Client experience can sound a whole lot more fluffy than it is.
Putting time into making your service a start-to-finish, delight-inducing magic carpet ride of goodness isn't just good for the soul. It's good for your business.
Sock-removing client experiences are the stuff word-of-mouth marketing is made of. It inspires more repeat and referral business so you can spend more time doing your amazing work and less time trying to drum up business from cold leads.
But here’s the truth: results alone won’t get you a referral-based biz and neither will a bunch of random extras.
You can’t just add a handwritten thank you card, or even a fancy gift, to the tail end of your service and think you’ve checked “Create Mind-blowing Client Experience” off your to-do list.
Sure, delighting your clients with fabulous extras is lovely. It also doesn’t mean a damn thing if you haven’t first laid down the foundation by ensuring your clients can access your services with ease.
Word-of-mouth marketing happens when your clients walk away feeling a sense of pride for having been so smart to have invested in you.
So how do you create a service that sells itself?
Let me break it down for you:
When it comes to looking at one of your services, your client experience is everything from the moment your client reads your sales copy to the moment the work is all said and done.
A whole lot of stuff happens between these two points:
- Money changes hands.
- Instructions are given.
- Scheduling happens.
- Expectations are set.
- Automated emails land in inboxes.
- Discussions are had.
- Documents are received.
...and that’s just the short list!
Any time a person interacts with your biz or anything they associate with your biz (think apps, invoices, docs, etc.), it’s called a touchpoint. Each of those little moments inform your client's satisfaction with their investment. The client experience is all of those little touchpoints viewed as a whole.
A mind-blowing client experience is created by breaking down your service into those touchpoints and ensuring each and every one reinforces the big promises of brilliance you made through your carefully crafted copy.
The easiest way to do this? Look at each touchpoint through the eyes of your client and ask yourself a few questions:
- What questions do they have?
- What feelings are they experiencing in that moment?
- What do they need to know?
- What would make this easier?
Now you’ve got the insight to set your processes up in a way that makes it easy to do business with you! You can go through and make the little tweaks that will make your service truly client-centric. That's what makes it feel like magic.
With the foundation in place...
Once you've built that foundation, you can start to turn up the delight factor by adding in your mad flava (personality) and little extras that will really make your clients swoon.
It’s going to require some work but with the process ironed out you can create systems to keep everything going smoothly for both you and your client.
Up for the challenge? Let us know in the comments how you’re going to up the dynamite factor on your current service offering!
P.S. Here's why you need a goodbye package for your clients + how to create one.
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- Client Experience: So Much More Than a Thank You Card - December 2, 2014
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