MAL49 MAL 49:22 | Page 54

If you are going to offer great experiences to your customer , you must express it from the heart . In essence , you need to purge your heart of all the clogs that can hinder you . You need to declutter yourself before you can give a great experience to people . This is more than serving the customer with a smile .
What are the memories that you create for people ? When people engage with your brand , what are the memories that they leave with . These are the things that make up the customer experience . So , instead of saying customer experience , we can actually say Customer Memories .
For this reason , every single function in the entire customer experience value chain must be operating at their very highest level of performance .
I was invited to speak at a conference and had to travel . On getting to the destination , I checked into my hotel room . The hotel has a good name but I found myself in a terrible room . I was put in a very old and stuffy room that had a stale smell . It was so stale that I had to stay outside on the balcony for a considerable amount of time . I just couldn ’ t stay in the room . I called the reception and asked for another room and they gave a very sorry story about how apologetic they were . I was expecting that help would come for me in minutes . I was wrong . Over an hour later nothing had changed and so I had to call them again to tell them that I was checking out of the hotel because I couldn ’ t take it anymore .
A few minutes later they moved me to a very beautiful room . It was a flawless room and there was nothing I could complain about . It was a truly gorgeous room . What was supposed to make me happy now actually got me angrier . I thought to myself that the hotel must really think very low of me . How else could they explain the fact that they had this lovely room as an option but decided that what I deserved was the stale smelly room that they first put me in ? If they had nice rooms like this , why on

If you are going to offer great experiences to your customer , you must express it from the heart . In essence , you need to purge your heart of all the clogs that can hinder you . You need to declutter yourself before you can give a great experience to people . This is more than serving the customer with a smile .

What are the memories that you create for people ? When people engage with your brand , what are the memories that they leave with . These are the things that make up the customer experience . So , instead of saying customer experience , we can actually say Customer Memories .
earth would they still have dingy rooms like the one that they first gave me ? This was a clear demonstration of the fact that they knew what was right , they had the capacity to deliver it but they chose to hold on to mediocrity instead by keeping the stale smelly rooms .
As lovely as the hotel was , my memory of that hotel is that , it is the hotel with the rooms that smell funny . I also remember it as the hotel that did not value me enough so even though they had a great optional room , they put me in a smelly room .
When we tolerate an inch of mediocrity , it grows and grows and eventually it will take over the business and dictate how the business is defined . To be mediocre means to be ordinary . It means being average . It points to things that are substandard . It is a choice that people make and which businesses make every time they think they have arrived or when they put the experience of the customer on the back burner .
So many good companies that produce good products and services have paid dearly for not placing a premium on the customer ’ s experience . They focus on the service not realizing that the customer service is a part of the entire experience .
The explosion of the internet expanded opportunities in a way like nothing else has since the beginning of time . A person in Nairobi could suddenly find himself having a partner in China . A person going to Mombasa suddenly found out that there were more hotels and places to go than he ever realized . The internet provided the most powerful thing for the customer ; choices !
As a result of this , businesses can no longer just focus on selling their product or service . They must realize that choice gives the customer power and never in history has the saying been truer that the customer indeed is the king . If the customer is king , then it makes the job clear . Please the king and you remain in the kingdom . Upset the king and the king will cut you off permanently . You might even lose your head ! Products and services are not enough to please the king anymore and the king is aware of this . So many people have the same products and services . How then do we please the king ?
The era in which we live is best described as the experience economy . It is an economy not driven by products and services as in the past but more by experiences . The organization that is therefore able to deliver the best experiences will secure the pleasure of the king who as we have seen is the customer .
If you are competitor focused and you are already at the top of your industry today , where do you go ? But if you are customer focused and you are at the top , you can secure your lead over and over again because there are always new ways to wow your customers . You however have to define the experience that you want to give your customers and strategically plan it and flawlessly execute it .
Putting a customer in a stale and smelling room is suicidal in this experience economy . That hotel represents the kind of business that has become an endangered species . Today ’ s customers are becoming more and more intolerant to mediocrity and companies that dish it out will soon be banished from the kingdom or have their heads cut off .
Good products and services will produce customers but good experiences produce brand ambassadors . Again , when we talk of ambassadors , it is not motions - it is not just paying someone to become our brand ambassador . The most effective ambassadors are the unpaid customer who had a great experience .
54 MAL49 / 22 ISSUE