Throughout our series on of The Seven Principles of Modern Marketing, we’ve talked extensively on the importance of customer interaction. It is imperative that modern companies, “Stop viewing customer engagement as a series of discrete interactions and instead think about it as customers do: a set of related interactions that, added together, make up the customer experience.”* That is, marketing is more than any single interaction. It’s not enough to get it right once. Marketing is about creating a synergy in which a customer’s overall impression is greater than the sum total of his or her experiences. It’s not just a good feeling from one discreet interaction; it’s a positive impression of your company as a whole based on an ongoing relationship. To accomplish this, you have to create what we call a “Wow Factor.”
Create A Wow Factor!
In addition to going old school with the highest quality customer service and letting that take place on a very personal level, your company also needs to identify every customer touchpoint and maximize its impact. That is, take the time to map out the points at which your customers interact with your company and its representatives (including social media) throughout the customer’s life cycle with you, and find ways to make those moments memorable.
Consider this: the average social media user has 130 Facebook friends, 300 Twitter followers, and 100 LinkedIn connections. When you create a WOW moment with just that one person, or fail to, word can spread exponentially. So, think it through: are you maximizing the impact of every customer interaction, or are you simply managing to not annoy customers? In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, it’s not enough to manage the status quo. You must go beyond polite service and interact in memorable ways that form a pattern customers notice and combine for themselves into a truly positive impression of your company.
So, how do you create a Wow Factor? Consider the following, many of which speak to the first five Principles of Modern Marketing:
• Reduce in-coming call wait times dramatically and have well-trained, English-speaking representatives on the line.
• Provide unexpected free extras, whether these are products or services.
• Update your computer systems so representatives can immediately serve customers instead of making them repeat their history every time they call
• Provide extensive training to all front line employees on how to be truly customer-centric
• Segment your customer database so your marketing messages speak to their needs and buying history
How do you create Wow Factors and truly outstanding customer interactions within your organization? We want to hear from you!
Source: *McKinsey Quarterly, July 2011
