Providing the Best Customer Experience — the Smart Way

McKinsey’s study on the customer experience provides valuable insights for any business. While it focuses on the financial services, there are some nuggets for everyone:

Here are the company’s recommendations:

Focus on factors that move the needle.

McKinsey’s survey uncovered that only a hand full of factors make all the difference for the customers. In the case of financial services providers, making the process of submitting paper work easy is helpful but has way less impact than transparency of prices and fees. Instead of spending resources on paper work submissions, financial services providers need to focus on transparency.

For other sectors that means find out what makes your customers tick the most and then make that experience the best they can have. Many other things are just frills and won’t help distinguish you from your competitors. This is important for small businesses which need to be careful where their resources go. Spending more time upfront to identify the most important factors for your customers will have more impact and help you save time, money and energy.

Ease and Simplicity

Making things easy for customers is a no brainer. However, according to McKinsey, there are diminishing payoffs. The extra mile may just have to be the extra half mile. Again, how much time and resources go into the extra mile when you can achieve the same positive customer experience with a little less?

Master the Digital Journey

The most the customers can do digitally, the better they rate their experience. Obviously, that does not apply to all sectors. Yet, as we’ve seen in the food industry, going digital can make a huge difference. What part of the customer experience can you move online? Ordering, scheduling, inquiries? That is for you to decide.

Perception

You can provide the best customer perception but it won’t help you as much as the next competitor with the identical experience if you don’t blow your own horn. The world needs to know you are customer friendly and that the experience you provide is the best out there.

http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/the-four-pillars-of-distinctive-customer-journeys?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1609