Are you missing this in your coaching or consulting business?

As a coach or consultant, the work you do with your clients matters - which is why it's so important to have an amazing, and seamless, plan for your customer experience.

In this blog post, we'll talk about what each step in the customer experience is and how to make them all memorable, which will result in less customer churn and ultimately improve customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention.

Whether you want to create your customer experience from scratch or improve upon the one you already have, read this post for a step-by-step approach to making yours amazing, or at the very least, use it for inspiration and ideas. 

You don't even need customer service teams in your business to do this...you could do it all on your own or with a customer support team or with a customer facing staff.

Get out a piece of paper and a pen or open up a Google Doc and start writing down your customer experience! 

What Is A Customer Experience?

Let's start by clarifying what a customer experience is.

I like to think of it as...the steps your customers goes through from the time they first find you, to the time they spend learning more about you, to the steps they go through in your sales process, to becoming a customer, to receiving your service, and even after they are finished working with you.

When you create your customer experience, it's important to think of each step from the customer's perspective.

Customer sees this...

Customer receives this email...

Customer gets this in the mail...etc.

Everything is from their perspective.

Why Is The Customer Experience Important?

The answer to this may be obvious to you, but it's important for us to talk about.

The customer experience is important because when they have a positive customer experience every step of the way - they are more likely to get amazing results, continue working with you, provide testimonials for your business, and tell everyone they know about their positive experience working with you...which could ultimately lead to referrals for you.

Creating a positive customer experience helps your client and you. It's a mutual benefit.

On the flip side, if they have a poor customer experience - they are more likely to get poor results, stop working with you, not provide you with a testimonial, tell everyone about their bad experience...which could ultimately hurt your business and your reputation. You don't want to create unhappy customers, when you can avoid that situation.

With that said, let's get down to business creating each step in your customer centric approach to business.

Customer Experience Step 1: Your Marketing

The first step in creating a positive, customer interaction experience is your marketing. This includes the places people find you and learn more about your work.

Some common places you might be utilizing for your marketing are social media, various podcast platforms, and your own website. Those are just a few examples, there are many more! 

I personally use my personal Facebook page, my LinkedIn page, this blog, and my website. (Connect with me!)

When someone finds you and learns more about you through your marketing efforts, it's important to provide valuable information that helps them as it relates to the topic of your business and how you help your loyal customers, but it's also important to make offers or invitations for them to work with you. Tell them exactly what to do, where to go, and how to take the next step in working with you further.

Take a few minutes and think about your marketing from your customers' perspective...is it an amazing experience? How can you improve your marketing and the way you build relationships with your potential customers? 

Customer Experience Step 2: Your Sales Process

Your marketing helped your customers get results ahead of time, and it also told them exactly what to do in order to work with your further. Now, it's time to WOW your potential customer with your sales process. 

One common sales process is to have the customer book a free consultation or free discovery call with you directly from your website and your calendar app. (I use Calendly, what do you use?). Meet with your potential client on a free call and discuss what it's like to work together further from there. 

If this is similar to the sales process you use, I recommend you get even more specific with it than that. 

Write down everything your customer experiences from the time they schedule a call with you, to the time they get on the call with you, to the time they make a decision to work with you further or not, to the time they sign a contract and make their payment.

As an example...

Before Free Consultation:

• Customer schedules a free consultation in Calendly.

• Customer receives a confirmation email from Calendly immediately. 

• Customer receives a reminder email from Calendly 24 hours before. 

• Customer receives a reminder email from Calendly 1 hour before. 

During Free Consultation:

• Customer shows up to consultation.

• If the client says YES, I verbally tell the customer that they will receive an email with a copy of the contract and payment today.

• Customer receives an email with the contract and payment link.

• Customer signs the contract and returns a copy to me.

• Customer pays. 

Is this similar to your sales process?

I recommend you document every step the customer takes on your piece of paper or on a Google Doc. There are multiple customer interactions and touchpoint, and it's important to write them all down.

Customer Experience Step 3: Your Customer Delivery

After they sign and return the contract, and make their payment, they are officially your customer. Yay!

