When is the last time you had to follow up with a company about an issue, whether it was a missing package, erroneous charge or missed service appointment, and expected an easy rewarding experience – quite the opposite for most of us – we EXPECT a bad experience and are braced for one, then SHOCKED when it doesn’t happen!  When, how and why did that change?  Customer experience doesn’t stop there though, for those that have businesses where customers visit – it starts the moment they pull into your parking lot.

Customer experience should be something you think of every single day and you should intentionally experience your company from a customer’s viewpoint.  When you look through the lens of a customer it is amazing what you will see and how the smallest things make a big impact.

Here are some of the things that I notice:

Hair salon – getting my hair washed and looking at a broken ceiling tile, bright white bulbs and yellow bulbs mixed together, two burned out lights, an old holiday decoration that someone missed when taking them down.  Bad enough when you see these things at a tired chain salon but at an expensive spa/salon?

Doctor’s office – there is a LOT of time to be observant while nervously waiting in a room for the doctor to come in; 8 month old magazine, torn cover of a children’s book, evacuation map that is so old the print is barely legible and the sides are curled because it was put up with two pieces of tape, the missing chair to set my purse on so it is clutched in my lap, flickering ballast that needs to be changed (perfect for a migraine), window blinds that are crooked.  How much attention is the staff and doctor going to pay to me or care about my experience when they don’t see what’s right in front of them – maybe they don’t care?

Restaurant – excited to try a new place I found on yelp that is supposed to have a fantastic caesar salad; opening the door with fingerprints all over the glass, sliding on a section of greasy floor on the way to my table, gingerly opening a menu that looks like it has lived a full life in a child care center, wondering for a moment why the word “homade” looks funny, watching the server pick up the top of my straw with her fingers, trying to guess the age of what I think used to be a lemon wedge, looking across the room at a clogged air return filled with grime and hoping there is not one above my table.  None if these things are that bad, but together they make you subconsciously wonder what the restrooms and kitchen look like.

Customer and team member experience is something I am very passionate about and it can be exceptional if you just try.  My team and I walked in and around the buildings we managed on a rigorous schedule looking for burned out lights, broken fixtures or furniture, garbage around the buildings, areas that needed paint touch up, cleanliness, needed repairs, areas of improvement or missed opportunities.

From outdoor to indoor activation, what would visitors hear, smell, feel?  When we selected indoor and outdoor furniture – would it stand the test of time, would it be comfortable, how easy would it be to clean, were there different areas inviting different body types and conversational situations?  When we selected bathroom fixtures – where would we locate the hands free soap and hand towels, making sure there were coat hangers on the back of the stall doors and small tables to set your coffee or purse on when washing your hands, adding toe openers for the main doors, making sure there was lighting both in and outside of the stalls, what size tile or color grout would we use and how easy would it be to clean?

Now more than ever, requires organizations to focus and rethink how their business operates and how they are serving their customers.