Does your customer really come first?

“The customer always comes first”; “The customer is always right,” etc.

You hear it ALL the time. Heck, a lot of us are probably guilty of saying it. However– can you think of a time when you were personally a customer and you felt like you came first, or you were right?

People have a tendency to remember bad experiences over good ones–so your mission should not only be making sure you provide as many customers as possible with a positive experience, but also to limit negative experiences to as few as possible.

Now if you’re in eCommerce, I’m especially making this point for you. While there is a lot you have to worry about– as long as you have all your ducks in a row, your customer is in charge of his/her own experience.

Sounds easy, but unfortunately so few actually make it work. We’ve just replaced old challenges with new ones: slow load times, unsatisfactory search tools, bland and often undelivered transactional messaging. Sadly, instead of looking to the root of the problem, many try to cover it up by employing new tactics or adding more to the site.

There’s many reasons why these things happen… but how it happens is usually getting caught up in your own product/service/company that you fail to see how potential customers view and experience it. Chances are you’re probably web savvy and not thinking about someone new to the internet experiencing your site. So your homework today is to find someone who represents your average customer and is willing to give you an honest opinion. Heck, if you want to, contact me at krusk(at)sitebrand. com and I’ll tell you what I think!

PS- It may sound like I’m putting down web personalization… What Sitebrand does. But I’m actually thinking the opposite. I would definitely encourage using web personalization and I know it can help you boost conversion rates, but before you can dive in, you need to fix any fundamental problems on your site, which will help us keep you satisfied with your results, keep you happy because you’ll see improvements and most importantly –Keep your customers happy! That IS the ultimate goal… Right?

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Posted in Kelly Rusk, Personalization, eCommerce