How To Affect Your Customer’s Experience

Last week in Customer Experience: Future, Present, Past we discussed in detail the three phases your customer goes through when they deal with your company. I’ll give you a brief recap of last weeks post for context, but you should click the above link, and read it before you continue.

Phase One is primarily a left-brain, cognitive process that takes place when your customer plans his or her visit to your place of business. This is where they set their expectations.

Phase Two is where they actually visit your establishment, which is primarily a right-brain, sensual and emotional experience.

Phase Three is also a cognitive process, but it’s a different part of the brain. This is where your customer reflects back on their emotional, sensual experience and tries to put it into words. 

Maximize Your Impact During Each Phase

Let’s once again follow Stan through the three phases as he visits your hotel, but this time we’ll look at the best ways to positively affect his stay in each phase.

Phase One: The Future

In Phase One, Stan’s setting his expectations of his trip. It seems like in keeping with the adage “under promise, over deliver” we should lower his expectations, but that doesn’t work. If Stan’s not excited by the prospect of staying at your hotel, then he’s not even going to give you a chance.

While your potential customer is in Phase One, you need to sell the hell out of your place of business. You need to communicate everything you intend to provide: nothing more, but definitely nothing less. You need to tout all of the amenities that will be available, and all the services that you will provide.

In other words, you need to tell your potential customers about all the things he or she can expect to find when they arrive.

Feel free to use all the emotional language you can think of, because the left-brain likes to pretend it understands the feelings attached to those words, and it will paint an even better picture.

If done correctly, Stan will book the room, and leave Phase One, excited about his future stay at your hotel.

Phase Two: The Present

Once Stan actually arrives at your property, you need to deliver on all of the things you’ve promised and this will satisfy his left-brain. Once he’s gone through his mental checklist, comparing what you’ve promised with what you’ve actually provided, this hemisphere basically goes on vacation because it’s no longer needed.

As explained last week, Phase Two is both sensual and emotional. It’s all about the right-brain, and because the two hemispheres of your brain don’t use the same language, they have difficulty communicating to each other. Consequently, Stan has difficulty measuring whether or not his stay is meeting his expectations, so he trusts his gut, and if he’s having a good time, he’s happy.

While Stan is in Phase Two, your goal should be to stimulate his right-brain as much as you can by attaching a sensual or an emotional component to every element of his stay. This will elevate each experience to an event. Strolling mariachis while he eats, or a mint placed on his pillow are great examples.

The language barrier between the hemispheres provides you an opportunity, which you should take full advantage of. Since Stan is assessing his stay based on how happy he is, you should actively seek to anchor those feelings by using these two steps:

1. During his stay you should seek opportunities to makes him smile, or preferably laugh. This fully engages his right-brain and puts him in his happy state. It also instantly warms him to you.
2. While he’s in this state, ask him if he’s enjoying his stay. This question, coming right after you’ve made him smile, makes him feel like you really care. The question itself forces him into his left-brain to answer, and since in that moment he’s happy, his answer will generally be something positive.

If this sequence happens often enough during his stay, when he moves into Phase Three, which again is a cognitive process, he will recall all the times he reported having a good time, and he’ll tend to remember his stay more favorably.

Phase Three: The Past

I had lunch the other day with a friend of mine, and when I shared my theory of the three phases of a Customer Experience, she addressed Phase Three by telling me about a 1995 study designed to measure people’s recollection of pain. Click here for the abstract.

The study focused on the recipients of a colonoscopy, an uncomfortable and painful procedure. They interviewed the control group immediately after the procedure to determine a baseline of just how painful the procedure was. The patients seemed to remember the moment of peak pain, and the pain experienced in the final minutes of the procedure.

The next group, according to my friend, went through the exact same procedure, but instead of removing the scope immediately after, it was left in for an additional three minutes and then removed. When this group was asked about their experience, they reported that the entire procedure was much less painful then the control group.

Same procedure, three minutes longer, but perceived as less painful because the final minutes were relatively pain free.

Our takeaway from this study is that regardless of how good or bad our customer’s experience was, we can make it better if we take these two steps:

1. Don’t screw up their departure
2. Slow down their final moments with us

Regardless of how hard we try, things happen from time to time, and not every customer is happy when they leave. Let’s imagine that despite our best efforts, Stan’s stay at our hotel wasn’t great. A number of things happened and overall he wasn’t happy. The front office manager, who has had several conversations with Stan over the course of his stay, is not looking forward to reading his TripAdvisor review. Let’s also imagine that I’m the bellman.

Step One – On Stan’s final morning, he calls down for luggage assistance, and advises us that he’s in a hurry to get to the airport. If I show up to his room quickly and none of his items falls off the cart, we’re halfway done with Step One. If, when he gets to the front desk his bill is right, then we have arrived. His final moments with us will have been without incident. Whew!!! Step One complete.

Step Two – I’ll spend time with Stan until his car or a taxi shows up. I’ll engage him in conversation, and if he insists on talking about how crappy his stay was, I’ll empathize with him, but quickly change the topic. My goal is to get him to talk about anything positive.

When Stan’s car arrives I’ll open the door for him, this way I’m in control of when it shuts. I’ll demonstrate that I care for him by making sure that he has directions to his destination. I’ll take a second to thank him for staying with us, and, if he’s made me aware of his troubled stay, I’ll apologize once again. I’ll give him a warm smile and invite him to give us another chance in the future. Then I’ll gently shut his door, and my final gesture will be to smile warmly and give a quick wave good-bye as he drives away. Step Two complete.

This whole departure routine might have taken an extra fifteen seconds, probably less. It was quick, but it didn’t feel rushed. By winding down his stay, I kept it from feeling like someone had abruptly removed a colonoscopy scope.

This two-step departure process will, to some extent, have positively colored the end Stan’s experience with us. Based on the results of the study, his recollection of his stay won’t be as bad because the final moments were “pain free”. Consequently, when he does write his review, it won’t be quite so harsh.

I’m sorry about the length of this post, but I had a lot of information to give you, and I didn’t want to leave anything out. 

Be sure to come back next week for more adventures from a Service Superhero. 

Remember, I can transfer my abilities, or Superpowers, to anyone who truly wants them. Let me know if you'd like to set up a training seminar for your service team, so you can begin to deliver "Superhero Service" to each and every one of your customers. 

If you agree or disagree with anything I’ve said here, or would just like to share a Service related story, or insight, I'd love to hear from you. Please post a comment below.