Guest Post: Deliver a Total Customer Experience

This week we feature an article by Mike Macpherson, Director of Sales and Marketing for VBO Tickets, a global provider of a total ticketing engagement solution. He shares how organizations can deliver a total customer experience.

What is the total customer experience?

Customer obsessive, customer-focused, customer-centric, the idea is to take customer service to a higher level. Here are four areas that help to deliver a total customer experience. 

Listening to the customer

We may not be able to solve every customer’s problem, but we can actively listen to each and every customer. Listening to the customer is very important to implementing a successful total customer experience. Sometimes, the simple act of listening to the customer can turn a negative experience into a positive one. We can learn from the experience, adapt our service levels accordingly, even improve our product from what we learn.  

Actively listening to customers demonstrates a real interest in their business and their needs. Customers want to feel you are genuinely trying to understand their concerns and then they want to see you deliver solutions to those concerns. Just like a doctor we frequently ask our customers what their pain points are so we can learn what prescription is required to alleviate those pain points.  

Asking the right questions, actively listening, and documenting insights from the customer is one of the most effective ways to provide the right solution. Customers often provide the best means of enhancing the total customer experience.  

Take a whole company approach to the customer experience

Involving everyone in the company with the customer experience changes the entire dynamic. Every department should feel the customer’s pain and know how to eliminate it. 

To provide a total customer experience all of the customer touchpoints need to be reviewed and assured of becoming a great experience. While the customer service team is crucial to the company’s purpose, each employee should feel equally responsible for providing customer satisfaction. 

If the whole company is focused on the customer experience, everyone can better understand the customers’ needs and what matters to the customer. Every employee will consider how their actions impact the customer and try to give them what they value most. This whole company approach to the customer increases the organization’s effectiveness at delivering a successful total customer experience. 

Engage the customer

Today’s customers expect a relationship with who they do business with that goes beyond just using products. The goal is to involve the customer in a relationship with the brand that becomes a part of their daily lives. 

Engage the customers by providing helpful content in blogs, emails, social media posts, videos, or podcasts. For this strategy to work, the content has to be truly useful and not just a sales pitch in disguise. Instead of asking how we can sell to customers, we ask them how we can support them. We want to offer customers something they want in exchange for their valuable time and attention. 

Another effective customer engagement strategy involves opening a means for customers to converse with the brand and other customers on a regular basis. Breaking the ice in social media forums such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram is a great way to get the dialogue rolling. To engage customers in this way we want to keep the conversations frequent and relevant. 

Engaging customers is also done well through stories. Inspiring your customers by sharing the brand’s vision and its impact on the lives of other people. 

Engaging with customers means building a positive ongoing connection. This process doesn’t occur over one transaction. It is sustained by ensuring each and every customer touchpoint is a consistently great experience.  

Invest in your people

To deliver a good customer experience, we want to hire great people who enjoy helping others and solving problems. Taking time to properly hire, train, and motivate new hires will prove well worth the investment.  

Hiring people with the right attitude is even more important than hiring people with the right skill set. The organization’s attitude determines how they interact with customers and how far they are willing to go to help provide a great total customer experience. 

To find the right people, look for a good blend of empathy, initiative, and shared values. Empathy enables employees to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and understand how they feel. The initiative enables employees to identify the customers’ problems and take action to fix them. Shared values empower employees to be enthusiastic about the company’s core values. 

Mike MacPherson is the Director of Sales and Marketing for VBO Tickets, a global provider of a Total Ticketing Engagement Solution. They help organizations boost ticket sales with integrated customer relationship management, ticketing, fundraising, merchandise sales, virtual engagement, and marketing solutions.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes article: Customer Loyalty Month Is In April—Are You Ready?