UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging

Chapter 26. Experience Gap

ONE OF THE things companies need to realize is that they are only as good as the weakest experience of their customer. Many businesses are guilty of creating a great experience to get a first sale from you, but are really bad at keeping that level of service going. Once these customers get to the post-first-sale place, their experiences change. Your service is only as good as the worst experience a customer will have, not the best. It works with that age-old phrase: You are only as strong as your weakest link.

The space between the best services, often what a new customer receives and the worst experience, is what I call the Experience Gap. As a business owner your goal needs to be having nogapatall, optimizing every point of contact with your customer. As the gap grows, so will your customer's dissatisfaction.

I recently experienced this myself on two different occasions. The first was a negative experience with a store where I had shopped for a long time—Best Buy. The second was an out-standing experience with Cirque de Soleil in Las Vegas.

I was shopping for a voice-to-text software program that allows me to dictate into the computer and have it translated into text—one of the important tools that I am using to write this book. My amazing Twitter followers recommended a particular brand and I found the title at Best Buy, one of my favorite electronic superstores. The title was on sale and therefore sold out there, so I decided to take the trip across the ...