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I was reading an article in Business Week and a quote caught my eye. It said, “If you have a great website but a crappy in-store experience, that will affect business.”
Now that may seem like a common sense statement but there are many businesses that are looking at their website as the be all and end all to their business solutions.
So how can you do an audit of your experience at your place of business?
Customer Experience Scorecard
Let me explain my process, which you can adjust for your company as needed.
I created a checklist that would score all the various stages of customer engagement on site. As I went through my visit, I would score each point so it would be easier for me to help improve performance in specific areas instead of thinking that everything was wrong.
My tracking started even before I arrived because I used the directions on the website to see if they were easy and useful.
As I drove up and got out of my car, I began looking around as if I was a customer. Many retail businesses only focus on what happens once the customer enters the store, but the impression is being formed as I walk up. Also, many employees are so used to coming to the location that they actually stop seeing things as they walk past.
Is there anything off putting? Customers may not consciously notice things like cigarette butts, trash, dying plants or employees huddled by the door, but it does register in their mind.
I would then grade every interaction with the team and element of the store. Add each onto the scorecard and give it a grade. For example, let’s take a car dealership. Elements would include the first person who greets you, the showroom, the service center the service counter, the waiting room, bathrooms, TV choice etc.
The list could go on, but lets say you came up with 10 points along the customer experience. How do you honestly grade yourself?
What then must happen is you need to check to see if there is a documented process in place that covers how this part of the journey should be handled. If not, create one and train the team. If there is a process, re-train your team to get this part of the journey fixed. Need a little help? See my article on training here.
Then score yourself again in a month or so. The goal is to improve your overall customer journey score. If you focus on the experience in pieces, you will able to impact specific areas that in turn will improve the overall performance.
How did you experience lineup with your website? The goal of all of this is to create the experience that matches your claims on your website. Your customers will talk about the experience at your business, and many will do it online. What you cannot afford is the customers telling others that the promises you make on your website are not followed through.
This affects all of your business because if you are promising great service and fail, then all of your claims in regards to your products are also tainted and you lose business.
Use this idea of a scorecard to make sure you are delivering an excellent experience for your customers.
Keep improving!
Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.