A Touch of the Criminal Mind to Enhance the Customer Experience

  

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Everywhere you look there are articles, white papers, webinars, and blogs exhorting businesses to personalize their service or else lose customers to businesses that do. But how do you know what to do? What to say? When to offer?

Maybe you need to think like a criminal. Not the petty thief who impulsively decides to rob the liquor store. The kind of criminal that plans in advance so there will be no surprises and he can get away clean. What does this criminal do?

This criminal "cases the joint" looking for patterns and obstacles. Once he learns about his target, he plans how to use those patterns to his advantage and how to overcome those obstacles. After the plan is in place comes the rehearsal so that when the actual job is done it comes off without a hitch.

This is what you need to do, except without the ominous undertones. You need to "case" your customer. You need to look for patterns in his behavior and determine what obstacles your business throws in the path of a successful customer experience.

Watch for patterns of behavior that lead to interaction. Maybe the customer prefers to browse, uninterrupted, before narrowing the search for a specific service or product. Maybe this customer always goes straight to what he wants and expects to have questions anwered about it. Or maybe the customer prefers to leave and come back until the decision has been made.  Learn the pattern of a customer so you know the best time and way to offer your assistance.

Find the obstacles to the customer having a successful interaction with your business. Does he get different answers to his questions depending on which channel he uses? Is there a bottleneck that slows down the process? Is there an issue with the timing of your service offer such as leaving her waiting too long for your response? Or perhaps you are overeager and get in his face when he prefers to be left alone.

Found all the obstacles? Remove them.

Standardize all information across all communication channels. Go through the processes yourself to find trouble spots. Learn how to tell when each customer is ready for your help.

Rehearse. Rehearse your practice of updating the knowledgebase and synchronizing all the channels to the same anwer so that when each change comes along, you know all the steps to take. Rehearse your processes so that trouble spots can be avoided. Rehearse different scenarios of interaction before you actually work with a customer.

Now the job is ready to be done. With the proper "casing", planning, and rehearsal, everything should come off without a hitch. No surprises.

And you get away clean with your customer's heart and business.

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