To create an experience that allows you to win customers and retain them:<ol><li>Make a guarantee, promise to solve the problem. This could be a customer service provider saying. “I’m going to take care of this for you.”</li><li>Keep the promise: Making a promise in your marketing or advertising is not enough. You have to now act to make sure that promise is kept.</li><li>There will always be a time when you’re unable to keep your promises, or at least in your customer’s mind, you did not keep your promise. You have to find a way to restore trust so that your customer is willing to give you another chance.</li></ol>

Solving the problems customers have

Once you identify that problem and you make a particular promise, then you can focus on your customer experience. Whether it’s your marketing, operations, delivery, customer support, you name it, your focus can be on keeping that promise. That’s an important aspect because it gives you that focus. Having an experience guarantee allows you to be a lot more focused and make smarter decisions.

Laser-like focus

“When you promise to solve a particular problem, you’re also saying, in effect, ‘If your problem falls outside of this, we might not be the best choice for you'”

The whole concept of an experience guarantee is based on the idea that your customer is trying to solve a problem, and that’s the insight you need to have to create a wonderful experience and experience guarantee. The way you do this is by listening to your customers. And while that seems simplistic, companies are not as good at listening as they’d like to believe.

The problems customers are trying to solve

“When companies try to be all things to all people, they end up not being very good”

They do get mixed up a lot. But there is a very important distinction.
<ul>
<li>Customer service is part of the broader customer experience. Customer experience means all of the interactions a customer has with a brand and how they feel about those interactions (the people you interact with, their advertising, the packaging, the physical location, the ambiance, the decor, etc.)</li>
<li>Customer service is the assistance a company provides to help a customer with its products or services. That’s a very specific part of customer experience, often the most important or most memorable part.</li>
</ul>

Customer experience vs customer service

Guaranteeing a great experience for your customers isn’t hard, but are you actually delivering on that promise? Jeff Toister, author of The Guaranteed Customer Experience, joins us to talk about the key to earning (and keeping) our customers’ trust and business.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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On Inside Intercom you'll hear the team from Intercom interview makers and do-ers from the worlds of product management, design, startups and marketing.

JEFF TOISTER

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