Are your customers’ expectations getting higher? Is their loyalty harder to maintain? Do they have lots of choice just at the touch of a button? You’re not alone! In today’s competitive sales landscape of crowded markets, ever increasing expectations, and greater transparency, it’s much more difficult to win and keep customers.
So, how do the winners do it? Drawing on my 30 plus years of research, working with, and learning from truly customer focused businesses, it’s clear that they take a Dramatically and Demonstrably Different approach to customer experience…. and it’s all about ‘AI’!
No, not ‘Artificial Intelligence’, which can obviously deliver great convenience and efficiency for customers, but ‘Authentic Interactions’! That means creating genuine, human personal experiences that make your customers feel truly valued, understood, eager to return, and of course, likely to tell others too!
So, how do these ‘3D Businesses’ do it? I’ve identified 5 Key Ingredients of ‘Authentic Interactions’. No ‘magical answers’ or ‘academic theories’, but 5 ‘obvious’ things that you know you should be doing. The key is ‘Are You’?
First of all… why ‘Authentic Interaction’ matters
Genuine, human, personalised customer experiences are rare! What happens when something that people want becomes rare? It becomes more valuable. While technology can certainly make things faster, ‘Authentic Interaction’ makes you stand out.
By doing things your competitors aren’t doing, or even better, can’t do, customers feel appreciated and understood, they stay longer, spend more, and become your best advocates. The following statistics show this:
- 84% of customers say being treated like a person rather than a number is important for winning their business (Source: Verint Systems Inc survey of more than 34,000 customers)
- 91% of consumers are more likely to buy from businesses that provide offers specifically tailored to them (Source: Accenture)
- 62% of consumers are prepared to pay more for a good ‘personalised’ customer experience (Source: Achieving Customer Amazement Report)
- 60% of consumers are more likely to become a repeat customer after a personalised experience (Source: Exploding Topics 2024)
- 66% of customers expect businesses to understand their individual needs and preferences (Source: Exploding Topics 2024)
Although this is what customers want, many businesses are struggling:
- 63% of UK businesses say creating a personalised response is difficult (Source: Salesforce Report 2024)
- 71% of UK customers feel frustrated by impersonal customer experiences (Source: Salesforce Report 2024)
So, what does it mean for you, and maybe more importantly, your customers? It means, they’re not getting what they want and this is a huge OPPORTUNITY!
Let’s break down the five key ingredients of ‘Authentic Interactions’ and help you establish how you can bring them to life in your day-to-day interactions. Have a look through them and identify how you ‘measure up’ in the areas that count. I know it might all seem like obvious, common sense stuff, but please read this first…
What I if told you, you the read this sentence wrong?
Did I catch you out? We often see things how we want to see them, so as you read these ‘common sense’ ideas, please work through them with a ‘fresh pair of eyes’!
Key ingredient #1: Make it easy for me!
Customers don’t just want great products or services; they want the experience of buying from you to be easy, intuitive, and enjoyable. Sales professionals who champion ‘Authentic Interaction’ are constantly looking for and removing friction from the customer journey and make themselves easy to buy from and do business with.
What does this mean for you in the ‘real world’?
- Be responsive: reply promptly, keep promises, and set clear expectations.
- Know your stuff: product knowledge builds trust. When you don’t know something, admit it, then find the answer fast.
- ‘Stand in your own queues’: Identify and understand your customers frustrations and find ways to eliminate them. This could be processes, policies or people!
- Remove those blockages: spot and fix anything that makes buying and doing business with you harder than it should be (even in the accounts department – hey, this is revolutionary stuff!).
‘3D demonstrated’:
- A professional services firm noticed that their contracts were full of jargon. By simplifying them and adding a one-page ‘plain English’ summary, they made signing up quicker and easier, resulting in a 25% increase in conversion rates.
- A personal business advisor who having spent half a day with me to establish my needs and how he could support me, then sent me a report with an email saying ‘Dear Sir or Madam’!!!! I pointed it out and he said it was ‘policy’. They have now changed it!
- Jumbo Supermarketn in Holland introduced a ‘slow lane’ for customers who wanted a friendly chat as a pilot in one of their stores. It proved so popular, they extended it to over a 100 other stores.
- The MD of a business rang up and asked for himself, and the lady on reception said ‘Who?’!!! Turned out receptionist had gone for lunch and this lady didn’t know who was who! They soon changed things!
- The manufacturing business team that introduced a ‘rule’ that anyone taking a message for someone ‘not in’, ‘owned’ that message until they came back. Thus, if they weren’t back by 4.30pm, the message holder rang the customer to explain that they hadn’t been forgotten!
Key takeaway: ‘Being Easy’ isn’t just about speed; it’s about clarity, simplicity and removing hassle. When customers say “It’s always so easy doing business with you” you know you’re winning.
