KEY POINTS:
If the price is much the same, what prompts you to choose one retailer, one tradesperson or one company over another when seeking a product or a service?
Forget the multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns. It's all about word of mouth.
According to statistics released by Nielsen Media Research last month, 83 per cent of the New Zealanders who were surveyed relied on word of mouth recommendations over all other forms of advertising.
And that's not surprising. Take our recent experience in looking for a company to build our new home.
We visited a multitude of show homes - beautifully built, award-winning, immaculately presented; with helpful salespeople, plenty of brochures and information available; and everyone reinforcing the fact that they could do anything we wanted.
Despite all this we were no closer to choosing a builder - simply because we couldn't see any difference among them. So, what were we going to do? Follow that 83 per cent and ask for recommendations from people we know and trust.
Imagine how much money those building companies could save on marketing by adopting a strategy that would lead to customer word-of-mouth recommendations.
How many of your customers are recommending your business to friends and family?
Recent research carried out at the London Business School concluded: "Media fragmentation has made it more difficult and costly for businesses to reach target markets. People are becoming more selective and internationally aware, thus less likely to follow predictable mass media consumption patterns.
"As a result, companies keep spending increasing amounts of money on advertising that is becoming less effective; customers are tired of being marketed to."
A recent US survey found that 95 per cent of CEOs surveyed understood the importance of a customer-experience strategy to their business but, alarmingly, only 13 per cent knew how to go about developing one.
If you are going to capitalise on and encourage more customer promoters of your business, you need to deliver a consistently unique and memorable customer experience. It must be totally customer focused, building strong relationships and encouraging loyalty.
Regardless of the size of business or the type of industry, these seven steps are vital to the development of a successful customer experience strategy: * Customer service, not lip service. Unless there is total commitment to a long-term strategy, you are absolutely wasting your time and money. Your people will pay less attention to what you say and much more to what you do.
* A committed vision. Where does your organisation want to be in the future? Without a clear, well communicated vision that motivates and inspires, we are all just going to work to do a job. A vision is the difference, in many cases, between engaged and disengaged people, and it's your people who will play the key roles in the delivery of your customer experience.
* A customer-experience statement. A statement clearly defining the experience your business will deliver consistently to every customer. Without it, everyone will have his or her own version of what your customer experience should be - resulting in inconsistency. You will never build real customer loyalty by delivering an inconsistent experience.
* Identifying touch points. A touch point is any point where a customer or prospective customer touches your organisation and from that "touch" forms an opinion of your business. Touch points can be as varied as any advertising, sponsorship, your delivery vehicle, a phone call or a visit.
* Service standards. Once you have identified your customer touch points, put them in priority from the customer's perspective. Then write a service standard for every touch point. This is where your customer experience statement starts to come alive.
* Measurement. If it can't be measured, don't do it. It's important that you know that everyone is meeting each standard consistently.
* The ongoing journey. Creativity is an important element in any customer experience strategy. You will not develop a sustainable competitive advantage by doing what others are doing. Nor will a competitive advantage be sustainable unless it has these key elements - inspirational leadership, a customer-focused culture and the right people in the right positions with the resources they need to deliver the experience.
* Chris Bell is managing director of Customer Experiences, which helps businesses improve the way in which they interact with customers and clients.
