Happy Customers = $: Solopreneur Insights, Vol. 9
Happy customers come back to you. They tell their friends about you. They become your best salespeople. Learn how to delight your customers, and you'll never worry about your income again.
Your path to wealth runs through happy customers. Since my readers truly care about helping people, this should delight you. It means you can focus your strategy on one key question:
”Will this delight my customer?”
Every tactic, process, service, product, message, touchpoint, and business decision can be run through this filter to determine whether the answer is “yes” or “no.”
Get this one thing right, and everything else becomes easier. Getting it right will depend on how well you did one key thing.
More on that below.
First, let’s look at an example of a powerful Customer Experience model.
The Happiest Place on Earth
The Customer Experience Pathway is exactly what it sounds like: The path you guide your clients along from the first moment they hear about you until the moment they’re telling others how great you are.
Think about the best-known example of customer experience curation: Disney World.
Around 60 million people visit “The Happiest Place on Earth” each year. They employ teams of thousands to identify, strategize, and execute the experiences that make every moment the best it can possibly be. Their entire brand rests on getting this right, all the way down to smells, lighting, positioning the attractions, scripts for their staff, personalization, and everything in between.
Fortunately, you’re not Disney. Your lift is nowhere near as heavy as theirs. But, you can study what they and other experience-focused businesses are doing and learn how to apply this to your own business.
Building Your Own Customer Experience Pathway
The Customer Experience Pathway (CEP) serves two major purposes:
Creates a clear process for you to follow
Sets clear expectations for the client
Like all well-structured processes, your CEP becomes your lighthouse in the storm of running your business. Rather than react to the moment, you have a trusted system that will guide you through any mess. But, that’s not it’s most important function.
Alas, we arrive at the key I mentioned in the introduction.
Expectations Matter
I mentioned “delight” earlier. What does this mean when it comes to customers? It means we met or exceeded their expectations. No need to complicate it.
Expectations are critical to any satisfaction formula. Solopreneurs cannot afford to miss this. We’re often at a disadvantage compared to larger agencies that focus all their efforts on the initial dog-and-pony show. Sure, they often disappoint the client later. By then, however, we missed the opportunity and will need to wait until their disappointment sets in before we approach them again (an effective tactic, mind you, but that’s for a different article).
Your CEP sets the appropriate expectations for the client. Once we do that, we can focus our efforts on exceeding those expectations. Our goal is to make the expectations simple so they can understand them quickly. We do this by examining their core question:
“What’s it like to work with you?”
If They Have To Ask, It’s Too Late
A powerful CEP not only answers this question, it answers it long before they ask. From marketing to the point of purchase to garnering feedback, our CEP stays one step ahead of the client. A powerful CEP clearly defines and sets expectations for:
Processes
Price Points
Definition of Success
Feedback System
Handling Objections
Exchange of Value and Payments
Relationship Style
Ideal Customer
What It Means To Work With You
Let’s break down each of these and how you can make them as powerful as possible.
Processes
If you haven’t read my article on building your Production Process, go check it out. Once you develop your own version of this, you can build out each step with as much detail as possible. Each of these details will be some form of client touchpoint. Your goal is to make each step in the experience as delightful as possible. Consider the difference between explaining your process steps to the client in three ways.
You just tell them
You create well-designed documents
You create a high-quality, customized video
Each of these could cover the information. But, only two of them will delight the customer.
Price Points
Most people wouldn’t think about price points as part of a Customer Experience. Yet, they’re crucial to the experience. Price points are tied to a sense of value. First, in the value that you provide. If you’re a luxury brand, you charge luxury prices. Otherwise, you’re not a luxury brand in that market’s eyes. Second, in the value the client ultimately receives. If I pay $30 for a cheeseburger, it better be the best one I’ve ever tasted. Anything short is a failure. However, paying $5 for a cheeseburger that turns out to be great will earn my delight. Be careful with low prices, though. They attract low-quality customers.
Definition of Success
If there’s one recipe for disaster, it’s this: You and the client have different definitions of success. Create deliberate messaging in your marketing, meeting outlines, and project scopes that clearly and frequently point back to the definition of success. In my design business, every project has a clear definition as part of the scope that the client signs.
Feedback System
Clients need to know they’re not left out to dry. Saying, “Just call me if something comes up” is not a feedback system. Designate key moments in your process for client feedback. Communicate these moments as part of your process. Make sure the client knows these checkpoints are a vital part of the project’s process and success.
Objection Handling
Learning how to gracefully handle objections is an unspoken superpower. In fact, I give it credit for my ability to land and keep clients who have paid me millions of dollars. Your Feedback System will help to frame many objections to your advantage. But, there will always be the random objections. Research objection handling techniques and apply them to critical moments in your CEP, especially sales calls, presenting concepts, and working with client teams.
Payments
Yes, payments are part of your experience. Consider how your clients pay you, when you charge them, and how you handle following up if they’re late. Make them as easy as possible for the client, even if that means taking a hit on Stripe’s fees.
Relationship Style
Every client will have a different style of working. Some are more professional and organized. Some are more personal and friendly. Some need concrete descriptions, and others think conceptually. Define your style of working and your ideal customer relationship style. You can prime prospects in your marketing, reinforce beneficial style attributes at key moments, and open the door to connecting with your customers on a deeper level.
Ideal Customer
Like your Definition of Success, making sure you define your ideal customer is like magic for attracting the clients who are the best fit. This means they’re looking for the experience that you can provide. Make sure you are targeting exactly who you want to work with in your marketing, network with those same people, and—most importantly—build a portfolio of clients that reflect your ideal. When your customers and prospects say, “They just get me,” you’re in Easy Mode.
What It Means To Work With You
This is the most overlooked item on the list. Think about what you want your clients to feel when working with you. Immense value? Appreciation for Quality? Efficiency? Notoriety? Determine the 2-3 most important reasons “why” your clients work with you, then live up to it. Inject this language into your marketing. For example, in my design business, my clients know that working with me means they have direct access to the person who would be LEADING the big agency’s A team, but for a fraction of the cost, faster results, and better collaboration.
Start Where You Are Now
Look, you’re not going to get this done in a weekend. Some of these items need time to reveal themselves. Your best bet is to start with your current transactions. Use well-designed document layouts. Create a few more communication touchpoints to cover key topics. Provide the client a clear beginning-to-end process document. Create a feedback system and tell the customer you want their input. Find ways to treat your customers at key moments to something they don’t expect. Celebrate their wins publicly. Share your appreciation for them non-stop.
Once you get the basics covered, pick just one area each week to focus on. This week, focus on describing your CEP from start to finish. Next week, convert those Google Docs to some layouts that look way better.
Make this part of your routine business operations, and you’re well on your way to creating a portfolio of delighted customers who tell other people how great you are. Once you close that loop, you’re in Easy Mode for life.
Here’s my breakdown for working on my Customer Experience Pathway:
Yearly: 2 days Initially / Ongoing
When I first developed my CEP, I set aside about 2 hours each Friday to compile lessons I noted throughout the week. Building a decent initial model took about 2 month. Once I had the model built, I simply added the items on the fly, then developed them further later, as needed.
– Torrey
Follow me: Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn
Visit my website: torreydawley.com
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