How was it for you?
When I started shopping with Ocado they rang me to find out more about my first experience with them. They wanted to know how easy I had found it to navigate their website, order my shopping and how helpful I found the driver.
They told me how much they valued my custom and hoped I would be ordering from them again.
I am sharing this not because I have a desire to “big up” Ocado, although they did do a good job, but because this got me thinking about your business.
Are you following up with your customers?
This, of course, falls into two camps: checking new customers are happy with the service and making sure they have got everything from the experience that they wanted; and ensuring existing customers are still happy and if there is anything else you can do for them. There is a lot that can be done around this, but don’t worry we will be exploring some of this in more detail another time.
For now, I want you to try and think about what the experience is like for a new customer, when buying from you for the first time.
Make a list to identify the touch points:
Website – this applies equally to service or eCommerce businesses
Initial contact/phone call
Packaging & instructions – eCommerce
Delivery – here I am thinking of eCommerce, but equally it applies to the delivery of service
Invoicing
These are just some ideas, but you may well think of others that are relevant in your business – please feel free to share them in the comments section below.
Now I’d like you to think about how you are going to contact that new customer to check out their experience…
Here are some options:
Auto responder – an automatically generated email message that is programmed to be released at a certain point in the process
A personal email from you – made relevant to the customer
Phone call – this is best coming from you if possible
Web based survey
Third party survey – using an external provider to follow up
Letter from you – this one can be quite powerful as direct mail has reduced in recent times
Again, we will be exploring some of these in more detail including identifying what might work best, and how you could set them up to achieve the right result.
In the meantime, why not try one of the options out and get some feedback from new customers?
