How can I impress my customers?

The world of buying and selling has changed, and the only thing we can be sure of is that it will continue to change. You can now get your groceries, clothing, legal advice, and banking needs all from the comfort of your couch. Today's business operators are asking "how can I impress customers in a way that makes them want to leave the couch to come to my business?" After answering, they then have to figure out how to align everyone in the business to do the same. Perhaps this simple tactic, which has improved my customer rating from an 8.65 to a 9.23, may be able to help others too.

Get in to a Customer's Mind

To impress our customers we must first step out of our "business operator" mind-set, get hands on, and look at our business as a customer. Doing so involves some foundational questions:

• Who exactly is my customer?
• What needs does my customer have and how does the business meet those needs?
• What expectations does my customer have of my business?
• What am I offering that differentiates me from my competition?

To get help answering these, we can do some research by watching our customers in our business, asking our customers the some of the above questions, and from looking at reviews on Google or Facebook for our business or businesses similar to ours. Once we understand our customer's mind we can start taking action to move towards impressing our customers.

The Three "W"s of Great Customer Experience

A customer experience is essentially the way a customer responds to or even perceives our business. While in the customer mind-set, its time to get hands on and focus on how to impress our customers. The "Three W" approach is what I have used to improve satisfaction rates from my customers as well as to align my organization on how everyone can take steps toward impressing our customers. The way this works is we observe a piece of the business and evaluate it in light of the Three Ws to gauge how our customer is responding to it. We can use this for anything or anywhere in the organization, from sales interactions to standards in a fresh-food area, and so on. The key is slowing down and asking the right questions during observation. The aim is to discover which reaction the customer is currently having and how to improve to get to a better reaction.

As I see it, customer reactions can be simplified in to three categories: the experience is What is Expected, the experience is Wrong, or the experience Wows them.

What is Expected

This is the first W- what's expected. This time instead of using the question for the overall business, we are applying it to a specific piece of the business. This is the baseline experience, and though it might be good, it is not special yet, and only puts us on par with the industry standard. We do not want to fall below this, but the aim is to move in to a better experience. For example, in my Fresh Produce area, I need to recognize exactly what my customer expects within that part of the business, then assess what I am actually delivering in light of that. The "What's Expected"would include things like a clean area, fresh product, accurate pricing, and friendly & knowledgable workers. With my Produce Manager, we can slowly look through the department to see if we are meeting these basic needs, anything less would give our customer a Wrong Experience. As we assess this together, it also gives the Produce Manager insight on what to do immediately to correct the experience for the customer and it empowers them to act to make it right. The more frequently we slow down, observe and assess, the more detailed my Produce Manager also becomes and the more they are able to see breakdowns on their own to deliver a consistently right experience.

Wrong

If you are failing to meet the basics of your customer's needs or expectations, you are leaving them with the Wrong experience. Until the exact customer and their needs are clarified, it is hard to fully recognize where a business may be going wrong. Not long ago one of my managers and I decided to spend time assessing an area of the store that slowed down dramatically in sales, my fabric department. As we slowly walked the area, we found that items were not clearly priced, it was disorganized, and even worse, multiple associates said they did not know how to properly price fabric after they cut it. After identifying our specific customer, we found that fabric was typically shopped earlier in they day while our staffing covered evenings. We needed to get this right, fast! So we created a plan on how to better organize the area and maintain it so pricing was clear and accurate. We started holding training sessions to get more associates to learn how to price fabric they were cutting, and we reviewed the schedule to make sure there was consistent coverage when they customer was there. It took a few weeks, but we were finally back to meeting our customer's basic expectations of the fabric department, and we saw an immediate lift ins sales by double digits every day. Slowed sales were the indicator of where we were missing the expectation of our customer telling us where to observe, assess, and correct.

Wow!

This is the gold standard of an experience. This is the type of experience that people go home and tell someone about, create a viral video over, and become loyal to your business because of. This is where you are outpacing the competition and drawing in traffic because the customer knows they will get everything they expected plus a little more from your business. The question is "now that I am consistently giving my customer what they expect, how can I start adding even more value to their experience?" This could include a personal gesture, like the story I heard of a restaurant waiter who tracked down a woman's lost purse while she ate. It may be like a store I was told about that provides a bus to go pick up college students who aren't allowed a car on campus so they can do their shopping. Something that has worked well for my business is finding local experts on social media and inviting them in to host events to teach my customers which products to buy and how to use them properly. As of now, none of these things are specifically expected, but when done, they show customer's how valued they are and build loyalty within the community. A customer may be able to purchase make-up online, but when a local social-media influencer who specializes in cosmetics is in the store showing customers personally how to properly choose the right foundation for their skin and then teaching them how to apply it, that becomes something worth getting off the couch for.

A key to note, taking the time to do these "plus up" type of gestures in a business that is not yet meeting the basics of the customer's expectations is not worth investing in. First meet the basic expectation, then add in the Wow factor. Trying to jump from Wrong to Wow without first hitting What's Expected will not achieve the desired results.

Creating a Culture

The best part of the Three "W" method is that it is simple enough to teach every person in a business. As each person in the business begins to evaluate their own job and performance in light of the Three Ws, they can start to see where to make positive changes on their own and begin to turn the business in to a culture of driving customer experience. A leader must initially take the time to walk other leaders and influencers through the method, and then delegate each of them to teach another person. As a store leader, I can verify the impact by asking front-line associates questions such as "how are you going to wow a customer today." If the culture is spreading, they will be able to answer sufficiently. As the culture has built within my business, I have seen the customer rating improve, sales have increased, traffic is up over last year, and more importantly, we are building a community reputation of the place to go for a great experience.

If you enjoyed this article or found anything within it useful, please share it! To see more of how I apply these lessons and more to my business, follow me on Instagram @zacharyplones or Facebook.

To see a short video on this concept, check it out on Youtube here.