Key ingredient #2: ‘Show me you know me’!
I once arrived at a client’s offices that I’d done some customer experience training with six months earlier. I was meeting the MD to see how things were going. Andrea, the 17 year old office junior greeted me by saying ‘Have you had a good journey from Sheffield Andy?’ which I thought was nice that she’d remembered where I’d come from. She then asked ‘Would you like a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?’ ‘Yes please’ I said…. ‘It’s black no sugar isn’t it?’ she replied. I said ‘Yes! How do you know that?’ ‘It’s my job to know’ she beamed back at me! She’d set up a simple database where she put in little details about her customers! That’s what this is all about: making your customers feel valued by ‘showing them you know them’!
As sales professionals, you know that personalisation is not new, but ‘Authentic Interaction’ means going further than simply inserting someone’s name into an email (although it is a good start!).
What does this mean for you in the ‘real world’?
- Smile and recognise them when they come into your office / shop / business
- Use ‘Caller ID’ and greet people personally when they call.
- Use the information you have to demonstrate understanding of each customer’s unique situation.
- Share relevant insights, ideas, or connections they’d find valuable.
- Remember personal details: a quick note on their last order, a question about their big presentation last week, or even a birthday greeting.
‘3D demonstrated’:
- ‘I saw this and thought of you’ – a personalised email with an article, a bit of industry news, an example of best practice that’s relevant to them (maybe this one?!!!)
- A car parking spot reserved just for them when they arrive at your offices.
- The engineering business that flies the national flag of the country customers are visiting from outside their offices.
- The hotel receptionist who recognises you when you return to the hotel.
- The salesperson that understands your goals and aspirations, the ‘challenges’ you face, knows the football team you support and remembers your ‘other half’s’ name.
- The personalised card or letter that says ‘You’ve now been a customer of ours for 12 months, thank you!’.
Key takeaway: The best sales professionals notice the small things and act on them. They proactively make each interaction feel like it’s tailored, genuine, and special.
Key ingredient #3: Take personal responsibility to ‘delight’ me!
What exactly is ‘Customer Delight’? My definition is ‘surprising customers with the level of service you provide’ and let me just emphasise, it’s surprising them in a positive way please! Customer delight is not ‘Have a nice day!’ or ‘Buy one, get 10 free!’. Obviously, it’s got to make commercial sense (hey, anyone can give stuff away!). Doing what you promised is good but doing more than expected is great and it’s a key ingredient of ‘Authentic Interaction’. It means proactively looking for opportunities to ‘exceed customer expectations’, and the scary thing is that in many industries, that can simply means delivering things ‘on time, on budget and in a courteous and friendly way’!
What does this mean for you in the ‘real word’?
- Look and listen for opportunities to surprise them in small, meaningful ways.
- Identify ways to ‘delight them by imagining if they were to say “Yes, they dealt with me professionally, but what completely blew me away was…” What is it?
- Take responsibility: If a problem arises, own it and fix it, fast.
- Don’t write off the ‘old fashioned ways’. Go on, write a simple, handwritten note to a customer to say ‘thank you’.
‘3D demonstrated’:
- The returned call at the exact specified time you were given
- The delivery that arrives early (you may well have added an extra day when you told me so you can ‘delight’ them)
- The front-line member of staff who deals with your customer’s query, enquiry, or problem on the spot (and doesn’t have to ask a manager for permission!)
- The ‘standard letter’ that says ‘according to our records, you paid us on time, thank you!’ (It amazes me how many businesses have standard letters for saying ‘You’re 30 days / 60 days / 90 days overdue’, but don’t have one to say thanks for prompt payment!).
- The unprompted phone call that simply asks: ‘How are things?’
Key Takeaway: ‘Customer delight’ doesn’t have to cost much; it’s about taking personal responsibility to show the personal touch at any (and every) point of the customer journey.
Key ingredient #4: Spot and deal with disappointment
Ever had a situation where something has gone wrong, a customer has complained and the way you dealt with it totally ‘delights’ them? (I often suggest that a key measure of the strength of a relationship you have with a customer is how big a mistake can you make and still get away with it! Please DO NOT take this as the key learning lesson from this article!)
Yes, things go wrong and how you deal with it says a lot about you and your business. Often, customers will accept things positively if it’s dealt with promptly and courteously.
However, research from Rapide shows that 91% of companies don’t always complain when they’ve had a bad customer experience, so any businesses only measuring ‘customer complaints’ is in danger of mistaking silence for customer happiness. ‘Authentic Interaction’ means proactively looking for problems and giving your customers ‘a damn good listening to’ spot and deal with them.
What does this mean for you in the ‘real world’?
- Proactively check in: don’t wait for complaints, instead, ask for feedback.
