A healthy obsession with the customer experience
Not customer service, but customer experience
Make no mistake; the customer experience doesn’t simply entail what customers go through when they buy something. It also encompasses what happens before, during, and after that purchase – every aspect of doing business with your company, from the quality and efficacy of your products to convenience features to whether your customers can reach you by e-mail, phone, text, or in person.
It’s truly a holistic experience. It’s a 360-degree proposition, including what happens after they become your customers. The experience is what they’ll remember because it’s about how they felt doing business with your company.
The good news is that what will set your brand apart from the sea of sameness is providing a great customer experience – and what’s great about that is that it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You just have to really get to know and understand your customers, their needs, desires, concerns, and frustrations and figure out how to deliver service in the way that they want, that is, in a manner that’s important to them.
A better customer experience benefits your business
Focusing on improving the customer experience to grow your business is the strategic move that will help your brand stand out and be more competitive in the Animal Health and Nutrition sectors. Crafting a customer experience that caters to your Ideal Customers (the most valuable customer segments for your brand) will improve your business in five ways:
- It will give you a significant competitive edge since your competition is probably talking about the features and benefits of their products instead of focusing on improving the customer experience.
- It will increase customer loyalty and retention.
- It will help differentiate you from other businesses or similar enterprises.
- It will give you a greater understanding of different customer groups, providing key insights into what they want and respond to, which will generate even more creative ideas and unique ways to delight customers.
- It will grow your business by bringing in new customers.
Any of these five ways is reason enough to focus your strategic marketing initiatives on improving the customer experience. Combining all five ways to deliver an exceptional customer experience to your Ideal Customers adds up to a truly unbeatable market position.
Providing a good customer experience sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But this is not what we’re talking about here. It’s about how you can deliver an exceptional experience to the people who are behind the decisions, procurement, use, measurement, and evaluation of your product, and how that experience can be the key to cultivating loyal customers who will buy more from you and, better yet, will help you gain new customers by referring your brand to their company associates and peers.
What it takes to differentiate your brand with a better customer experience
You may be thinking, if this is all it takes to grow sales and improve customer retention, why aren’t my company and my competition doing it already? The answer may be because your company and competitors are all fighting for the average customer instead of carving out particular groups and customizing your offering to them. This can be difficult, as often the differences are subtle and your competitors may not see an obvious “hole” in the market. They simply don’t recognize the need to do it. And that’s precisely where your opportunity lies: by creating a customer experience that addresses a specific customer group’s needs and wants, you can differentiate yourself from your competition and grow your business with new, incremental customers.
To figure out how to best serve a particular segment of customers, you need to gain insight and expand your thinking to encompass the entire journey that every customer goes through, from the moment they realize they have a problem that needs solving, to searching for alternatives, finding your brand, getting to know, like, and trust you, and finally to buying, using, measuring the results and deciding to purchase again.
A real world example: Nutra Blend, a company driven by customer obsession
The vitamin and mineral premix business is a vital part of the Animal Health and Nutrition sector. The premixes themselves are largely considered as commodities, and suppliers compete for each potential customer with a combination of low prices and customer service. The USA market is among the most contested, with dozens of multinational and local companies constantly fighting for market share.
In this hypercompetitive environment, Nutra Blend is widely recognized as a standout leader. The company was founded in 1975 in rural southwest Missouri where its roots began in the poultry industry. As its customers’ needs evolved, NB expanded into a regional premixing and distribution company. Currently, NB manufactures vitamins, trace minerals and other feed additive premixes for the livestock, poultry and pet food industries. In addition, NB distributes nearly every major micro-ingredient available on the market and delivers weekly to all 48 contiguous states. In 2018, NB reached $1 billion in sales.
In 2020, Nutra Blend launched the E-Store, a new online ordering platform. This innovative, digital marketplace allows customers to place orders quickly and conveniently online. This site also provides new tools and features to manage their account, access product resources and much more. Matt Harper, Nutra Blend Marketing Director, puts it this way. “The foundation of Nutra Blend’s business is anchored in providing industry leading customer experience. A key component to accomplishing this has historically been fueled, in part, by building strong relationships with our partner customers. We realize that in today’s world, e-business also plays a critical role in providing unequaled customer service. We are breaking new ground in e-business applications that have not been seen in our industry that will provide innovative tools, resources and e-services. This combined with our continued person to person service sets a new standard in customer service and expectations.”
“The foundation of Nutra Blend’s business is anchored in providing industry leading customer experience.”
Take action now and get ahead of your competitors
Every customer wants to feel special and important; we want the places we spend our money to welcome, appreciate, respect, and value us. But the customer experience needs to be more than that in today’s business climate; it must be more nuanced, refined, and unique – to move from “mass” to “targeted.” This doesn’t mean that each and every customer needs to have a customized experience. It means that brands must make their services more targeted and tailored to specific customer groups. By doing so, you let that customer group know that you recognize them and their specific needs, wants, hopes, or frustrations. You show that you are responding to those with specialized service offerings that are right for them. And those customer and prospects will feel so valued that they’ll reward you with even more of their business.
If you are ready to gain a competitive edge by delivering a better customer experience, contact us .
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