5 Ways to Deliver A Stellar Customer Experience Even Without a 6-Figure Budget (Special Offer Included)

5 Ways to Deliver A Stellar Customer Experience Even Without a 6-Figure Budget (Special Offer Included)

It’s no news that the individual consumer is now the boss. Gone are the days when customers were willing to wait for hours to get a response to their requests or complaints.

Gone are the days when any act of negligence was overlooked and the brand isn’t made to pay for that negligence.

The world is changing fast and the way customers interact with brands is changing too. No excuse is good enough for bad customer experience (CX), as there are many choices to pick from.

The struggle for brand loyalty is getting more difficult by the day and the competition amongst brands is getting more fierce. It’s now a game of numbers and survival is now for the fittest.

 Today’s happy customer is worth five more happy customers, but on the contrary, the loss of one unhappy customer today equates to the loss of 10 more.

The principle is simple; if your customers love and enjoy your brand’s experience, they’ll definitely come back. Often, they don’t return alone.

They’ll tell and bring others to your business so they too can experience the same thing they’ve experienced. It’s also true that if your customers have a bad customer experience, they will not only disparage your brand, they will tell anyone who will listen, online and offline.

In fact, statistics say that 90% of unhappy customers are willing to share their grievances over a bad customer experience than with a good customer experience.

Big brands all over the world are starting to realize this and they’re re-prioritizing and devoting resources to create a quality customer experience.

Some have embraced different technologies to improve their overall customer experience. Some are investing hugely in messaging chatbots, data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence just to make sure they have a cutting-edge advantage over the competition.

It’s now very clear that new customer acquisition is 6-7 times more expensive than customer retention. As the saying goes, a bird in hand is better than two in the bush. 

 Where does this leave smaller brands? How do you deliver a stellar customer experience when you have a smaller budget?

How do you make sure that your customers feel happy, satisfied and engaged with your brand even when you can’t invest in big technologies, big data analytics and artificial intelligence?

How do you retain them and keep them loyal to your company and remain profitable despite the competition? Well, I have good news for you, you can deliver an extraordinary customer experience even if you don’t have a 6-figure budget. Here are five ways you can:

1. Be customer-centric: I am putting this first because it is the most important. Technology is not the most important thing in delivering superior customer experience, people are!

Customer experience is about putting people first, valuing people and recognizing that people are people first, and customers second. It’s about handling issues with care, responding expeditiously, taking note of the details important to your customer, and working with integrity, being truthful and honest to your customers.

When you are customer-centric, it shows in all you do. You transform from having a transactional relationship with your customers into an interactional relationship where your customers feel acknowledged, heard, respected and cared for. 

2. Hire the right people for your company: Hiring the right people is very important for delivering stellar customer experience. Before hiring anyone or anyone new (if you’re already staffed), make sure your company’s core values and mission statement are clearly defined and documented. 

Look for attitude, enthusiasm, and potential over work history. Of course if your need is specifically for someone with advanced skills, you’ll need to consider their experienced skill level as well, but nevertheless, if their attitude is not a fit for your company’s values, their skills won’t serve you well in the long run, and may cause turmoil in the short-term.

Skills can always be taught, but ones’ character and ambition cannot. When everyone lives by the shared values, working with those of the same mindset and mutual goals will elevate the entire productivity and happiness factor of all employees.

And do I need to stress that happy employees make happy customers? The number of people that will choose to shop at one store, or eat at one restaurant, or stay at one hotel over another because the staff at the counter always greets you with a warm genuine smile, is amazing

3. Use the E3 Principle™: This is my trademark principle which means that you need to educate, empower and entrust your employees.

Employee engagement is very important in delivering stellar customer experience. If your employees don’t feel excited and engaged in your business, it will drive productivity down.

All people want to feel acknowledged, appreciated, heard, and respected; they want to feel pride in their work.

My simple formula to achieve the most productive, happy employees who become a truly cohesive and more productive team is: E3 Your Employees. Educate x Empower x Entrust = Higher RETENTION.

When you Educate, Empower & Entrust your TEAM, they feel valued, a part of something bigger, and become vested in their success as an employee, and in turn, the success of your business. 

4. Create an outstanding employee experience: You create a stellar CX by first creating an outstanding EX, employee experience.

I believe we need to approach our businesses from EX to CX™. For this reason, it’s a wise choice and can be more beneficial, to find committed employees that exist within the company to promote from within.

The hiring process can be very expensive to a business, large or small. So why make it harder and more costly for yourself?

Don't look outward for the "next best employee" in the market. Instead, I believe businesses should look within their company to promote those committed employees with greater potential that’s not yet been recognized or challenged.

Think about it -- you hired them already for a reason, seeing their value and potential. Now let them fulfill their purpose and contribute to your success. Again, it bears repeating, they’ll feel more vested in your success when you show them you are vested in their growth and success!

5. Hire an expert to help you: Invest in you. Invest in your business’s productivity and growth.

Invest in your employees, so they can be armed with the mindset and strategies to deliver an outstanding customer experience that will earn you lifetime loyal customers; customers who will become your free-marketing-salesforce singing your praises on and offline.

Want to power your customer experience and make sure you are leaving no stone unturned and no dollars left on the table? Want to Transform Transactions Into Interactions™ for in your employee and customer relationships?

You need someone to come in and audit your employee’s and customer’s journey and offer expert advice on how to tweak the status quo producing less than maximum results, for a better method that delivers results.

The benefit of an outside set of professional eyes and ears can equal huge outcomes. Sometimes it’s only a small shift that produces the biggest results!

Champions are not born, they are made over time through trial and error, and trying again, maybe in a slightly different way. The discovery and development process is a learning process every brand needs to go through. 

Our business succeeds only by the relationships we create with our people, employees, and customers, and therefore, the reviews and referrals they give.

This is what I’ve experienced. I became obsessed with this because what I found is, the world needs more connection.

And, when I realized that this greater connection could also equal profits, I became obsessed with the rewards and benefits of delivering a Celebrity Customer Experiecne™. 

 Knowing I can help a restaurant or hotel make even an incremental but significant shift in their business lights me up. So I’ve decided to offer a limited-time Management Consulting special for a select number of restaurants and hotels.

If you’re located in the Austin or San Antonio area and would like personal 1:1 help with the customer service at your restaurant or hotel, reach out to us by email, or schedule a call directly to discuss. We’re running a special on our 1:1 Restaurant and Hospitality Management Consulting.

For a rare low special rate of $500, I will personally come in and observe your business for 1/2 day, and then for the second 1/2 of the day, debrief management and/or sit down with employees to share strategic observations.

I’ll share takeaways you can apply immediately to improve your employee and customer experience thereby increasing your revenue, reviews, and repeat customers.

Reach out to me at [email protected] with any questions, and to schedule a free call with me to discuss, kindly visit, www.jillraff.com/schedule.