The Differentiation Blueprint: Building Winning Customer Experiences

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to the show. We are talking about differentiation in your business and doing it The Bliss way. Today, we look at customer experience. It's like the company version of dating, but when the date goes bad, it's can I speak to your manager? So I'm Stephen Sakach here with Tullio, Siragusa and Ash Maher. Hey, guys.

**Ash Maher** (0:40)
Hey, hello.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:43)
So let's get into it. We're talking about differentiation in your business, how you stand out from a crowd or the competition. So there are a lot of ways you can accomplish this, but we are focusing today on one area, that's the customer experience. All the ways you interact with the customer from their first touch to after they've purchased your product or service. In a marketplace where there aren't a lot of differences, and maybe if you're in some business where there's not a lot of differences in price or the product, maybe customer experience can be that critical differentiator for you. Do this right, you can have higher levels of loyalty, customer advocacy, where your customers are your best marketers. Do it wrong and they can bolt and you have that negative word of mouth and bad social media and all that stuff that comes with it. Ash, let's get into some data here. Companies with a customer-centric approach, they often outperform competitors. What kind of data can we share with everyone?

**Ash Maher** (1:51)
Yeah, so they definitely do. So a couple of studies here. One from Bain and Company. A customer is four times more likely to switch to a competitor if the problem is service-related rather than price or product-related.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:06)
That's huge. I mean, that's a big four times.

**Ash Maher** (2:09)
Yeah, the four times likely to jump ship to your competitor. So really interesting steps. Now, there's another study by Forrester. Companies that lead in customer experience outperform by nearly 80 percent. That's crazy. It's not like 30 percent or 20 percent. It's about 80 percent. A study by Dimension Data. Eighty-four percent of companies that work to improve their customer experience reported increase in their revenue. So for those who are like, it's going to make me money.
What's the point of all this? Oh, well, it does. It does actually increase your revenue base.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:43)
If you've got to sell some of the stuff that we're talking about here in this podcast, here's some data that are like, hey, boss. Hey, Mr. Manager. I think we should do this and this. Here's why. Here's the data.

**Ash Maher** (2:55)
Exactly. Now, this is a study by American Express Customer Service Barometer. American consumers will pay 17 percent more to purchase from a company with a reputation for great customer service. It's funny. I actually feel that way myself. I take pride in some of the companies that I pay extra in because I could tell all my friends, well, they have the best service ever. It's always like a bragging. I never thought of it from a conscious perspective that, there's other customers feel that way too. They take pride when they know that they're working with them.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:27)
It's a big deal too. If you want to raise your prices a little bit, this is a good way to add some more value, is by just outperforming in this particular area.

**Ash Maher** (3:37)
Exactly. Another study by Forrester, brands delivering superior customer experiences bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lack in customer experience. Then we have one more, customer-centric companies are 60 percent, again, for the money-driven bosses, 60 percent more profitable than companies that don't focus on customers at all.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:04)
Yeah. So if you've got to convince your manager and tell her, hey, I think we should do this or this, here's a few data points. Just take this and then you can sell it in. Hopefully, you're selling in something and they see the empathetic value here and the loving approach, and they're fully on board to begin with. But it's always good to have that data, I think, if you're looking for areas to improve. Tullio, let's talk about some key elements of exceptional customer experience.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:41)
Yeah, absolutely. I'll add that the beauty of this, and this is why empathy is the cornerstone of all this, it's not about meeting the transactional needs of people. Anyone can do that.
It's about meeting the emotional needs of people. That's what we're talking about in the experience. Empathy plays a big role in this. In fact, it's the very first stage if you're into design thinking, of design thinking, it's empathizing. That's really understanding and addressing the customer's needs, not just their transactional needs, but their emotional needs. So, for example, it's really about putting yourself in the shoes of the customer and understanding their pain points, but also what their motivations and desires are. That's the triangulation. It's like you can solve a problem, that's nice, but does it solve their needs from a desire or motivation point of view? You have to triangulate those things. And companies that excel at customer experience, they also prioritize listening, listening, listening to their customers and addressing their needs in a very personalized manner. So there's no cookie cutter approach here. It's really just making it personal. Some examples of this. Probably the best example would have to be Amazon. They do it so subtly. So when you think about it, why is Amazon so popular? Well, they're an e-commerce site where you can buy stuff. But what's the challenge of buying stuff online? Well, you don't get to try it. So you're not sure if it's going to fit right, if it's going to be exactly what you wanted. And so you take a risk. And then the worry is, okay, if I don't like it, what's the process to return it? Is that going to be a pain? You start to worry about all these things that could cause pain in the experience of buying a product. So they removed all that. It's like, just buy it. You have a problem, you can return it. There's even a return for no longer needed option, right? So, and they make it simple. You can get it picked up. You can drop it off at different places that are nearby your home. So that's empathizing for the need for someone who's like, I need a product or I need a clothing item. I don't have the time. So it's empathizing with the need of people who want very efficient shopping experience. But I don't want to deal with the headache of having to be bothered with a big process if I don't like it. So they removed all that. So it's a great company showcasing empathy in how they have set up their entire business. And then they use other things too, like matching up your experience to other things that might work out for you. They recommend the sizes based on your previous history and things like that. So they are as close to having created an experience that is frictionless. That's really what it's about, frictionless. You know, even Zappos was historically known for their dedication to customer service, which was a natural...