Providing a Consistent Customer Experience

Lorraine Kelleher of Spearline shares her advice for providing consistent customer service.

A focus on ensuring customer experience consistency and satisfaction can be a key differentiating factor for many businesses.

Research by Esteban Kolsky details that only one in every 26 unsatisfied customers will complain, 91% of these non-complainers will also choose to leave the business.

Kolsky describes how a business must ensure that the correct infrastructure, strategy, and employee training is in place for a positive and consistent customer experience.

It is imperative that this is across all touchpoints and interactions as customer experience is multifaceted. However, ultimately an organization is reliant on the customer to decide whether they have had a positive experience or not.

Journey Consistency

From brand awareness campaigns to sales discussions, onboarding, and long-term support, customers should feel that they are on a consistent journey. This shows a thorough understanding and belief in the product or service which the business has to offer.

It can also help to build brand affinity and product commitment, leading to an increase in positive word of mouth and recommendations to others. There should be an integrated, coherent approach at every stage of the customer journey.

Companies must also ensure that they are working to provide their customers with the best possible service at all times.

Emotional Consistency

McKinsey highlighted that emotional consistency was among the biggest drivers of loyalty and satisfaction for consumers. Trust is at the heart of this and customers must have unwavering faith that organizations will deliver on what they promise.

This means that dialogue should be transparent and honest at all times. The quality of the product or service offering must be consistent, as just one bad experience or unfulfilled agreement can dramatically erode trust.

The Harvard Business Review suggests that customers progress through an emotional connection pathway and that those who reach stage four of the path can be over 50% more valuable than those in stage two of the journey. It is the responsibility of the business to help progress their customers through each stage of this model.

1. Being unconnected.
2. Being highly satisfied.
3. Perceiving brand differentiation.
4. Being fully emotionally connected.

Communication Consistency

It is essential that all brand messaging and information communicated from an employee within the organization is delivered in a coherent and interconnected manner. Disconnect between messages and even positioning can lead to high levels of misinterpretation by prospects and even customers, leading to low rates of satisfaction.

Businesses should provide content that shows business knowledge and industry insights. This should be reflective of brand identity and culture. It is also important that those at any stage of the customer journey have access to the relevant level of content for their requirements.

Some will desire a simplified brochure that will provide them with a basic understanding of an offering. In contrast, others will require in-depth technical specifications with clear demonstrated return on investment analysis.

The right content should be consistently available at the right stage of the audience journey to help the reader to progress to the next conversion point.

Conclusion

Businesses need a coherent, consistent strategy to ensure customer satisfaction and a positive customer experience. They must also be mindful that a low level of complaints or an absence of feedback should not be perceived as a sign of satisfaction and is more likely to be indicative of customer churn.

To maintain satisfaction and success, a business must ensure that its operations are oriented around the customer and their needs.

They must move away from a company-centric model of measuring results and examining internal benchmarks and adopt a customer-centric model where outside-in behaviour is placed at the core.

Lorraine Kelleher

There should always be an open dialogue between the business and the customers in order to understand how the product/service can be improved and enhanced.

Spearline’s success has been attributed to a number of core components: the knowledge of our team, world-class products, and brilliant customers. They are always eager to work with our customers and to respond to their challenges with innovative solutions.

To find out about Spearline, visit: www.spearline.com

Author: Guest Author