New Year's revolutions
I hope you all had a great break over the Christmas and new year period before diving back into work. By now we are all settled back in, dealt with the inevitable backlog of emails and adjusted to writing 2017 instead of 2016 and are raring to go with all the enthusiasm that only a new year can bring.
Before you fully embrace the daily grind and allow the merry-go-round to speed right up, it is a good time to think about what you want to achieve with your customer experience this year. Why not start by having a look at what happened in December for inspiration.
The Christmas period is hugely important to retailers with lots going on, Black Friday, the ‘run up to Christmas sales’, the ‘last week before Christmas’ sales, the ‘last 2 Saturdays before Christmas’ sales and so on. I always find it an interesting period to look at as in isolation, massively competitive, so many companies fighting for the money in your wallet, it’s an advertising and marketing overload.
I think it is a period in time that you can learn lots from everyone else and use it to improve your own customer experience. You see lots of great activity and even more cringeworthy activity that makes you wonder who on earth had signed it off.
We are all consumers, I imagine most of us were subjected to the Christmas sales and marketing onslaught in one way or another. Just consider for a second how these adverts, offers and communications played a part in the experience that you were given.
What experiences stood out as being memorable for you? Memorable could be good or bad, hopefully you have several examples of the former and few of the latter.
Personally, I had a great shopping experience in a local jeweller, who always tries to give a great, relaxed experience, understanding what you are looking for rather than looking for the upsell opportunity. In the week running up to the big day I had the same standard of experience that I get mid-year when it is significantly quieter. I also had the bonus of the owner showing me round their new collection, showcasing his infectious enthusiasm and passion (immensely powerful in the right context). An outstanding in-store visit that was supplemented by some simple and relevant communications that enhanced the overall experience.
Something at the other end of the spectrum, a national retailer that released an advert restating the importance of family at Christmas, but didn’t reduce their opening hours to enable their colleagues to spend more time with theirs. Personally, it came across as family is of utmost importance as long as it doesn’t affect our earnings.
Anyway, back to your experiences. What did you enjoy? What made you go wow? What made you furious and vow never to revisit that place again? What were the almost perfect experiences that would have been amazing with a couple of tweaks?
January is typically a time of reflection and committing to doing something new and/or differently, so what might you take from your own Christmas shopping experiences to help develop your own? Hopefully you have just spent a couple of minutes thinking about your recent experiences and are starting to think about them in the context of your organisation.
Things get really busy, really quickly, so before the merry-go-round speeds up too quickly to jump off, think about what you want to achieve and plan your customer experience revolutions for this new year. Take the time now before you find it too hard to step back, start your revolution (or evolution) now.
Feel free to share your thoughts or ideas in the comments and if you would like to talk more about your plans and how Silver Jet can help then please get in touch.
