Create a WOW Customer Experience: Day 9 of 21 Days to Build a Better Brand

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

To your customers, your brand is the collection of expectations, experiences, and memories of interacting with your business. To build a better brand, you must provide better experiences. Today you’ll learn how you can create a WOW customer experience for one of your brand touchpoints.

The Customer Experience

My wife and I bought some candles a few years back during a trip to Monterey, CA. We love their unique scents (Teakwood & Tobacco is divine) and burn them all the time. We decided to order more so I found them online. P.F. Candle Co. shipped the candles as expected but when I opened the box it changed my image of their brand altogether.

Inside I found a hand-written note that said “Patrick, thank you so much. You’re awesome!” They also included small samples of three other scents, one of which (Golden Coast) has become my new favorite.

“Wow”, I thought, who takes the time to hand write thank-you notes to all of their customers? And why don’t more companies offer sample products to try when you order? It’s not that these things are hard to do or expensive, it’s that they took the time to think about their customer.

This simple but amazing experience has made me a P.F. Candle Co. fan for life.

Brand Touchpoints

Denise Lee Yohn, author of “What Great Brands Do” says, “A brand touchpoint is any way a person in the marketplace interacts with your brand—so practically every brand has hundreds of touchpoints and each plays a role in shaping brand perceptions.”

According to Forbes, “Customer experience is the cumulative impact of multiple touchpoints over time, which result in a real relationship feeling, or lack of it.” In other words, the customer experience is comprised of their entire end-to-end journey with your brand.

This is not to be taken lightly. Your customer’s personal experiences with you will stick with them forever. Because of this, the customer experience is one of the most important factors in whether or not your business will be successful over time.

Think about all of the ways people interact with your brand. They might see your posts on social media, visit your website, walk into your store, or make an online purchase. What does the entire customer journey look like from beginning to end?

Here are some examples of customer touchpoints not everyone considers:

A good example of an often-overlooked brand touchpoint is your website’s 404 (page not found) page. Here’s how Clif Bar turned this normally ‘meh’ experience into something pretty fun and totally on-brand:

Look to Your Competition

One of the big reasons you focused on your competition was to see where they fall short. What brand touchpoints are they completely ignoring or getting all wrong? These are huge opportunities for your brand to stand out.

The Element of Surprise

When considering how you can create a WOW experience, one that really stands out in the eyes of your customers, focus on a touchpoint that most brands overlook. Surprise your customers by turning an ordinary experience into something extraordinary.

Your customers will be absolutely floored when they experience something unusual, and they’re more apt to tell everyone they know about it too.

Day 9 Action Item—Create a WOW Customer Experience for One of Your Brand’s Touchpoints

Grab your 21 Days to Build a Better Brand Workbook or any notebook and write down every touchpoint your customer has with your brand. Think about their entire journey from beginning to end. Pay special attention to all of the little touchpoints that other brands often ignore.

Look back to the work you did on your competition. Where are they lacking? Where are there opportunities for you to be different and amazing?

Pick one often overlooked touchpoint and write down ideas on how you can wow them. Your challenge is to turn a typically ‘blah’ experience into a WOW experience for your customers. What can you do to surprise them? What would make them want to tell all their friends about you?

Coming up: Start building some personality into your brand! Tomorrow you’ll choose your brand archetype.

Don’t Forget

Subscribe to The Brand Sketch Blog and start receiving daily emails for this series as well as future tips and teachings around building your remarkable brand.

Subscribe to The Brand Sketch Podcast where I expand on the daily teachings and share more brand-building examples and helpful insights.

Join The Brand Sketch community on Facebook where you can ask questions and get help and support from me and your community of fellow brand builders.

Download the 21 Days to Build a Better Brand Workbook. This ebook is a valuable resource that contains all of the teachings and printable worksheets for this series. Download your workbook today and save all your work in one place!