“Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” – Bruce Springsteen
It is fact that consistency in customer experiences is crucial – several studies have corroborated this repeatedly. Consistency in customer experiences ensures that customers feel a heightened sense of satisfaction, learn to trust the company and over time become loyal brand ambassadors. These positive results from consistency in customer experiences happen since customers derive a sense of comfort and know that the company would provide top class service every time they interact with it. Consistency in customer experiences is one of the cornerstones to creating robust, profitable and trusting relationships with customers, who in turn provide more and repeat business, speak well of the company and even encourage their friends and associates to engage in business with the company. What better way to trounce competitors and become a force to reckon with, in the current volatile and highly competitive business environment. The premise of great customer service is that a company provides its customers with easy, reliable, trustworthy and efficient service, each time. Hence, consistency would be one of the basic requirements of top class customer service.
Consistency in customer experiences shows your company’s commitment and dedication to offer the most desirable kind and level of service to all customers. Consistency is extremely vital for customers – it affords them peace of mind without any apprehensions of unpleasant incidences or sudden breaks in service. Such service is an expectation of customers across all industries – all customer segments expect uniformity and stability in the delivery of service irrespective of where they may be located, the time of day and the reason for which they interact with a company. As a customer, you too would expect that whoever and wherever you connect with in the company, the attention, promptness and courtesy you receive is standard across. This would create an image of reliability and consistency, leading you to trust the company. If on the other hand, service were not in harmony, you would end up feeling annoyed and reluctant to trust the company. Consistency in customer experiences is not the opposite of personalization, as some people tend to believe. In fact, personalized service to all customers translates to consistency – personalization would be factor that would tell customers that they could expect harmonious and uniform service and experiences with your company at all times. In fact, personalized service to some customers only would lead to a bad reputation – your company would lose the customers who do not receive personalized service, as they would view as ‘playing favourites’ and not being valued.
What is your company’s stance on consistency in customer experiences? Do you believe that consistency is essential or unimportant? We believe that consistency is crucial and to ensure that everyone in the company follows it, a company must have a set of defined and clearly laid down rules and policies that state that every customer interaction be consistent and of high quality. Every touch-point must provide the same courteous treatment and a uniform message and image of the company. If one touch-point offers great service and another metes out shoddy treatment, it will confuse customers and they would either complain or decide to leave your company for another after posting negative comments via social media. None of these situations would be favourable for your company.
The other reason why consistency in customer experiences is so crucial is because; it leads to trust and confidence in your company. In the world of business, trust is one of the major drivers for customers becoming loyal to a company and providing repeat business and referrals. Through consistency in customer experiences, customers learn to depend on a company and know that without any extra effort they would receive top class service, reliable products, competitive pricing and an overall comfortable relationship with the company. Without consistency across all verticals within a company, a customer would be confused about a company’s values and culture – receiving great service one time and shoddy service at another. This tells the customer that the company does not care about their needs – emotional or business and soon the customer will stop caring about a company. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, strategies and rules are essential to ensure that everyone in the company understands the commitment towards consistency and top class service.
The other advantage of consistency is that a company would pay attention to sending out uniform messages to its customers. Consistency in messaging and communication would ensure that customers view your company and brand as being unified and strong internally, which in turn builds confidence and feeling of dependability. The promises a company makes through such consistent messaging are believable and it is easier for customers to know what they can expect and what they should not. Customers tend to be easily angered when the promises given by a company are unfulfilled or cheated on and this is when they vociferously speak out about the poor experiences and inconsistency of the company’s promises. As news spreads, companies lose credibility and market reputation. Customers would misinterpret even the good intentions of the company leading to overall poor experiences and lowered satisfaction levels for them. Consistency in customer experiences is therefore crucial to ensure the success and sustain credibility for a company and any company would benefit by investing time and other resources into ensuring it.
Consistency in customer experiences tells customers that your company is passionate about meeting and exceeding their expectations because you care about them. Irrespective of the perceptions customers or prospective ones might carry of a company it is possible to change them to positive impressions by consistently providing great service and top class experiences. Research suggests that customers would be willing to pay more if they receive the same high quality service every time they interact with a company. Through consistency, a company would be able to build and sustain robust relationships with customers even if the persons dealing with customers leave the company or move out of their current roles. Every person in the company would understand how to maintain consistency and why it is so important and hence customers would not experience break or discrepancies in the kind of service they receive.
By being consistent, companies would convey to customers that they are valued – hence consistency in customer experiences is also a great customer retention strategy. With so much competition and the huge costs required to attract new customers, companies have no choice but to focus on retaining their existing customers. With time, these customers become loyal and are extremely potent ‘tools’ to attract new customers at minimal costs. Consistency in customer experiences tells customers that your company seeks to put their interests first and would do anything to help them succeed and in return, customers will help the company to become increasingly successful and profitable. A good deal, would you not say!
While consistency in customer experiences is crucial, it is not that easy to achieve. However, when it is absent, it becomes of the most glaring and conspicuous flaws of a company leading to diminishing customer trust and over time customer numbers. The one thing that most industry leaders have in common is their unfailing dedication towards consistency in customer experiences leading to top class customer service.