leads and customers in the front end.

But I also always like to talk to them about customer retention as well, because this is often totally overlooked. But it can be where the most significant growth for your business lies.

You need both – a strategy to consistently bring in fresh new leads and first-time customers, plus a system to look after your long-term customers. 

As Brian Kurtz says in his new book Overdeliver;

“Saving a loyal customer after they feel you have not fulfilled your promise (at any point in the relationship) is your most important sales function. You do this by making world class customer service your highest priority.”

How can you make this happen in your business? Here are four suggestions to start you off…

Firstly, are you creating a frictionless experience for new leads to become first-time customers?

Something as simple as making it easy to buy from you, and having an excellent onboarding experience will make a big difference in how your business is perceived.

Secondly, how do you treat your existing customers?

Do you look after them well? Do you give them preferential treatment and reward loyalty? Or is it a case of familiarity breeds contempt? You often see businesses such as energy providers offering great deals to new customers, yet hiking up the price over time for long term loyal customers. This seems like a crazy way to do business. And customers don’t like feeling taken advantage of when they’re very loyal to your business.

Thirdly, what are you doing to create lifelong customers?

Someone who not only buys from you more than once but also becomes an advocate for your business because their experience with you is so good. And maybe over time they even become a direct referrer of new clients or customers to you.

The secret to this is that you need a well thought out Ascension plan within your business. In other words, a great back end so that your customers can continue buying from you when they’re ready to take the next step.

And finally, are you using personalized marketing?

Does your marketing speak to customers at their point in the journey, or is it generic, taking no account of how they’ve interacted with you, or whether they’ve bought from you so far or not.

You can create more personalized marketing by having a well thought out email marketing strategy with proper tagging and segmentation. This way, whether your emails are one-off broadcasts, or automated emails triggered by the actions a subscriber has or hasn’t taken, you’re always trying to give them a tailored experience from you. Personalization goes a long way to making your leads and customers feel like you actually care about them because you’re speaking to them through your marketing and way that feels much more relevant.

So to wrap up, I want you to think about how other businesses have treated you. How has it made you feel? Did it make your life easier or harder? Was it a pleasure doing business with them, or something which left you feeling used and abused?

Remember – it’s your business and your rules…so why not put caring at the heart of it, and do everything you can to create loyal long term clients and customers.

If the task of putting together a personalized email marketing strategy and getting the critters written has been languishing at the bottom of your To-Do list for longer than you can remember…let me take that off your plate for you. It’s the least those lifelong-clients-in-waiting of yours deserve. 
I have tea and biccies and whole lotta’ email marketing goodness at the ready, so get in touch and let’s get cracking.