I’m going to teach you the one measurable that matters. And it’s huge. If you figure it out, the rest will take care of itself. What is that one? It’s the customer experience. We’re going to get ready to jump into that.
A lot of people focus on revenue and profit margins. I would tell you, take a year and pick something that you want to focus on each year in your company. We do this in my company and it’s not always “money”. We’ll create a measurable that dictates other measurables. Like in my company, Get Started Marketing, it’s traffic.
If we hit that all the other numbers take care of themselves. I don’t need to know the revenue or anything like that, because there’s a number we need to hit. It knocks down 10 other dominoes. And I’m going to give you some maybe to focus on next year.
What is Your Standard for Customer Experience?
One measurable that maybe you’ve never thought about as a measurable, is customer experience. I look back at shopping experiences or service experiences that I’ve had that were amazing to the point where it literally seared something in my brain.
I remember the first time I went to a Nordstrom in Annapolis, Maryland. I still remember it. You walked in and you took an escalator up to the men’s clothing department and somebody was playing the piano and wearing a tuxedo. It was unbelievable. You literally wanted to spend all day there. They created the perfect retail experience for me.
Zappos made buying shoes as simple as it can possibly be done with a one-year return policy. I don’t even know how they do that. To me, it was the perfect customer experience.
Because I own service companies, the customer experience is critical. I’ve saved every survey card from the day we’ve opened up one of my companies. I have a massive box for, and when those customer survey cards come back, they go on my desk to this day. Nobody looks at those before me. I get them first. And I still go through every one of them and I go to my partners if there’s one that’s not so great. It goes on their desk and we talk about it. If we have an issue with the customer and we resolve it, I ask my partners is if it has been resolved? And would they buy from us again? That answer needs to be yes.
Number one, would they buy from us again?
Number two, would they tell others to buy from us?
I want the perfect customer service experience, even Rolex have warranties, so do Mercedes. Things can always go wrong, I’m not saying things don’t go wrong. Things can go wrong, but the customer service standard that I’ve set for my company is, have we done enough to show them that we want their business and we want them to buy from us again? Would they tell others to buy from us?
It’s funny, I had an issue with the client one time and I stood strong to it because I felt like she was wrong, but I was nice about it. But we agreed to disagree. She ended up calling me a year later to do business with us because she said, Sean, I disagreed with you, but it’s the way we disagreed…If I’m going to hire somebody, at least like the fact that I can argue with you a little bit, and you’re classy about it. You fight fair, you hold strong to what you believe.
She ended up spending a ton of money with us. My hope is that she would buy from us after her first experience, and I believe she did say she would never use us again. I said that’s disappointing, but my response is, we’re not the perfect fit for everybody. I’m sure you’ll find another great company. I say that in tongue and cheek, because I don’t think you will.
I’m going to give you a measurable. I want to talk about one thing,. How good is your customer experience? I want ours to be so good that even though 99% of every job goes well, I want to know whether that customer would buy from us again and would they tell others to buy from us.
Why is the customer experience so important? Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition.
Look at the statistics. It’s five times more expensive to bring on a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer, so it’s just good math for me.
Personally, I just think it’s good marketing. I have a repeat customer telling you, Hey, they’re fantastic, but that’s just me.
Existing customers are more likely to Buy From You than a New Customer
We all know that the new customer has to fall in love with you trust you. They want to see if that you provide that level of value. Bringing on a new customer is a whole different sale than selling to an existing customer. An existing customer is familiar with you, they trust you, they like your business model, or they wouldn’t be calling you back.
A new potential customer means you have to start that trust process over. It’s easier to sell to an existing customer.
Great Customer Service Strengthens Your Brand
Nothing is better for your brand and customers who love you. That’s mic drop. Nothing is more powerful for your brand than customers who love your company, love your products, love your service, and love you. That’s what you want and it strengthens your brand.
Great Customer Service Gives Your Team Confidence
Employes want to work for a company that’s delivering what it’s promising its customers. Could you imagine, because I have before, working for a company that doesn’t deliver on anything and it’s nothing but dealing with customer complaints every day? How much fun is that?
Well, when you have team confidence, it spills over to employee retention. Poor customer service destroys employee retention, because who wants to work for a company like that? I think people would love to work for Nordstrom, that’s why they call them “Nordies”. And Zappos has a cult-like following among their culture.
Great Customer Service Creates New Profit Streams
Why, because your customers are going to tell you what they want you to offer more! This is incredible!
I started a company and it offered one thing, and the goal was to do $100k to pay for a very high-end golf membership that I wanted. Well, now it does $4 million. Why? Because my customers kept coming back and saying, Well, could you do this?. They asked us because we provided as good at customer experience as you could.
You can’t make everybody happy. We all have the crazy aunt who’s she’s been pissed off since the 60s. You have certain people that you’re never going to make happy, I understand that. I’m the person who said, the customer is not always right, but however, you could learn from every customer. Sometimes it’s just good business to appease them
So what do we talk about? We talk about the one measurable that mattered, and that is the customer experience. You can focus on revenue, you can focus on profit, you can focus on margins. I’ve used customer acquisition and other measurables, but I like customer service because sometimes it gets the team focused off of the money. If all you care about is money, maybe you use this year to just worry about the customer experience. It’s going to knock over a lot of other dominoes. It’s going to increase revenue. It’s going to increase team confidence. It’s going to increase your employee retention. You’re going to get bigger sales because existing customers spend more
So focus on customer experience and creating the perfect customer experience. When you do that, they’re going to chase you down for your business. They’re going to tell you more things they want you to offer. Set your new customer service standard as, would they buy from us again? Would they tell others to buy from us? That’s a standard that we try to use.
