The golden key to being remarkable

When people recommend you or your business to others, they do it with the expectation that you will enjoy the same experience that they did.  It’s a nice idea, but fundamentally flawed if a critical situation is ignored.  This post offers bold leaders a clear and present opportunity to differentiate themselves by delivering a remarkable user-experience in this frequently occurring blind-spot.

A remarkable buying experience

In our connected world, where our reputations are separated by a single click, how you manage word-of-mouse has become both a business and career maker or breaker.  Buzz evangelists tell us that the only way to guarantee a tailwind of positive recommendation is to focus on being remarkable i.e. saying and doing things that matter enough to others enough for them to want to recommend us to their friends and family.

So what?  Tell me something I don’t know.  Yes, heaps has been written about this, but I’d like to focus on a small but remarkable blind spot.

Recently, marketing guru Jim Connolly wrote a post  What’s your experience? where he talks about the importance of providing the best possible buying experience for customers.  It’s an important post and well worth a read – especially the comments.

Although Jim wasn’t writing specifically about being remarkable, I know he would support the idea that creating the best possible buying experience has a huge influence on your remarkability.  That said, I made the following comment in response to his post.

A huge design flaw

“One of the most overlooked areas when businesses plan (often by default) their customer experiences is to ‘design’ the experience in off-peak time.  This is a huge flaw because it typically means that the second things get busy, the customer experience erodes.  Why should me as the customer suffer a less than peak experience just because the place is busy?

Be it a coffee shop or computer store, I’ve yet to find a retailer who has designed a peak experience for peak time.”

Why does it happen this way?  Why is the on-peak experience delivery typically left to chance or an especially wise and motivated employee?  I guess it’s just easier to implement an off-peak experience.  Easier, but ultra short-term when reputations are now click-driven.

You want to take your remarkability to the next level?  The golden key is to design your customer/user experience to be remarkable in both peak and off-peak periods.  This will put you at an immediate advantage against off-peak only providers.

A golden opportunity for all of us

This isn’t just relevant to retailers and other customer service providers, it’s relevant to all of us who are interacting with people and seeking to build positive reputations and recommendations.

Think about yourself for a moment. What are you like when the pressure’s on?  How different is a user’s experience of you on-peak vs. off peak?  Do they get the best possible buying experience both times? No?  Now there’s a golden opportunity for bold leaders.

Your opinions, experience and feedback

• How different is a user’s experience of you on-peak vs. off-peak?  How do you know?

• What could you do differently to deliver the best possible on-peak buying experience for users of you, your services and your company?

• What’s a good example of a person and/or business who consistently delivers best possible on and off-peak user experiences?

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