And the winner of my completely unofficial and slightly biased Awesomeness in Customer Experience Award goes to…

You. If you can pull off a few things. Just a few.

1. Keep it simple. The gold standard of perfection in user design is that the interaction between person and product is seamless – simple – understated – intuitive. This is much harder to make a happen than you would think. Even with my beloved iPhone, I’ve encountered user experience issues that just don’t make sense. But, I still love the thing and have sung its praises for months.

   The trick of course is no trick at all – make sure that the all of the critical and core elements of the user’s end-to-end experience have been built for your target audience, tested, and approved – by your target audience. A 50 year old non-techie Legal Assistant will provide very different feedback than a 22 year old software developer.

2. Give me a reason to come back. I’m not talking about an offer. What I want is something else, something less tangible. I want the warm fuzzies that make me think I want to do business with you again.

   Where does this come from, you ask? Mostly, it’s a combination of 3 things: I can do what I came to do, I can do it quickly enough so that I’m not wondering how long I’ve been “doing”, and I get a thank you at the end for the business. Easy, right?

3. Don’t overcommunicate with me. I’m busy. I don’t have time to read the promotional emails and newsletters you send me every other day. Make sure what you are pushing to me via all channels combined is not more than a few times a week, unless you are responding to my request and unless I have specifically asked for it.
4. Give me an easy way to talk to you if I need to. The worst thing you can do is have no face and no name. It sets a precendence for a relationshipless transaction and interaction. Whether you’re taking the AT&T route of having regional support reps with a “call ME if you need anything” mentality, or if you have in-browser chat functionality – always make it easy and personal. Also, if it takes 25 minutes in a phone queue and you make me jump through hoops in your phone tree, I’m not going to be coming back.

   There are so many new media technologies that you can integrate into your support structure these days that increase overall productivity, allow for a geographically dispersed team, and reduce overall support costs that it’s a shame not to.

That’s all… do those things and I promise you I will be singing your praises.

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