You might wonder why customer experience matters so much for scale-ups? Why is that important for your future business design? And what role does tech play?
Rogan Hounsell-Roberts was a founder of a successful scale-up; has helped organisations across many sectors achieve success; is a founder of KR5 Consulting; and has a passion for helping ambitious business owners scale-up and exit.
Good customer experience means you’re more likely to get more business in the long run. Customers will buy more and stay with you longer. They might also tell their friends how wonderful you are!
In part one “Why customer experience matters for scale-up design” we look at how the big picture helps us improve our service. Part-two “Customer experience benefits that drive change” looks at why you’d want to spend money on changing the way you work. Finally, in part-three “Customer experience technology is a game changer” looks at how tech is changing the way we think.
What is Customer Experience
Put simply, customer experience is about the feeling customers have when they do business with you. In a perfect world, they’d value and enjoy working with you. That’s not something that happens once. Experience is just that, it happens over time. When you add up all those positive experiences you gain trust. Trust is something of great value. Customers are more likely to spend more, buy more and stay loyal for longer. Customer experience is a key part of building a brand – see “How Business systems help your brand”.
Trust
Customer experience matters because positive experiences over a period of time builds trust, and trust is valuable to the business. Let’s drill into that a little further. What exactly builds trust? Would you trust someone that was unreliable? Or what about someone that lied? Or how about someone that put you down or simply never returned your calls? See “Owner Success – Consistency Culture in Business”.
Empathy
When a customer gives you business, they are making themselves vulnerable. Deep down they may be anxious. Will you deliver the order? When will the order arrive, will it be late or arrive at an inconvenient time? What happens if it’s not what you were expecting? How does it work? If there are problems, what then? Therefore, customer experience matters because it’s part of building an emotional connection.
Growing pains
As businesses grow, there are more customers and volumes. With a stretched team and resource shortage, it’s harder to keep all the plates spinning in the air. There are delays in delivery or sending out an email or making that call. Too much time can pass, or things fall between the gaps. What worked at the beginning starts to creak. Admin starts to take longer than it should.
When the scale-up should be building trust and be on top of their game, the situation can conspire against them. At a time when they need to be reliable, things can go wrong. There might be a knock-on effect of more calls and emails from anxious customers, or issues to resolve. The scale-up can lose sight of the people and connection with the customer. Customers could feel let down.
Avoiding pain by design
Of course, reducing those pains means planning ahead – see “Scale the Business with Purpose”. Looking forward to the future and building the systems that will support the business. Systems that anticipate needs; provide information; keep on top of communication; spot issues before the customer does. Most importantly, systems that help you keep promises and be true to your values. See “What are business systems, and why should you care?”.
In today’s world, technology is changing expectations. When customers enjoy a buying experience, they’ll measure others against that new standard. It’s not just online purchases, people like to use their phones and apps on the go. They expect tech in the backend of a business to improve their experience. They expect speed and efficiency that’s only possible with tech.
KR5 Consulting is a business technology consultancy with a passion to help ambitious business owners. We provide a unique approach to business technology to help you scale-up and exit. Our approach delivers high-level views for the board, along with incremental and practical implementation. Our work starts by understanding the business direction and needs so we can work together to create a plan. We create a map of the current and future systems to create a clear overview and monitor progress. Our purpose is to help you accelerate, increase profits, scale-up, acquire customers and beat the competition. We do the heavy lifting so that senior leaders can focus their time on building a successful business.
If you’d like to explore the ideas in this article further or need help and advice, please contact Rogan at rhounsell@kr5consulting.com – to arrange an informal chat.
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