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

7. AFTER THE SALE

Of course, the customer experience doesn’t end after you’ve made the sale (see Figure 8.4). Even though the purchase may be complete, the “ownership” experience is just beginning. Remember the purchase funnel from Chapter 3? After the purchase comes loyalty and finally (hopefully), advocacy. To become—and remain—loyal to your product or service, the customer has to continue to have a great experience. Part of that is how your product or service performs, of course. But the other part is what the ongoing experience is like for your customer. I recently read an interesting article that drove this point home for me. It was about how airports are trying to cater to business travelers even more by adding workout facilities within the airport. Think about it: if you are in an airport, either flying to or from it or connecting through, you are already their customer. You’re there. But airports want you to keep coming back. They want you to fly out of their airport in areas where you may have a choice among others. By offering a workout facility at a nominal charge, they are providing a valuable benefit to business travelers who fly frequently and may find it very difficult to maintain their fitness routine on the road. And what better way to spend a 2-hour weather delay than by getting a good workout in? It’s an amenity that some airports are offering after the sale to show a specific customer group (in this case, frequent business travelers) that they understand them ...