Are you focused on the customer experience?

Much like the three laws of motion that govern general physics, there’s a set of six fundamental truths about how the customer experience operates for industrial brands–or any brand, for that matter. And whether we know these truths or not, they’re operating like software underneath every marketing program we develop. Marketing might get you the new customers you seek, but if you’re not supporting their customer experience, what’s the point?

Every interaction creates a personal reaction.
To be successful, you need to understand your customers —functionally, financially, personally, and emotionally. What keeps them up at night, and how can your component technology help those specific situations? Your response to this question should be focused and meaningful.

People are instinctively self-centered.
A shift to customer-centricity is essential. It’s freeing to know that instead of believing your organization must have all the answers to what customers really want, you can just ask them. (And ask them again.) Their answers might surprise you.

Customer familiarity breeds alignment.
The customer is right. Let them be the entire focus of the organization. Organizations functionally organized around serving customer needs continually yield higher profits, ROI, and loyalty. Although ingredient brands are not like Apple or Shinola, there’s a lot that can be learned from how these “customer-focused” organizations continue to succeed.

Unengaged employees don’t create engaged customers. Ever.
Customer experience depends on employee experience. Studies have estimated that for each 1% of buyers who return for a subsequent visit, overall revenue will increase by approximately 10%. In other words, if business-to-business platforms invested in keeping another 10% of their existing customers happy enough to keep buying, they would double their revenue. A recent airline study measured what turns a happy customer into a loyal customer. The surprising results were not that loyal customers always had a seamless experience, but rather had experienced an issue and had that issue resolved quickly and to their satisfaction. That type of proactive service requires engaged employees.

Employees do what is measured, incentivized, and celebrated.
Don’t blame employees. Instead, fix the environment in which they’re serving customers to increase the likelihood that they’ll better care for those customers and keep them coming back.

You can’t fake it.
People are either interested in other people or they’re not. If you’re not committed to customer experience, you’re only fooling yourself. Understand people and you’ll stand the best chance of understanding buying and selling behaviors.

Wiser people have said: “Deal with the world as it is, not how you’d like it to be.” When it comes to customer experience, these six laws help describe the dynamics at play in customer-focused organizations. Anyone looking to improve the customer experience must understand these underlying realities in order to effect change, because–as the saying (sort of) goes–ignorance of the laws is no longer a valid defense.