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The first time I remember really being introduced to the term “The Customer Experience” was from a gentleman named Michael Dell when I worked for him in the Online Division of Dell Computer Corporation. It was a mantra that he drilled into each person who worked for him especially our group as we were trying to prove that if given the best online experience, customers would not only go to, but prefer building and ordering computers online compared to through phone or fax.

Now many years later, technology has evolved so quickly that many of the most challenging issues we dealt with back at Dell have now become somewhat commoditized and even basic. Though with all this great technology it seems that web site owners are getting further and further away from focusing on their customer and the experiences each of them have when they land on their web sites.

So why is the customer experience so important? I could easily write a book on that sentence all by itself, but let me try to drill it down to a few main points:

• No matter what industry you are in, B2B, B2C, there is and will always be competition. Specifically when it comes to the web, customers have a wealth of choices and options out there on the information superhighway. Every time a potential customer of yours has to click one more time, do another search or waste one more second of their lives that they do not want to on your web site; it is one more chance you are giving them to leave and buy from one of your competitors.

• A smart business person knows that it costs a lot more money to gain a new customer / client than it is to keep an existing one. How does a business continually grow while keeping margins down? Repeat business and the only way a customer is going to come back and buy from you is that if you provided them with a pleasant and rewarding experience on your web site the first time and each time after that.

• Your web site is a huge representation of your brand! I always cringe inside when a client says to me, “We know our web site is not good, but we just have not gotten there yet.” My immediate response usually is, if a brick of mortar store of yours had items lying in the aisles and the store looked terrible would you immediately go and clean that up? Why is that any different than your web site? Especially since your web site can bring in tens, hundreds, even thousands of times more traffic a day than a brick and mortar store ever could. Bottom line, each time a user lands on your web site they are forming an opinion on your web site, your products/services and definitely, your overall brand.

Alright, so hopefully I have made my point on why The Customer Experience is so important. The next question needs to be where do I start? Where do I begin to start making the changes needed? I don’t want this post to go on forever so we will take on that subject in The Customer Experience – Part 2 so stay tuned.

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