THE INSTANT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Businesses talk a lot about the importance of the customer experience, what leads up to it, what goes into it, and how important it is. Let’s face it: everything in your business has to be working toward an excellent customer experience if you are serious about that goal. One item that is not always addressed is simply the customer experience that occurs by just a moment’s exposure. I call this the instant customer experience.
Bernard Tyson is the CEO of Kaiser Permanente. I love the way he captures this essence of the instant customer experience (“How Did I Get Here?: Bernard Tyson” Bloomberg Businessweek , 9/28/15–10/4/15, p. 96):
“ I still do hospital visits, and I can tell how well it’s run in a couple minutes: How clean are the floors? How does the staff respond? What’s the vibe? ”
If the instant customer experience is not good, the customer may not stick around to enjoy the full customer experience. All those individual exposures (whatever they may be) instantly communicate a customer experience. The only question is will it be an excellent customer experience or something less? You decide.
