subject: Email as "Customer Experience" [print this page] Email as "Customer Experience" Email as "Customer Experience"
The most successful companies today understand the shift is clearly away from "sales" and towards "the customer experience." Starbucks serves as a great example.
Starbucks is, on the surface, a traditional brick and mortar coffee business. However, the true genius of Howard Schultz's coffee houses was that they were able to create a new customer experience. Starbucks filled a great void in American life- and it wasn't coffee. It was for a place to see and be seen.A place where you could be online- but escape the isolation of home. Where you could lounge on a couch - and not even have to order anything. A place where "sales" was not the focus of the business. Starbucks understood early on that the customer experience transcended the company's need to make a sale.
If I had to create an "elevator pitch" for the Starbucks concept when it was a start-up, it would probably not even talk about coffee. It would go something like this:
"America's living room- a comfortably stylish meeting place where anyone can read, do business, meet friends, relax, go online, socialize or be left alone- whether they bought anything or not."
Clearly, no one in their right mind would invest in such a venture, would they? Yet that was the company's value proposition. Surely "overpriced coffee drinks that are unnecessarily fattening and a small selection of cakes, muffins and sandwiches that are no better than anyone else's" would not seem like the foundation of a successful business model either, would it?
I'm sure that if tomorrow, coffee were banned in America , Starbucks would want to continue to be a stylishly comfortable place for meeting friends, going online, escaping the isolation of home, etc. As long as they provided that experience, it really wouldn't matter what they sold. Starbucks' success is much more about the customer experience they create than the beverages or snacks they sell.
The customer experience begins with your customer's first contact with your company. But how do you create an ongoing, engaging experience, so that your business becomes a part of your prospects' lives, whether they buy from you or not? I believe that email provides a unique medium for building a deep relationship with your prospects and can create an ongoing, engaging "customer experience."
"Email?"" you ask. "You're kidding, right?"
I'm not kidding.
Visit us today to find out how "Email as Customer Experience" can transform your business, at http://www.bravovalenti.com
