It’s so very easy to spot a busi­ness that has in­vest­ed in cu­rat­ing its cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence brand in an in­ten­tion­al way. The ev­i­dence is loud and im­pos­si­ble to miss. Em­ploy­ees are ea­ger to serve, sys­tems work like clock­work, process­es are cus­tomer-friend­ly, and there’s an ease to do­ing busi­ness. What’s the ic­ing on the cake? The cus­tomers feel the val­ue of their hap­pi­ness is of greater im­por­tance than the size and weight of their bill.

Cus­tomers are im­pressed when a busi­ness in­vests in mak­ing the first point of con­tact, the point of res­o­lu­tion. En­sur­ing that cus­tomers don’t have to go far to have their needs re­solved is a boon to build­ing strong cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships. In the case of hu­man-to-hu­man en­coun­ters, this means that the au­thor­i­ty to make con­se­quen­tial de­ci­sions is vest­ed in the first point of con­tact, negat­ing the need for es­ca­la­tion to up­line re­fer­ral.

I have ex­pe­ri­enced this first point res­o­lu­tion sev­er­al times, and my re­ac­tion each time is the same. Pure de­light at not hav­ing to wait or not hav­ing to ne­go­ti­ate an ac­cept­able out­come. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, when, dur­ing dig­i­tal trans­ac­tions, the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence en­ables cus­tomers to ex­pe­ri­ence in­tel­li­gent in­quiry and swift res­o­lu­tion of their needs, that’s im­pres­sive. When a busi­ness takes the time to in­vest in sys­tems that re­tain unique in­for­ma­tion on its cus­tomers, so that trans­ac­tions and in­ter­ac­tions can be per­son­alised with a cou­ple of clicks, cus­tomers are im­pressed. The sim­ple act of pulling up a cus­tomer’s shop­ping his­to­ry and of­fer­ing a dis­count on a cur­rent pur­chase com­mu­ni­cates the ex­tent to which a busi­ness is will­ing to go to please its cus­tomers.

A busi­ness that in­vests in deep, sus­tain­able skill train­ing for its cus­tomer con­tact staff achieves a greater yield in the avoid­ance of en­counter fric­tion, the speed of so­lu­tion de­sign and size of the sale. Con­verse­ly, the com­mon prac­tice of glo­ri­fy­ing su­per­fi­cial train­ing for cus­tomer con­tact staff, may yield a short-term burst of ex­cite­ment, dur­ing which time new tech­niques are tak­en for a spin, but this hard­ly re­sults in a sus­tain­able shift in the adop­tion of new skills.

An­oth­er move that im­press­es cus­tomers is when a busi­ness takes ac­tive steps to re­duce its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al bag­gage. You know, the bag­gage that shows up is cul­tur­al strife, lead­er­ship mal­prac­tice, op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cies, and a pre­pon­der­ance of brand mis­steps. A busi­ness that is known for be­ing a great place to work and a great place to do busi­ness, wears a dou­ble badge of ho­n­our in the minds of its cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ty.

This per­fect storm con­verts pos­i­tive cus­tomer sen­ti­ment in­to a pos­i­tive rev­enue stream. Cus­tomers are im­pressed when a busi­ness demon­strates that its cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence is de­signed, cu­rat­ed, and man­aged, mo­ment by mo­ment, to en­sure cus­tomer suc­cess.

Achiev­ing cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence nir­vana is with­in the reach of every busi­ness. It in­cludes pay­ing at­ten­tion to the val­ue points as­so­ci­at­ed with the cus­tomer’s jour­ney, dis­cov­er­ing and re­me­di­at­ing ex­ist­ing pain points along the jour­ney, rig­or­ous over­sight of the ser­vice de­liv­ery process, and dili­gent mea­sur­ing of the cus­tomer’s ex­pe­ri­ence through­out the jour­ney.

On the oth­er side of the coin, cus­tomers are not im­pressed when a busi­ness puts on­ly enough re­sources in place to meet min­i­mum ex­pe­ri­ence ex­pec­ta­tions. Typ­i­cal­ly, this in­volves on­ly the most rudi­men­ta­ry pro­vi­sions to en­sure that trans­ac­tions can be ex­e­cut­ed, re­act­ing to cus­tomer com­plaints when they oc­cur and up­grad­ing ser­vice so­lu­tions on­ly when ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary. A com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy that fol­lows a proac­tive and co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach is nowhere in sight. Many busi­ness­es opt to fol­low this patch­work ap­proach for two rea­sons. The ef­fort lev­el is low, and its ex­e­cu­tion does not re­quire ma­jor sub­ject mat­ter ex­per­tise.

The prob­lem with this game plan, though, is that it does not de­liv­er a per­ma­nent so­lu­tion to the busi­ness of keep­ing cus­tomers hap­py, de­light­ed and loy­al. The busi­ness­es that opt to forego this patch­work ap­proach, typ­i­cal­ly in­vest in an over­sight unit tasked with man­ag­ing the in­fra­struc­ture that will sus­tain a co­or­di­nat­ed, co­he­sive and com­pre­hen­sive plan for achiev­ing ser­vice ex­cel­lence. Let me say here that I have come across few busi­ness­es that have tak­en this nec­es­sary but bold step to­wards in­fus­ing re­al sci­ence in­to the ac­tion plan for el­e­vat­ing their cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence to a five-star rat­ing.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, a busi­ness that in­vests to im­press its cus­tomers is com­mu­ni­cat­ing loud­ly that it is pre­pared to earn its cus­tomers’ loy­al­ty through the time, ef­fort and care be­ing put in­to cu­rat­ing the brand ex­pe­ri­ence. I en­cour­age every busi­ness that is in­tent on be­ing ad­mired for stel­lar cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, to take ad­van­tage of every avail­able op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­press its cus­tomers. Do­ing so paves the way for good busi­ness and pays good div­i­dends go­ing for­ward, as well.