Customer experience can make or break any business.

It is the glue that holds the

customer’s attention towards a company’s or a business’s products and services.
Without an excellent customer experience, the brand would most likely face
problems connecting with your prospective target audience. A truly remarkable
customer experience is where the customer feels an emotional connection with the
brand story, which helps them make purchasing decisions. A brand needs to engage
with customers at every point of time. It connects to all five senses: sound, sight,
smell, taste, and touch. It viscerally involves customers to experience the intangibles.
The product we consider as experience might last for hours. However, the memories
of what we hear, feel, touch, see, and taste remain there for a lifetime. Creating the
right air which involves all the elements of Marketing mix with right passion and
attitude is very important for a marketer and the business. All the human actors who
play part in service delivery influence the buyer’s decisions i.e., the firm’s personnel,
the customers, and other customers in the service environment. The environment in
which the service is delivered and where the firm and customers interact is also
important for any marketer. Any tangible component that facilitates the
performance or communication of the service, and the actual procedures,
mechanisms & flow of activities by which the service is delivered – the service
delivery & operating systems is essential in a marketing mix. Embedding the right
attitude & passion in marketing mix helps the customer to experience the
inseparability. A positive attitude in customer service will ensure that customers
have positive experiences each time, and would leave feeling good about themselves
and the company, which in turn would lead to customer loyalty. The customers who
are loyal to the company become customer advocates and spread a positive word of
mouth which in turn creates more referrals for the company.  All the 7p’s in
marketing mix should have a halo of passion. The passion helps a marketer to sell
the concepts in the marketing plan. It is passion that inspires a win attitude among
the marketing team and a brand must be passionate about their products and
services. The customers must also feel passionate about the products & services
being offered by the brand. A business or a brand must also think creatively
different. Customers should be managed as important assets. Not all of them are
equally desirable because they vary in their needs, desire & buying behaviour. They
love the experiences which are unique, differentiated & personalized one’s. By
better understanding their customers, a brand can tailor its offering to maximize its
overall value. This can be done through relationship marketing. There has been a
shift from transactions to relationship focus in marketing. Companies use tools &
software like CRM, ERP to deliver that kind of customer experience by capturing data
across all customer touchpoints and integrating it across a single database. Brands
these days have appended their analytical CRM & customer care incentives with the
goal of owning the customer experience. CRM can allow the company to surmise the
customer’s unspoken needs which influences the customer’s emotion and retention.
To deliver the best customer experience there has to be a transaction from product
focus to experience focus. The focus should not be on products alone but also on
customers and services offered by leveraging customer data and providing
memorable and personal experiences. Customers become partners and the firms
must make long term commitments to maintain those relationships with quality,
service & innovation. The company must identify the right set of potential
customers, know their needs, wants, desires, bias & preferences and address them
through various customer touch points. Also, sometimes things go wrong in the
service business. Customers can be difficult - angry, upset, frustrated for various
reasons. Regardless of whether the anger is justified or not, as customer service
professionals a company can take the opportunity to turn a bad situation into a good
one. What separates the professionals from the amateurs is the ability to manage
difficult customers. The brand must take the ownership and hear out the customer.
This isn’t always easy to do, but in the end the customer is going to feel better.
Listening is the first and most important step in dealing with anger. It calms the
customer down and shows your concern. A company must empathize and feel what
the customer is feeling by putting themselves in their shoes. They must also
apologize especially if they did not personally make the error or create the situation
that’s making the customer angry.  A simple “I’m sorry” can go a long way. The brand
must stand united and take all the heat as a team. Mistakes do happen and company
must be ready to accept them all.  They must have an action plan ready to follow the
apology. They must escalate it, resolve it and communicate back to the customer on
time. A company can be the customer’s advocate. They must take charge,
responsibility and initiative to do whatever they can to solve the customer’s problem
as quickly as possible. Both company and customer must look for common ground
and work towards a solution together by discussing a range of solutions. A company
must cover all the gaps & whitespaces. They must know what the customers expect
and provide the right service design and standards and match performance to
promises. They must have an understanding of customer expectations through
proper research and adequate communication. The remedies to all the gaps come
from the 7 P’s & if a company is successful in closing all the gaps, it would
automatically close the customer gap and promote positive word of mouth, loyalty &
customer retention. Company must make customer to participate in their business
and must make them find value in their offering which happens through word of
mouth. The loyal, satisfied & existing customers become advocates and generate
referrals through positive word of mouth and henceforth increase the revenue for
the company. A company can boost profits by 25 % by retaining 5 % more of their
existing customers and cost to serve the existing customers is 5 times less than the
new one’s because both the customer and supplier understand each other. Also, the
outspending ratio is higher for the loyal, existing customers because they can afford
to pay high prices than the new ones.