Last Best Experiences: How Active Listening Can Lead to Big CX Payoff

What elevates a run-of-the-mill experience to a good experience, or even great one? Sometimes the difference can be as simple as making a customer feel heard. By showing your customers that their opinions matter to you and that their opinions inform how you orchestrate your customer experience, you can build more meaningful relationships with your customers. Especially with big purchases, these types of engaging, thoughtful follow-up communications and feedback opportunities can help make customers feel they are receiving the value they deserve.

For Sherri Loechte, the Director of Sales Channels at Avtex, her most recent Last Best Experience happened shortly after purchasing a new monitor from Dell’s.

What Happened During Sherri’s Last Best Experience with Dell?

Sherri knew she needed a new monitor. She started her search on the Dell website, browsing the hundreds of options available. This was the first part of what made the experience great: it was easy to navigate and compare options, which made her feel confident making her purchase.

However, it was the post purchase experience that sealed the deal and made her a brand loyalist. Immediately after buying, Dell sent her a follow-up email to check-in and see how the process had worked for her. A week later she received her monitor. That same day, she received an email from Dell asking if she had received her shipment and if everything was working as expected. One month later, Dell sent her an email asking how her monitor was working, and if they could help with anything else. Every step of the way, Sherri received timely communications to check in on her purchase.

What Made the Experience so Memorable?

As consumers, we’re all used to receiving one-size-fits-all surveys that are supposed to reflect and provide feedback on our entire experience. By following her every step of the way and allowing her to share specific feedback, as well as ask for help if she ran into any issues, Dell proved that her experience as a customer mattered to them—even a month after purchase.

What Does Understanding Customer Experience Look Like?

80% of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as the product or service. Listening to what your customers want—what they actually want—is an important first step in providing that experience.

Part of valuing that feedback is understanding the different parts that make up the customer journey and listening to which aspects work well, and which ones need some work. It’s difficult for a customer to communicate, for example, that the website is difficult to navigate, but that the chatbot AI is helpful, if your customer feedback is limited to a short 5-question survey. And often, this catch-all survey creates feedback that considers only the most recent part of the experience—or the most negative part of the experience.

That’s why it’s important for companies to implement a Voice of the Customer program, so that they can gauge the effects of their CX efforts in order to better meet the needs and expectations of their customers. When brands combine desire to improve the customer experience with the listening tools to inform those efforts, they create the perfect environment for CX to thrive.