Now it's time to WOW them with your customer delivery.

Use your piece of paper or Google Doc to write down everything the customer experiences during this part of your process.

For a 12-week coaching package, it might look something like this...

Customer Delivery:

• Customer receives a payment confirmation email immediately.

• Customer receives a coaching portal access email, logs into the coaching portal and books their sessions. 

• Customer receives an email invitation to join a private Slack workspace with me.

• Customer receives a Slack welcome post.

• Customer receives a handwritten welcome card in the mail. 

• Customer meets with me for 12 sessions. (Customer receives a reminder email from Calendly 24 hours before each session and 1 hour before each session.)

Seeing your process written out like this is super helpful - not only to have a clear understanding of what your customer's experience is, but also to see opportunities for improvement.

In the above customer delivery example, you could send your client a feedback form halfway through their sessions and see if they have any feature requests, or send them a printed copy of your workbook in the mail, or send them a gift they'd really enjoy. There are endless ways you could improve the above customer delivery example - and seeing it written out helps you do that.

Customer Experience Step 4: The Renewal Conversation

The renewal conversation is a very important part of the customer experience, but that doesn't mean you have to offer a renewal opportunity to every client you work with. 

I recommend offering a renewal opportunity to those customers you want to continue working with further, and those clients you see a clear path to helping them with something else, or continuing to help them with the same topic.

Your renewal process will likely begin during the customer delivery process (step 3 above), but I wanted to break it out into it's own step, because I believe it deserves to be.

Your renewal process might look something like this...

Customer Renewal Process:

• Customer and I discuss renewal at the end of session 10.

• Customer and I discuss renewal at the end of session 11.

• Customer and I discuss renewal at the end of session 12 and they make their decision.

• If the customer says YES to renewal, the customer will sign a new contract and make their payment, then we'll restart step 3, customer delivery. (They will also receive a feedback form...see the last bullet point below).

• If the customer says NO, we'll continue moving into step 5 (keep reading for that).

• Whether the customer is a YES or NO regarding renewal, they will receive an email from me requesting they provide feedback on our 12 completed sessions. (Collecting customer feedback is a great way to keep track of customer data and create a customer satisfaction score for your business.)

Do you see any opportunities for improvement on the customer renewal process? I bet you do! Seeing it written out this way is so helpful. 

Customer Experience Step 5: When Customer Is Complete

There comes a time when your time with your customer is complete. This is a great thing! It usually means they got the help they came for. They sort of "graduated" in a way.

But that doesn't mean you can never talk to them again. I highly recommend you create a customer experience for post-graduation.

Your process might look something like this...

When Customer Is Complete:

• If the customer decides not to renew, I verbally tell the client when Slack access will be removed and ask if I can keep in touch. 

• Customer is removed from the private Slack channel with me. 

• Customer receives a thank you card in the mail. (Maybe a custom gift too.)

• Customer receives a quarterly email follow up from me asking how they are doing.

And that's it! That's customer experience management in a nutshell.

Summary

As a coach or consultant, the work you do with your customers matters - which is why it's so important to have an amazing, and seamless, plan for their entire customer journey.

In this blog post, we talked about each part of your customer experience, including:

• Step 1: Your Marketing - How they learn about your product or service and start to develop brand loyalty. (This is the first part of your customer acquisition.)

• Step 2: Your Sales Process - How they sign up for your product or service and begin their customer journeys. (This is the second part of your customer acquisition.)

• Step 3: Customer Delivery - When they receive your product or service, which usually includes multiple customer touch points.

• Step 4: The Renewal Conversation - Retaining customers is the biggest compliment, because it means they are not just having a positive customer experience - they are actually having a superior customer experience.

• Step 5: When Customer Is Complete - When your customer feels ready to move on, your time will come to an end, but this can also be a big compliment, especially when they share their experience with other people.

Documenting your thoughtful customer experience is a top business priority. I hope you use this blog post to create a customer experience strategy, or use this blog post as inspiration to improve your current customer relationships. 

Creating a memorable customer experience that results in a streamlined and enjoyable experience for your customers and you, is something I do with my customers and I'd love to help you with this too.