How to delight more customers by building consistent customer experiences

Do you Wordle? My partner and I do. In fact, we are competitive. When one announces their score, the other reaches for their phone. Last week I came down for lunch, my partner declared 'four'; I opened our iPad.

Hm, I thought that's a good starting word, typed and hit enter. Bless my cotton socks! The first tile turned green and before I could say Wordle, the remaining tiles resembled grass. I'd got it right first time. Wordle even called me a genius. Let's be honest, I made a lucky guess. How lucky? Well, National World reports 2,315 words on the Wordle word list. The odds of guessing the right five letter word first time are 2,315:1.

Despite my awe-inspiring lucky guess, I am not doing so well at Wordle. My average number of guesses stands at 4.1. My other half's is 4,0, which means we are about as good as each other. But. Look at the charts to the left. My scores are inconsistent, while 'im indoors has a nice tight spread, albeit he has failed twice. Yes, failed, Wordle doesn't spare your feelings. If you haven't guessed within six tries, you have failed. For those following the maths, I scored each 'fail' as seven guesses when I calculated our average number of guesses.

Getting back on track, his spread results from his method. He has two starting words helping him confirm or eliminate 10 letters. Then works out the word (typically, he has three letters right with one placed correctly after two guesses).

I might surprise those who know me when I confess a more random approach. I pick a word that feels good. Then I use the correct letters to think of another word. I generally have two letters right after my second guess. You can see why my number of guesses varies so much.

You may wonder how Wordle relates to customer experience.

Well, it highlights the benefits of designing customer experience intentionally. Rather than relying on serendipity.

Look at the charts again. Imagine your customer experience was as variable as my guesses. You would have one customer who loves you and many holding widely differing views. My better half is consistent. Mimicking his performance would create more happy customers.

In this article, we explore how to manage Customer Experience to be consistently good.

Decide to design your customer experience

Unluckily, customer experiences often come about by accident. They take shape in the common ground between your teams. No wonder average customer experiences have uncomfortable pointy bits.

To deliver smooth customer experiences design them first and then build your business to delight customers.

Understand your customers and their needs

We don't know, we cannot imagine our customers' needs. Even the closest relationship can fail to uncover their needs. It might even obscure them. Only standing back to see their challenges and expectations can help us know our customers. So, create customer personas.

What is empathy?

Empathy is the ability to understand other people's thoughts and feelings from their point of view. Empathy helps us respond to others and support them.

Unlike marketing avatars, customer personas don't help you sell more. They build empathy.

Armed with our personas and empathy, we can determine what our customers need. My preferred framework for understanding needs is:

• Jobs - the reason they buy your product or service - be they functional, social or emotional jobs.
• Pains - the stuff they dislike or fear about doing their jobs.
• Gains - additional benefits of achieving their jobs.

Deliver your customers' needs

To earn word-of-mouth, you cannot just talk a good game or build a customer strategy to leave in a drawer. You must deliver, time after time.

Capitalise on your hard work

Customers may not notice your changes. Rather than not bother, build 'benefits realisation' into your customer strategy. To prompt loyalty, point out how good your service is. The simplest method is 'you said, we did', you can play a lot of tunes with this communication. Tell people what you changed or show them how straightforward your transactions are compared to your competitors. Enter awards. Label products, services and touchpoints 'new and improved'.

Remember, your competitors might counter with improved experiences or use cash offers to steal your clients. If they win, help your customers leave and assure them of a warm welcome if the grass isn't greener.

Continuous improvement

Customer expectations change. So, you must continue to empathise and improve your products, services and touchpoints.

Transformation, innovation and disruption

Sometimes continuously improving is not enough.

Ford is often, wrongly, quoted as saying 'if I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses'. Steve Jobs turned the humble mobile phone into an integral part of everyday life. Both met unspoken customer needs, the essence of customer experience innovation.

When you lead innovation, you disrupt your market. If you follow (and following is a fine strategy), you must also transform. Either way, you must resume continuous improvement.

If you intentionally manage customer experience, then you can

• understand feedback,
• compare your performance to customer needs and expectations,
• enable continuous improvement and innovation.

Let's explore your opportunities and challenges, so you can grow by delighting your customers.