How was the experience with the last purchase you made? Was the product you wanted available? Were you treated well? What was the wait time? Did the customer representative give you their full attention and answer your questions? Were they distracted? What was your overall experience like?
We speak about customer service so much that the word has been repeated, misused and lost all meaning. The focus now is on the customer experience. That’s a much broader discussion and a better one too! Customer service is a seller’s term but the concept of the customer experience is owned and defined by the customer.
When we think about any successfully marketed national brand, their big pitch isn’t usually about the quality of the product. Their pitch focuses on how that product is going to make you feel or change your life. A ton of money is spent to make you smile and prompt feelings that life will be better if you buy their product. These brands focus on the experience.
No matter if we have a brick and mortar business, we operate online or sell face to face, we are dependent on their decision to come back and buy from us again. Their decision will be based on the result of their unique and personal customer experience and their judgment on whether or not we met their expectations.
Business owners want to believe we are great and unique. We overuse words we believe will elevate a customer’s perceptions of our business. Words like best, most, largest, lowest and biggest are used like fishing lures with the idea that we will attract customers to our business. It automatically moves our businesses to the top and places our competition underneath us, so we think.
Someone once said about being innovative that if you have to tell people you’re are innovative then you probably aren’t. It’s the same with any business, if you have to tell people you’re the best then you probably aren’t. Being the best is an attribute of the business not a declaration about itself. There is no short cut to truly being heads above everyone else in your field, but it’s reserved as a customer’s judgment, not a judgment you pass upon yourself.
That experience, no matter where it is conducted, has a context. The customer is looking for an easy process, feedback that they have made the right choice, and a fair price. At MSC our focus is on continually making improvements on that experience.
In our next newsletter in April, we will be unveiling some new facets to MidSouth Casters & Equipment. We will be introducing MSC Equipment, a new online ordering process, additional sales channels, a private label product line, and our perspective on the future and how we want to improve on our strengths going forward and enhance the “why” of your interaction with MidSouth Casters & Equipment.