Every great restaurant worth its salt aims to offer the kind of mouthwatering cuisine that leaves its patrons taste buds singing loudly to anyone who will listen. It behooves any company worth its salt to create the same effect with their customers after each interaction with their brand.
When so much of the customer buying experience is based on how customers feel they are being treated, creating a superior customer experience that offers a competitive advantage requires companies to create deeper emotional connections with their customers.
We’re indeed living in an age where customers have more options than ever before, greater ease of switching power and a stronger ability to influence a business than ever before. Organizations that don’t make customer experience a priority will be left in the dust.
Consider these tips to help influence the emotional aftertaste your brand leaves in your customer’s memory:
- Empower your Employees to Use Empathy as Much as Possible
So often the focus is on the external customer and on making them happy, but it’s important to remember that your people, your internal brand ambassadors, everyone within your company, needs to be empowered to treat the customer with empathy.
If your organization is so rigid and rule-based that no one is allowed to use good judgement to step outside the box for the sake of providing an exceptional customer experience, you can’t expect the emotional aftertaste to be sweet.
- Prioritize Your Focus on Three Most Important Customer Emotions
Since we know that people do business with people they like, it’s vital for your brand to focus on the most important emotions you would like your customer to feel as they interact with your brand. If for instance, you want them to feel inspired, excited, and relieved, then it’s incumbent upon you to focus on what you’re going to do specifically to ensure that they feel this way after interacting with your brand.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that you go on a quest to try to control your customer’s emotions. I’m simply suggesting that you make how they feel a priority. If everyone within your organization who interacts with your customers has these three words at the top of their minds constantly, it will influence the way they treat your customers.
- Go the Extra Mile
We all know how we feel when a company we interact with goes the extra mile and leaves us with lasting good memories. I still have a sweet emotional aftertaste following an interaction I recently had with Adrian, an Amazon employee.
He went above and beyond to stay on the phone with me for a long time until we got my shipping issue resolved. This happened during an apparent glitch that occurred when Hurricane Florence swept through part of the South and East Coast of the U.S. Not only did he ensure that I got what I needed, he also saved me money by upgrading my shipping and waiving the entire shipping cost (which I wasn’t expecting him to do). As if that wasn’t enough, he sent me a personalized email to confirm that my items were on their way and followed up to ensure that I was happy with his service.
If you keep these three strategies in mind, you’ll be sure to cook up experiences for your customers that will leave a delicious taste in their minds for a long time to come.