One of the things that mess up a lot of great concepts is when people try to academize them . Customer experience is not an academic exercise and it is not rocket science . We are all customers somewhere and we all know when the treatment touches our heart like my first rotary experience did .
Perhaps one way to simplify it is to replace the word experience with the word memories . 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 . Just making this little change is a total game changer because of the very nature of memories .
Memories never travel alone . They travel with the same emotions that existed when the memories were created and this right here is where the problem is . There is something that you can think about right now that will immediately put a smile on your face . There are even some things that you can focus on that will send you into a fit of laughter . Conversely , there are things that you can focus on that will immediately send you into a low emotional state and in some cases into a depressed state . Why is this so ? Because memories never travel alone . They are always accompanied by the emotional state that you were in when the memory was created .
My mother died on the fourth of November 1998 . For many years after this , every fourth of November was a very low day for me . We were very close and she was a beacon of hope and pillar in my life . She could always sense when I had a problem and would call me to tell me that she was praying for me . She never made any demands and she always sought for what was best for me at any point in time . She truly loved my brothers and I and would stick out her neck for us even when we were wrong . She would defend us in public and then deal with us privately . She was truly a rare one . Every fourth of November as I remembered her , I would find myself in a very low emotional state and this led to a lot of problems .
As human beings , we do not respond to things done to us based only on what was done . We respond based on our emotional state when those things were done to us . This is why someone can do something to upset you today and you let it slide and the next day or the next time someone does the same thing to you , there is an eruption and
you let them have it .
Emotions are contagious . So , if a person has a bad memory , every time they recall that memory , it will come with the same emotions that existed when the memory was created . Now , because emotions are contagious , they keep passing it on and that is why you can have a bunch of people who have a negative opinion of an establishment without ever interacting with that establishment . They interacted with an emotion and that got the job done .
It is for this reason that we need to be very conscious of the memories that we are creating for our customers . If the memories are bad memories , they will trigger off some negative emotions and anytime the person recalls that memory , it will come with the emotions . Since emotions are contagious , this becomes such an easy way of spreading negativity about a brand . It simply spreads with emotions . Similarly , if we give people great experiences or memories , the memories will come with emotions and these emotions are easily transferable from one person to another .
Customer experience is built from the position of putting the customer ’ s needs first . Think of a boxing ring . All fighting
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