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

6. CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORT

We all expect that a company will stand by its products or services. But you can enhance the customer experience for people not like you by thinking through all aspects of what it’s like to do business with you, for people of all backgrounds and situations. For instance, one of my friends is a divorced father of two young girls. He is an active, involved dad, completely committed to effectively coparenting his daughters. He told me recently about a problem he was having with all of their after-school activities, which include swimming lessons, soccer, and a dance class for the oldest. Since my friend has part-time custody of his girls, he finds himself taking them to their classes when they are staying with him. The problem is that the girls’ mother is the only one who receives e-mails and updates about all the classes and activities! Their dad is totally in the dark if a class is canceled or rescheduled due to weather, and so on. He and his ex-wife finally figured out a way to keep him in the loop, simply by putting an automatic “forward” function on all the e-mails the mom receives.

However, this dad is outraged. He can’t believe, in this day and age—when so many families share custody of children or have blended families—that these organizations haven’t set up something as important as e-mail communication to handle more than one e-mail address per child! Many after-school activities do make sure both parents are in the communication loop, but ...