How Well Do You Know ...  Interaction?

Every time a customer walks into a store, calls an 800 number or sends an email to a business' website, they're interacting. No matter how these interactions turn out, whether they embody perfection or become grueling nightmares, customers walk away with a distinct and persistent impression of your company. While this may be obvious, the next point is less so.

While you may see interactions with customers happening every day, you don't necessarily know how well they turn out, at least not how customers feel about them. To know interaction then is to have a system in place that gathers, measures and analyzes interaction facts. If this seeing/knowing distinction seems trivial or academic, it shouldn't. A host of research* concludes that customers' feelings determine sales levels and a bad interaction can be more harmful than no interaction at all.

With this in mind, the question becomes: what causes customers to feel? Certainly your signage, logo, etc. impact customers' feelings nominally and your product or service quality impact feelings substantially. However, after your products or services, it's the quality of interaction between staff and customer that determines what customers remember about your company—and this makes "how well do you know interaction?" quite possibly your single most important business question.

Ask these 7 Questions:

1. How well does your customer service reflect and reinforce your marketing messages?
2. Do your customers feel supported and engaged by your customer service staff?
3. Your customers appear to be buying—but what percent of them are in fact getting their needs met and finding the experience enjoyable?
4. When the customer needs to change something about their service or order—how long does it take to interact with you? What's involved from the customer's perspective?
5. There is a range of experiences and for each type of experience there is a different customer objective. Are your criteria for evaluating interactions suitably subtle? Do your measurement standards differ when evaluating run-of-the-mill versus more difficult interactions?
6. Do your customers get complete answers to their questions? How often? How rigorous is your definition of "complete?"
7. 96% of customers who have a problem don't tell you about it. What are you doing to actively discover what's on customers' minds?

Interaction is our deep and abiding interest. It's in our name. It's what we do. Go ahead and ask a question or let's talk.