Posted in: darrelrussell.com edit
07 Jan 2009
I am trying to figure out what an ultimate customer experience would be for a consumer-whether it's just being satisfied with a product or literally the personality and overall character from the sales associate during the experience...Please give me feed back on what you think-or own stories of experiences with customer service. Thanks!To understand the ultimate experience generally, you'll have to look into what is satisfaction http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx... (look under the gap theory).
Basically, consumer have certain expectation before they consume your product/services. This expectation is influenced by the features of your offering (low price can result to low expectation, posh outlets brings higher expectation, bombastic ads brings higher expectation etc..).
What they actually experienced during consuming your offering is the experience. This is the moment of truth, as this is when you deliver your offering according to what you have communicated such as the matters above.
Failure to match their expectation will cause dissatisfaction. But if you can match them, they are satisfied. But, for the ultimate satisfaction, you have to exceed their expectation with a very significant amount. If you can, they are not just satisfied, but DELIGHTED.
Simply put, the ultimate customer experience is getting so much worth than what they're expecting. So, to have this, you can do 2 things: lower their expectation and/or boost up your product/services so there will be a significant gap between those 2.Personally I'd think that the ultimate customer experience is not limited on the product or the character of your sales associate. It goes beyond that, those two being the most basic. Put into consideration before and after sales communications and service. A customer's relationship with the company does not end at the purchase counter, in fact, the company 's attitude should be at ensuring to have a lifetime relationship with the customer . With that kind of mindset, a company would ensure that the client is well supported in terms of using and troubleshooting a product. the company would also constantly communicate wth the customer not only to ensure that his product experienece is good but also to aid their customer to optimize the use of their purchase, and to profile your clients in such a way that you'd know what products of yours they might be interested in after a reasonable lenght of time. You're literally taking care of each and every one of your customers , especially from the point of their repurchase . Much of this is customer service and customer relationship management.