- Ask ‘Are you COMPLETELY happy?’ and act on the responses
- Get someone else in your business to ask your customers if they’re COMPLETELY happy about YOU and what you do!
- Be genuinely empathetic when things go wrong and fix it, fast.
- Identify the common ‘complaints’ and frustrations and eliminate them
‘3D demonstrated’:
- Businesses that systematically use ‘Net Promoter Score’ to measure customers’ views. It means asking the question ‘On a scale of 0 to 10 how likely is it that you would recommend us to family and friends’? Your ‘NPS’ is the number of ‘active promoters’ (people who score you 9 or 10) minus the number of ‘detractors’ (those who score you 0 to 6). It ignores the ‘passives’ (7 to 8). You can use it as a key performance indicator and compare your score with other businesses at the Net Promoter Website.
- ‘Eliminate the frustrations’ was an initiative we set up with a university reception team that encouraged front line staff to spot and deal with things they heard students grumbling or looking frustrated about. If they couldn’t ‘deal with it’ themselves, they reported it and senior managers took action.
- An IT support account manager of a client of ours noticed that a new client had stopped logging into their platform. She called to check in and discovered they were stuck with onboarding. Instead of sending them to ‘support’, she arranged a one-to-one walkthrough which ‘delighted’ them and restored their confidence in the business.
- ‘Are you ‘COMPLETELY happy’? is a question we ask after our speaking engagements and training courses. It’s a yes / no answer followed by ‘why / why not?’ It’s a tough question, but it’s better than asking ‘score us out of 10’ and accepting 8’s and 9’s (that means there’s still something not right!)
Key takeaway: Disappointed customers can become loyal advocates if you ‘spot’ them and show you care enough to make things right.
Key ingredient #5: Be consistently human, genuine, and… authentic!
The final, and perhaps most important key ingredient is all about ‘consistency’. It’s definitely not about big gestures every now and then. If you do a brilliant job for me and ‘exceed my expectations’, then by definition, I come back next time with higher expectations (which can be a good thing). Your challenge is to consistently deliver that ‘great’ experience each time, every time.
It’s about showing up with genuine interest and care consistently. It’s also about getting ‘everyone else’ in your team and business engaged, empowered and enabled to ‘deliver’ too!
What does this mean for you in the ‘real world’?
- ‘Authentic Interaction’ has to be embedded into every aspect of what you do. It’s about ‘consistency’!
- Be human: admit mistakes, say thank you, and show appreciation.
- ‘Champion your champions’! Reward and recognise those in your team who do these things (that might just mean saying ‘well done’ to them.)
- ‘Challenge your challengers’! Deal with those who don’t do it, which might mean simply pointing it out and training them to ‘deliver’.
- Be a role model yourself: Walk the walk consistently!
‘3D demonstrated’:
- Pret A Manger employees are encouraged to offer a free drink to someone who looks like ‘they’re having a bad day’ or to one of their ‘regulars’. Mystery shoppers look for ‘cheerfulness’ in their staff and the best are ‘rewarded’ for it!
- All Timpsons staff are ‘empowered’ to spend up to £500 to solve a customer’s problem or resolve a complaint without talking to a manager.
- Ritz Carlton Hotel employees can spend up to $2,000!
Key takeaway: People buy from people they like and trust. Being consistently human, genuine and authentic will set you apart.
Conclusions…
The best sales professionals are not simply the ones with the best products or biggest budgets. They’re the ones who build real relationships, deliver outstanding experiences, and make customers feel like they matter. ‘Authentic Interactions’ can be the things that get and keep you ahead of your competitors, even in a world of ever increasing algorithms and automation.
So, what are you going to do next to create customers who come back, spend more, and tell everyone else about you?
Maybe try one of these simple ideas today to get you started:
- Identify one ‘blockage’ that frustrates or irritates your customers and eliminate it.
- Show just one of your customers that you know them in the next 24 hours.
- Go out of your way to ‘delight’ one of your customers this week.
- Ask just one of your customers ‘Are you COMPLETELY happy with what I’m / we’re doing?’
- But DO SOMETHING that shows you’re human, genuine and authentic!
If you’d like to see how you and your business ‘measure up’ against the 5 ingredients, simply click here. It only takes a couple of minutes to answer some simple questions and you’ll get a free personalised report straight back to you!
Written by Andy Hanselman
Andy Hanselman is a recognised speaker on creating outstanding customer experiences. With over 30 years’ experience he speaks at conferences and events worldwide. He has built a strong reputation for his ‘down to earth’ approach offering no-nonsense ‘stuff’ that people can actually use back in the business immediately to improve their competitiveness. By sharing ‘real’ examples that resonate with the audience and telling stories that they can all learn from, he works hard to offer practical, stimulating fresh ideas and no-nonsense ‘stuff’ people can actually use in their businesses immediately.
Find out more and get inspired at www.andyhanselman.com.