How to Build a Dedicated and Lasting Customer Experience
Creating stronger communities of customers requires business leaders putting them at the center of the picture
Smartphones and social media have revolutionized communication. The pandemic has upended how interpersonal interactions and commercial transactions occur. Small wonder, then, that businesses find themselves grappling with how to navigate these changes to deliver the kind of experiences customers have come to expect. To keep up, companies are using an array of new tools, technologies, and people-focused outreach strategies to build creative and meaningful consumer journeys—and foster more lasting brand loyalties.
During a recent panel discussion at theデルの女性起業家ネットワーク パワーハウス サミット, presented in partnership with 株式会社 を ファーストカンパニー, business owners and marketing leaders discussed some innovative approaches to ensuring optimal customer experience. Here are some of their tips.
1. Building a community is key.
“We refer to our customers as our community,” said Ellen Bennett, cofounder and chief brand officer at Hedley & Bennett, which makes aprons, knives, and other kitchen accessories for chefs. The company refers to those customers as the Apron Squad, and Bennett said she’s constantly pushing her team to look for new ways to not only maintain connections with those customers, but also to learn from them.
“That’s the make-or-break of a great business,” she said. “If you can really listen to your customers and provide what they need and want, you’re going to succeed. If you’re in a stuffy boardroom just hearing about what you all think they want, it’s just an echo chamber of opinions, and you don’t actually have valuable input from your world.”
Jude Davidson, senior director of global customer development and loyalty marketing at Dell Technologies, agreed. “Placing your customers at the heart of your business will mean they’re successful and you’re successful as a business,” she said.
2. Follow the customer’s lead.
Rakia Reynolds, founder and executive officer at Skai Blue Media, a Philadelphia-based marketing and communications firm, always takes a pause when her firm starts working with a new client. The goal: To understand precisely what it is that the client needs and wants. “We want to know what your community says about you, and we want to know what your partners say about you so that we understand the full landscape and the full scope of your challenges,” Reynolds said. “How do we help you solve those things? In order to effectively do that, it’s about listening and listening and listening some more.”
Arriving at a better understanding of your customers also requires noticing when they aren’t happy—and taking quick steps to fix it. “One of the things we [do] with our customers is, if we’ve messed something up, we’ll go back to them and just say, ‘We are so sorry that happened, and this is what we did to fix it,’ “ Bennett said. “The loyalty almost doubles. They were upset, but now they’re like your number-one advocate.”
3. Partner up to make smart tech decisions.
For business leaders, tech matters. A lot. The panel participants each listed an array of CRM, business intelligence, and social media tools—including Clavio, HubSpot, Sprout Social, and Talkwalker—that they rely on to boost their customer relationships. But with so many available technology solutions, choosing what’s right for your business can be challenging. That’s where relying on an experienced tech advisor or network can pay off. For instance, Bennett found support for a number of areas of her business—including technology—through the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network. “I would ask a lot of other business owners what software they were using or how they organized information,” she said. “I recognize and respect what other people are using in the industry.”
Sometimes, however, the tech choice that seems right ends up not being so. Bennett said not to sweat it—the key is not to get hung up by making the so-called “right choice,” but rather treating it as an experiment that might fail. “It’s like hiring: You’re not always going to get it right,” she said. “You maybe thought that technology was going to change the world for you, but it turns out it wasn’t the right one for you, and that’s okay.”
4. Strike a balance between art and science.
Technology has certainly been a game-changer as companies have worked to build stronger relationships with their customer communities. E-commerce platforms and AI tools are helping to make shopping more personalized and streamlined. But for Davidson, companies need to remember that customers still crave a human connection. “There is sometimes a temptation to think that technology is going to solve all our challenges,” she said. “But it’s always a balance between how we utilize the technology to enhance the relationship we have with customers who are real humans, not robots.”
Striking that balance is critical—and becoming increasingly difficult to pull off. The pandemic fueled a shift in digital habits, making it more necessary for people to dive into buying goods online or have telehealth visits with their doctor. As a result, companies need to stay flexible and stay tuned to changing consumer trends. “We just have to keep evolving and pivoting to where people are showing up,” Bennett said. “There’s a beautiful blend of recognizing the needs that customers have and showing up where they want to be.”
