Customer experience: why perception matters

Welcome to the 6th episode of my video series. Let me tell you that I'm enjoying sharing my weekly videos with you and receiving all your comments and feedbacks, so thank you very much!

Back to business topics, when it comes to customer experience lots of brands claim to know it, but only few of them really seem to care about it.

So, how is it possible? Let's define it first before talking about it.

What is customer experience?

I think that the tweet below explains it very well...

Yes, you read it well: it's the the sum of all interactions with a customer.

That implies that every single interaction is very important since it may affect customer sentiment in a positive or negative way. Moreover, most people vent their emotions by sharing their experiences online (as global stats say).

Always show your love to your customers

Consequently, brands should do any effort to treat their customers well in any step of their relationship with them. Briefly speaking, they should focus on each of the following 3 phases:

1. Pre-sales –> by providing customers with clear and useful information in order to prevent misunderstandings or missteps.
2. Sales –> reassuring the consumer that he/she took the right decision to become your customer, also explaining what to expect in the future in case of need or assistance.
3. Post sales –> don't let him/her down. Conversely, schedule in advance way to get in touch in order to get important feedbacks as well as letting the customer know that your brand cares about his/her satisfaction (not just about your money).

Build trust to leverage positive customer experiences

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, some infographics are golden nuggets...

Photo credit -https://clearactioncx.com/trust-choice-customer-experience/

The golden nugget is trust though.

Trust is the lens thru which we filter others experiences. As you appreciate above, the same information may influence our evaluation of a company with totally different results!

• If a brand has been able to build trust, customers are reluctant to believe to negative information (only 25% will after hearing 1-2 times).
• Viceversa, if customers have no longer trust, the tend not to believe to positive customer experiences/information (only 15% will after hearing 1-2 times).

That's why building and maintaing trust is the key factor to retain and attract customers.

Now, let me tell you more about customer experience in this 3-minute video...

Highlights of this video

• 00:31 The perception of your reliability.
• 01:47 Why customer satisfaction is like a financial share.
• 01:18 A practical example: customer experience at a car dealer.
• 02:17 Greetings (till next Wednesday).

Video-related tip

It's what customers feel (not what you think) that is bound to affect their next purchase decisions.

About this video series

Time is running fast: this is the 6th out of 10 videos. Previous ones were about social customer service since it's strictly related to customer experience. The formula of this series is 1 new video on Wednesdays for 10 weeks.

In case you missed one of my videos check them out below:

1. What is social customer service? [video]
2. The revolution of online conversations [video]
3. The value of trust [video]
4. Empowered customer sentiments [video]
5. The new customer service culture [video]

More juice for you

Here are the top 3 articles about customer experience that I've selected for you. Enjoy them below:

• 3 ways to create customer experiences that boost sales by Brett Relander on Entrepreneur.com
• We need a measure for customer effort by Gerry McGovern on Cmswire.com.
• Great customer experience: a light breeze by Graham Moreno on Business2community.com

Your turn

Experiences lead to perceptions, perceptions affect trust and eventually lead to customer decisions. In this process, the new key point is that those experiences are amplified via social networks to the big online arena.

1. How do you make sure to deliver excellent customer experiences?
2. What's your best suggestion to build trust with customers?

Share your love for this article and add your comments below.

Have a great Wednesday.

Let's keep in touch

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About Paolo

Paolo Fabrizio is Social CRM, Blogger, Speaker. Multilingual professional (english, spanish, german, italian), he is a pioneer of online customer cervice, having contributed to insurance start-ups since the 90's.

Paolo's insight: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has evolved into Social Customer Service. That time is now. This revolutionary business era is the core of his Blog.