An optimal customer experience? Three golden ground rules

Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find new customers and retain existing ones. Whether B2B or B2C, online purchasing is hot, we do more and more remotely and we have less and less face-to-face contact. Of course, we don't have a magic spell to conjure up the optimal customer experience either. But in this blog Sebastiaan de Ruiter gives you three tips to get you started.

1 Know where you stand

Everything hinges on understanding your own position. Of course, new - and existing - technologies are flying around our ears. Chatbots, voice assistants, artificial intelligence, you name it, it's here. But beware: don't put the cart before the horse. Where are you in your customerlifecycle and which technologies fit the bill? If you are a large organization à la bol.com, then a different communication strategy suits you than if you are the butcher around the corner. If your target group consists of seniors, then a different strategy will work than when you target the youth. Don't just start working with all kinds of advanced technologies, but look carefully at which channels suit your company and your customers and which technologies you want to use for that purpose. Once you know which channels you want to use, communicate consistently across all of them to create a holistic experience. A good customer experience is not created by accident. You have to think about it and monitor it. Build on your best practices and grow from there. In a way that suits you.

2 Don't forget the fun

For a good customer experience, your brand interactions must meet three requirements: they must be functional, accessible and enjoyable. Functional and accessible are usually fine, but fun is often forgotten. For example, last week I listened to Peter Heerschop's famous column on The 538 Morning Show. He wanted to ask one of the major energy suppliers a question about a received bill that had been sent to his now mother who died three months earlier. He wanted to know the reason for that invoice and whether the termination of the contract had gone through properly. He couldn't manage to get a flesh-and-blood human being on the line. The robot kept asking him for his mother's account number - which no longer exists. Try explaining to a robot that that was precisely what the question was about. After an hour and a half, he gave up. I think we have all had experiences like this and agree that it is far from pleasant.

3 Make sure your team carries your strategy

I've written about it before: the work-from-home culture can get in the way of your corporate culture ugly. All that working remotely makes it harder for your team to continue to consistently convey your brand experience. Yet that's crucial. While the customer experience is created from the outside in, it is implemented from the inside out. If you want to build a customer-centric culture, start with your own team. Invest in your team and make sure they carry your strategy in everything they do. After all, if they don't propagate it, your customer can't experience it either.

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