What Will Your Customer Stories Be This Year?

Customers desire a reliable experience

That’s why I harp on the phrase “earn the right to grow.” Desire is an emotion that will earn growth and prosperity for your business. If you deliver a reliable experience, your customers and clients will desire to have it again.

Within the 5-competency framework, Competency 4 (Experience Reliability & Innovation) builds the discipline to deliver reliability and earn customer desire.

Reliable experiences earn your customer stories

When you deliver a reliable experience, you earn the right to your customer’s story through word of mouth. Your customers will come back because they want your experience. There are three questions that customers answer through social media. Positive responses to all three points earn you the right to new customer growth without the acquisition cost.

1. Was the experience consistent and reliable? No matter where or who the customer talked to in any channel.
2. Does their relationship with you improve their life or business? Did your actions prove your commitment to them?
3. How does it feel to do business with you? Honored, distrusted, ignored? All of these come out in tweets, reviews and message boards.

The power of social listening – in person or online – has an increasingly high impact on purchase decisions. Customers yield to the reviews and feedback of others who have experienced your business to drive nearly 80% of their buying decisions. Your promises, and messaging account for about 20% what customers consider when they are making a buying decision. This statistic comes from The Keller Fay Talk Track Report, whose information I have used regularly when chipping away at the importance of reliability.

When your experience is unreliable, the most powerful way to grow will suffer: your customer’s story. If the experience you deliver to customers is not consistent and reliable, then customers won’t vouch for you. That will impact recommendations and organic growth.

Conclusion

If your customer can’t tell another customer what they get from you, how they get it, how it improves their life, and consistently how you make them feel as a result – then you don’t own the moment and don’t earn their recommendation. And at any time, they may go shopping for another experience that’s more reliable.

Most importantly, the lack of reliability will ultimately send them away. And that customer story is one that you won’t want them to tell.

Take Action:
Prevent Customer Breakdown by Being Deliberate about Customer Experience Reliability
Clarifying the Role of the CCO – Competency 4 – This post is part of the article “Five Competencies for Chief Customer Officers” that originally appeared in the free eBook The 2015 Customer Experience Outlook, a collection of ideas from customer experience authors, designers, and industry leaders.