February 11, 2014
Every customer interaction is a "moment of truth" and an opportunity for a company to shine. If a company isn't paying attention, these interactions can be disastrous. For one pizza place, ignoring this idea meant a pepperoni pizza delivery would be their first...and their last.
I was researching customer experience and conversions for my company's SaaS application, and came across the following thought over at ConversionXL:
"Every single customer experience is your moment of truth."
Not long after reading that, I witnessed an example of this in practice. If a company isn't paying attention, those "moments of truth" can go horribly wrong.
My co-worker ordered a pizza for lunch from a place he had never ordered from before. This place is pretty close to our office, so it's conceivable to think he–or any of us–would order from them again in the future. The pizza was the (first) moment of truth for the pizza place, and it was a failure. What happened?
Failure on many levels. On one hand, it was just one pizza delivered one lunch hour on one anonymous day in the middle of a forgotten week sometime in the early months of 2014. But that one pizza, and the interaction with the delivery person, set the tone for that entire business not only for my co-worker, but for all of us. And potentially other people we know who might ask, "where can I get a pizza around here?" That's a lot of potential lost sales.
The customer experience isn't always strictly limited to the customer. Each customer has people directly around them or in their social circles, and soon enough those people will know whether or not a company was able to deliver. Pay attention to every customer experience, and if you do fall down (who doesn't?), own it, fix it, learn from it, and move on.
Ryan spends most of his time as Mystery Supply Co. He's been floating through space with you since the 70's. King of Michigan.