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Kindle Notes & Highlights
To never lose a customer again, you must meet your customers (whoever they are) where they are in their emotional journey.
remind yourself that you are selling something to people that will be used by people. If you always keep that in mind, you will move your customer through the phases of the ideal journey, and you will make every customer a customer for life, regardless of your business or industry.
I genuinely believe that business is ultimately about solving problems to help human beings.
You lose customers because they feel neglected after the sale is made.
The typical business does a great job of getting the attention of the customer and persuading them to buy, but then does very little to create a meaningful or remarkable experience for them after the sale.*
There are many reasons why customers leave, but the main reason is that businesses systematically ignore the emotional journey of the customer. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that the way they do business and the way their incentives and structures are set up creates a blind spot around customer experience, and that blind spot is the problem.
As businesses have grown colder and more structured around policy—without taking into consideration the people the policies impact and affect—consumers increasingly feel uncared for and not considered. Customers no longer feel special because more and more the operations and structures are designed to keep the “personal” out of the “business.” In most organizations, new customer onboarding and experience is not consciously designed, logically structured, or consistently executed in a way that meaningfully contributes to the customer’s emotional journey.
Brain science teaches that even if a prospect knows, loves, and believes in a company’s offerings, after they become a customer, fear, doubt, and uncertainty will plague their thoughts.
BUSINESSES ARE STRUCTURED AROUND CUSTOMER ACQUISITION, NOT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The number of resources devoted to marketing and sales are enormous compared to those directed toward customer retention. The 2017 edition of the annual CMO Survey (conducted by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Deloitte LLP, and the American Marketing Association) found that the average business spends 6.9 percent of total company revenue on marketing—and yet less than one fifth of that total spending is dedicated to customer retention activities.2
Across a wide range of industries, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates will yield a 25 to 100 percent increase in profits. Or so says Frederick Reichheld in his book The Loyalty Effect.4 If you are like me and not that good at math, you are probably skeptical about this claim. How can 5 percent equate to 25 to 100 percent? You may not know who Reichheld is, but you’ve certainly been exposed to his work. Reichheld is a New York Times best-selling author and business strategist best known for his work in the area of loyalty business models and loyalty marketing. You’re probably
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When an organization prioritizes customer experience, it sparks creativity as employees rally to enhance specific touchpoints and customer interactions.
Profitability and revenue rise as customers find additional reasons to do business with this “new and improved” organization that values their business.
The lifetime value of a loyal customer can be greater than ten times the value of their first purchase.
Like money left in the bank account, investments in customer loyalty compound over time.
When asked about their spending habits, seven out of ten Americans said they were willing to spend more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service and nine out of ten would pay more to ensure a superior customer experience.10 Working with existing customers is not only easier, but it results in a greater “share of wallet.”
In the last two years, venture capitalists have attached significantly higher valuations to companies with low customer churn rates (VC speak for losing customers).
With zero product defects, customized offerings, bargain basement pricing, and ubiquitous availability becoming the norm across all industries, the only thing left for a business to differentiate itself from the competition is the customer’s experience.
Customer service is reactive, while customer experience is proactive.
customer service
“The assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.”7
customer experience,
“How customers perceive their interactions with your company.”8
Customer service is how a business responds when things go wrong or a customer expresses a need. Customer experience, on the other hand, comes on the front end. It anticipates what might go wrong and structures the interactions to avoid this from ever happening. Customer experience is proactive. It’s the environment, the feeling, and the scenario a business creates for the customer to trigger a series of desired emotions.
According to research by Bain & Company, when asked, 80 percent of companies say they deliver “superior” customer service.9 The customers’ perception of the service level was very different. Only 8 percent of customers felt the companies delivered “superior” customer service.10
I like to emphasize the First 100 Days® after the sale as a critical window for securing customer loyalty—not because it is an exact time limit, but because it is easy to remember, short enough to maintain focus, and long enough to deliver value. This hundred-day time period gives you the opportunity to form a relationship, impress the customer several times, and deliver consistently so they trust and like you.
Research shows we make on average 219 decisions per day related to food alone.
“Designing” businesses in this way is not unlike creating movies. If a movie has made you cry, laugh, or feel fear, it almost certainly wasn’t an accident. The director and the producer knew you were going to have that specific emotional reaction and they designed and structured the movie to create the experience for you. Applying this Hollywood technique in business, the customer’s emotional journey becomes the primary focus. If businesses approached their customer interactions in the same way movies approach their audience interactions—figuring out the emotions a customer should have every
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the customer is deciding if they want to do business with you. They are learning what to expect from your organization and sharing (explicitly and implicitly) their expectations for the relationship.
the customer admits they have a problem or a need and believe you—the company or organization—can solve it.
