Drivers of Customer Experience

So what drives customer experience? More specifically, what drives your customers' experience with your company? This is excellent food for thought. By knowing what drives your customers' experience, you can home in on and leverage those points, measure them, improve them, and guarantee your customers a wonderful experience with you. Is it the customer service? Is it how quickly their package arrives? Is it the presentation? Is it the ease of making money? Is it the ease of contacting you?

What drives a positive customer experience? What makes turns a first time customer into a repeat customer? What turns a repeat customer into a rabid, lifetime customer? If you can identify that, you can systemize it and do it every time.

This discussion has roots in a recent trip to the dentist for a basic teeth cleaning. Every time I go to the dentist, I get a brand new dental hygienist. Seeing as how 95% of my time when I go to the dentist is spent strictly with the dental hygienist, it does matter who that person is. And my dentist, for the life of him, can't keep turnover down. In the last six visits, I've had a new dental hygienist each time; so when I'm greeted with the umpteenth new person, I sigh and go "Ugh" internally. Every new hygienist will take a stab at making some small talk, and I largely comply…but it seems like an exercise in superficiality. I mean, they're probably not going to be there the next time, and they may know it too. Personally, I would rather get to know someone at a deeper level.

I still remember my former dental hygienist, Tera. She was married with an architect husband who had just begun his own business. She had two children, and they were building a custom-designed house for themselves. Both she and her husband liked investing in Oregon coastal land. They were starting to make decent money with it, too. She was pregnant with twins the last time I saw her. And then she had her twins, and never came back to work. To quote Napoleon Dynamite, "Dang it!" This spun me into a world of revolving- door dental hygienists.

There's zero relationship with all my new teeth cleaners. Perhaps they see me as a commodity, a set of teeth to be cleaned before quitting time. And I don't want to, but I'm starting to see all of them as interchangeable commodities instead of unique, three-dimensional human beings. It's no good, and my satisfaction with my dentist has plummeted. It's in the gutter these days. So why do I remember all these details about my old dental hygienist, my favorite one? Because I got to develop a nice patient-professional relationship with her. I was very pleased with my dental experience during her reign as my chief teeth cleaner, a glorious period of about four years.

So ask yourself: "What drives our customer experience, and what can we do to make our customers thrilled to do business with us repeatedly?" I say you should be as personable as possible. Let your personality hang out. In all your communications with customers, be real and authentic; never come across as wooden or cardboard cutouts. People want to do business with real people. People do business with people they like, and avoid doing business with people they dislike. By allowing our customers to get to know us, I truly believe they'll come to like us—and that will be better for everyone.