Liar Liar Pants On Fire: The Little Lies Business Owners Tell Themselves

The Lie: My busi­ness pro­vides great cus­tomer ser­vice.  It’s what sets us apart .

Ask a group of busi­ness own­ers to raise their hands if their busi­ness pro­vides great cus­tomer ser­vice and you’ll find all their hands in the air. Who wants to be the busi­ness owner that admits that their busi­ness doesn’t give great ser­vice? Every­one, and I mean every­one, thinks that great ser­vice sets his or her busi­ness apart. Busi­ness own­ers believe this because they remem­ber the pos­i­tive feed­back and try to for­get the neg­a­tive. It’s a nat­ural human bias.

But while most busi­ness own­ers say they pro­vide great cus­tomer ser­vice few can define what great cus­tomer ser­vice looks and feels like. They have a hard time putting into pre­cise words what really sets their cus­tomer ser­vice apart from every­one else.   If they can describe what they mean, it’s often in the con­text of point of sale or ser­vice delivery.

The Truth: The major­ity of busi­nesses pro­vide good cus­tomer service.

The lie of “great” cus­tomer ser­vice is some­thing we have come to believe and your cus­tomers have come to expect.  While you may have good cus­tomer ser­vice it really is not some­thing that set your busi­ness apart from your competitors.

The truth is that your cus­tomer ser­vice is not remark­able.  It’s sim­ply the standard.

Con­sumers now judge your busi­ness not by ser­vice, but by expe­ri­ence, the over­all feel­ing of doing busi­ness with you.  And while it is true a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence is shared more widely than a pos­i­tive one, far fewer pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences are orches­trated to deliver a “WOW” result.  The truth is no one talks about a bor­ing business.

The Action: For­get cus­tomer ser­vice – aim to cre­ate a great cus­tomer experience.

The cus­tomer expe­ri­ence shouldn’t be thought of as merely the occur­rence of the cus­tomer cross­ing the thresh­old into your busi­ness. It begins with aware­ness and pro­gresses through­out the length of the rela­tion­ship. With some strate­gic plan­ning, design, and exe­cu­tion you can cre­ate great expe­ri­ences and some­thing that your cus­tomer will really say “Wow” about.

How a prospects comes to learn about your busi­ness, what’s dif­fer­ent about your busi­ness, and how and why to buy from your busi­ness, all are impor­tant for set­ting the stage for the ful­fill­ment and deliv­ery of an expe­ri­ence that is remark­able. Map­ping out your cus­tomer touch points allows you to cre­ate the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence for your cus­tomer along the path of the rela­tion­ship.   Don’t restrict it to only the “in store” or “ser­vice deliv­ery” episodes, orches­trate the entire cus­tomer lifecycle.

A great tool for map­ping this process is the Duct Tape Mar­ket­ing Mar­ket­ing Hour­glass™.  The Mar­ket­ing Hour­glass™ allows you to think and plan the touch points of your entire cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.  Begin­ning with attract­ing new prospects (the Know, Like and Trust build­ing phase), then tran­si­tion­ing into the con­ver­sion phase (Try and Buy), and then how you con­tinue to delight them (Repeat and Refer phases) the Mar­ket­ing Hour­glass pro­vides a visual con­text and roadmap.    Find out more about the mar­ket­ing hour­glass by down­load­ing this free eBook.

Are you cre­at­ing a truly great expe­ri­ence for your cus­tomers or sim­ply set­ting your britches on fire?