Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You: How to Delight and Engage the Customers Your Competitors Don't Understand

Chapter 5

How to Think Like People Not Like You

People become easily intimidated when they start trying to cater to a customer group about whom they know little or nothing. Many businesspeople are so apprehensive and anxious about crafting these specific efforts for particular customers because they are scared of making a mistake. They don’t want to offend a potential customer group by saying or doing the “wrong” thing. In addition, as I discussed in Chapter 2, they don’t want to risk the potential for negative publicity and the subsequent media firestorm if they somehow blow it.

So if you feel this way, trust me—you are not alone. It’s understandable that you’d feel doubt and trepidation. But despite the difficulties, this is the right journey to take, because crafting an outstanding customer experience for someone not like you will grow your business. It’s what your competitors aren’t doing (because they are scared or oblivious or both). And it’s what will bring you incremental business and foster great loyalty among a new customer group that feels singled out in a positive, recognized, and highly valued way.

I don’t want to imply that it’s easy to get inside the heads and hearts of people not like you; after all, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it—and very few companies and brands are. However, it is possible, and that’s where the huge upside potential is. If very few brands or businesses are taking this approach to the customer experience, then you can zoom to the ...