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August 30, 2021 Content Chat Recap: Why Customer Experience Can Be Your Best Marketing

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Over the past years, brands have increasingly prioritized the customer experience to retain customers, drive new business, and ultimately stay ahead of the competition. But, who in an organization is responsible for customer experience, and how can teams consistently create incredible experiences?

In this #ContentChat, we’re joined by Dan Gingiss (@DGingiss), customer experience speaker, coach, and author of The Experience Maker (out Sept. 14), to discuss why customer experience can be your best marketing. Dan shares a handful of learnings from his book—we received an advanced copy and, trust us, you want to grab a copy—including how you can use his WISE methodology to find ways to elevate your customer experience (with examples of brands doing this well). Read the full recap below, and tweet us your examples of WISE brand experiences with #ContentChat.

Q1: What is customer experience? How do you define it?

The customer experience is how customers feel about every single interaction with your brand.

These interactions include all your communications through email and social media, as well as when your customers search for your products, navigate your website, hear about your product from friends, or simply see your product on store shelves.

Every member of your team can impact the customer experience, and this experience is not tied to a single medium or channel.

Q2: What is an Experience Maker?

An Experience Maker is a person (or people) who prioritize the customer in everything they do. Per Dan, Experience Makers are always looking to turn an ordinary experience into an extraordinary one, remembering that even the smallest details can make a huge impact.

Anyone on your team can, and should, be empowered to be an Experience Maker.

Many professionals immediately think of marketers, designers, and user experience professionals as leading the customer experience, but literally every department and person on your team can have a role in shaping the customer experience.

Can you think of any Experience Makers? Let us know in the comments!

Dan’s book The Experience Maker thoroughly explains how you can become an Experience Maker on your team.

Q3: In your book, you share your WISE methodology for identifying and creating remarkable experiences. What does the acronym stand for, and how do marketers put its components into action?

WISE stands for Witty, Immersive, Shareable, and Extraordinary. There is another letter that completes the acronym, and you’ll learn about it in the book.

Witty means being clever, using language to your advantage, and refusing to be boring. Check out a few examples below.

Great experiences do not require all 4 elements of WISE, and teams should explore each area in a brand-relevant way.

Q4: When looking to create memorable customer experiences, what should companies strive for? What qualities make an idea more viable than others?

Customer listening is an essential part of improving your customer experience. Look for challenges that your customers face, listen to their requests, and run ideas by them early and often.

Remember to start small. Focus on small, meaningful improvements that address your customer pain points.

Per Dan, the best ideas to improve your customer experience should be simple, practical, and inexpensive.

Remember to stay on brand with everything you do. A witty, immersive, shareable, or extraordinary experience for one brand’s customers may not achieve the same result for a different brand.

The community shares a few ways that they gauge if a piece of content was helpful, as well as a handful of common experience challenges that you can easily address.

Q5: How can brands create a cohesively immersive experience?

An immersive experience involves consistency across the customer journey and appealing to the customers’ emotions or senses.

One way to ensure a cohesive experience: always take into consideration where your customer was before and where they’re going after for each interaction or step in their journey with your brand.

Test your customer experience and empower your team to make changes to improve that experience.

Use brand guidelines and FAQ documents to ensure a consistent experience no matter how your customer engages with your brand.

Q6: As content marketers, how can we get started in creating better content experiences for our communities?

Listen to your customers. Monitor social media, conduct surveys, and review customer service call transcripts (or similar documents) to understand the challenges that your customers face and ways you can improve their experience.

Create content that directly addresses your community questions and challenges.

And create and deliver content in ways that your audience prefers.

Often, this may involve helping customers and prospects solve problems even if it doesn’t lead to a sale. Company leaders need to be aware of and fully accept this fact.

Dan recommends the book They Ask, You Answer.

Don’t be afraid to try new ideas. Not everything will work, but you can take your learnings and try something different.

And ask yourself: is my content WISE?

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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