The customer begins to doubt the decision they just made to work with you.
when the relationship between customer and organization first materializes in a meaningful way and the business begins to deliver on the promises made during the Assess phase.
the customer learns about (and hopefully grows comfortable with) an organization’s way of doing business. Too many businesses that have delivered their product or service dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of times assume that everyone in the world knows their particular process. For the customer, this is most likely the first time they’ve ever experienced this particular way of doing things. They are at best unsure and at worst frustrated by the lack of familiarity.
when the customer achieves the result they were seeking when they decided to do business with you in the first place.
angry. If you do deliver (and the customer agrees), they will vacillate between happy and ecstatic that everything went as planned. In order for the relationship to advance, the customer must accomplish their original goal.
In the Adopt phase, the customer takes ownership of the relationship, leading the charge on deepening and strengthening the bond. In this phase they proudly show their support and affinity for your brand and are thrilled to be associated with your reputation. If you don’t make them feel like they’re part of an exclusive tribe, receiving unique rewards and participating in a special, shared language, you will never have their complete loyalty.
Advocate phase, the customer becomes a raving fan, zealous promoter, and eager referral engine all in one. In this phase, they develop into a built-in, unpaid, uncommissioned marketing representative, singing your praises far and wide to other potential customers who might benefit from your product or service.
Phase In-Person Email Mail Assess (chapter 8) Wealth Factory Notes from the Universe Coporate Executive Board Admit (chapter 9) Build-a-Bear Ridemakerz Tony Robbins Cos. Maverick1000 Notre Dame Glee Club Tony Robbins Zogics Affirm (chapter 10) CarMax Book in a Box CD Baby Caspar Beds Zappos Lands’ End Book in a Box CADRE Activate (chapter 11) World Bank Apple Tech 4 Kids 23andMe Cornerstone Wealth Acclimate (chapter 12) PolicyMedical San Francisco CrossFit PolicyMedical San Francisco CrossFit Acceleration Partners PolicyMedical Accomplish (chapter 13) Yoko Co. Online Trainer Acad. Audible Yoko
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Companies often assume a new customer already knows and understands everything about how the company works. They find themselves lulled into a false sense of security after a positive kickoff meeting or unboxing experience. The organization rides the wave of a good Activate phase into the Acclimate phase and expects the great experience to continue as the customer acclimates to the way the organization does business. Plus, it’s all clearly spelled out in the paperwork that gets sent out to the customer—whether it’s a service contract or a proposal. And of course customers read that stuff
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Acclimation is about making your customer feel comfortable with the people, processes, and systems of your business. If the entire process of onboarding customers is about creating a welcoming experience through a managed, structured series of contacts, then the Acclimate phase is where it is most important to help the customer settle into a new reality, one that you know more about than they do. It’s frustrating, I know, but this behavior exhibited by new customers (being focused on themselves instead of your onboarding process) is common across all humans. The hard reality of dealing with
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As a result, the distance between where you think your customer is and where they actually stand is huge. It is imperative at this phase that you do everything you can to bridge that gap and familiarize your customer with your way of doing business.
Quick Takeaway Regular communication tied to key milestones eliminates uncertainty. There are no dead spots. The customer always knows where they are in the process and gains a feeling of satisfaction knowing that you are working on their behalf.
Whoa! Pump the brakes!,” the company stays in a hard-charging, business-as-usual mode of operation—damaging the customer relationship with each passing day. Eventually the project stalls, dies, and the relationship that once held such great promise falls apart.
Each interaction should build upon the previous interaction. Not every interaction needs to be a spectacle filled with entertainment, but it should ease the customer’s uncertainty and create a feeling of stability that is matched with a feeling of forward progress.
Your map should be a printed or online visual that the customer can use to easily identify their place on the path. It should also include regular reminders about what comes next and why it’s imperative to stay in the flow. This is particularly important with more complex products or services and implementation time frames with a longer duration.
By making the process visual in nature, as opposed to a multipage document outlining the steps in the process in techspeak, PolicyMedical brings a feeling of creativity and fun to an otherwise onerous task. The implementation puzzle acclimates customers by giving them a clear map of the tasks, and it rewards their effort with an image they can proudly display in their office to memorialize a successful software implementation.
Juliet Starrett, CEO of San Francisco CrossFit.
