Close your eyes and think for a moment. How many businesses provide the kind of unforgettable customer experience that keeps customers coming back time after time? Do you know what I'm talking about? Think of the legendary customer experiences delivered by companies like Disney, Nordstroms, Krispy Kreme, Le Meridian King Edward hotel in Toronto, Ste. Anne's Spa in Cobourg, and others.

This month I begin a monthly series on building unforgettable customer experiences. Each month I'll share strategies and tactics to help you build and then deliver the kind of experiences that are guaranteed to grow your business, if you execute them with passion and make every detail count!

Why do you want to focus on experiences?
Let's start with your reason why. Why would you take the time to make sure that your customers receive memorable experiences? You're already too busy, right?

There are lots of benefits to delivering memorable experiences like increased customer loyalty, more spend from each customer, tons more word-of-mouth advertising, and so on. But the one measure that I like to focus on is bottom-line results. At the end of the day, it's about putting more money in your pocket than in your competitors'!

The John Robert's Hair Studio & Spa, one of the top salons in the U.S., is an incredible example of how a company achieved astonishing results by focusing on the experience they deliver to their customers. Just look at their results. They realized consistently large increases in sales over an eight-year period, with a 32% sales increase in 2001 alone. And John Roberts grew their team from two people to over 130 people in just 8 years. That's pretty amazing for a hair salon, don't you think?

Then there's Williams-Sonoma, an amazing store in the U.S. that delivers an unforgettable customer experience. Have you ever been there? Every detail is looked after and as a result customers remember the experience for a long time after leaving the store. Does this really matter? You bet it does. In 1998, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. sales exceeded $1 billion. Not too hard to take, eh?

What is a memorable customer experience?
Let's make sure we're on the same page here. I want you to think about a memorable customer experience as the little stuff you do to exceed customer expectations and to make them feel welcome, comfortable, important, and understood. We'll talk more about what I mean by "the little stuff" in future articles but for now let's think about this. Every human being has a need to feel welcome, comfortable, important, and understood. But why?

We're emotional creatures. We have feelings. And those feelings drive absolutely every decision we make. We either like something or we don't. We either want to shop at a store or we don't. We either want to buy something or we don't. There's very little room for grey here.

Think about it. Every decision we make is based on emotion whether we realize it or not. Why do you get your hair cut by that specific hairstylist? Why do you shop at that particular grocery store? Why do you pay more for a particular item when you could buy it for less? Why do you drive a little further to give your money to one business when you could buy the same thing locally? The answer: it makes you feel good. We all want to feel welcome and comfortable - these are basic needs. We also want to feel important. I tell my clients to remember that every one of us has a sign on our forehead that reads, "Make me feel important". And lastly, we all want to be understood. How frustrating is it when you can't get a sales person to understand what you really want?

Beyond your mission statement
Most companies really do aspire to be successful, to be at the top. They create an impressive philosophy and write a mission statement. They clearly define their target market and then develop a set of products or services that will meet the needs of their clients. Unfortunately, though, many companies find out that this is not enough. For the most part, staff aren't able to understand what the mission statement means to their job on a daily basis. And this stops most companies from being able to truly deliver memorable customer experiences.

Delivering a memorable customer experience MUST start with developing what's called a customer experience statement. A well-written customer experience statement defines exactly how you want your customers to feel each and every time they deal with you.

To understand the importance of the customer experience statement, think about having to drive to a destination but you don't know how to get there. Without a map that drive would be some kind of frustrating experience - you'd need to stop at a lot of gas stations along the way and ask for directions. Wouldn't you? Does your team have to stop too much and ask for directions?

In article 2...I'll talk about the next step in the process called 'Mapping your Touch Points'. Stay tuned. In the mean time, I'd love to hear about your challenges and successes in delivering customer experiences.

Ruth-Anne Boyd is the Business Development Director at The Customer Experience Company. She is an award-winning writer, consultant, speaker and trainer with over 15 years experience in plain language communications and workflow simplification. Ruth-Anne has won 11 awards for her communication material. She is a frequently invited speaker, and a member of PLAIN (the Plain Language Association International), Canadian Women in Communications (CWC) and DigitalEve.