Are you looking for ways to retain the clients you’ve attained for your flagship offer? Or perhaps your offer is just a one-time purchase, but you want to make sure that once people buy from you they begin their customer journey through the other products/services in your suit? Maybe your goal is to stand out from the crowd by offering a level of service your ideal clients just can’t get anywhere else?

If one, some or all of these ring true for you, customer experience is your new best friend, and in this blog post I’m going to share 4 areas in which you can uplevel it for your flagship offer. 

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to be using the terms customer/client experience interchangeably, as the difference really does depend on the type of business you operate. What I can say for sure, is that the teaching points I’m sharing here are relevant to you no matter what you’re selling, or who you’re selling it to!

Nowadays, thanks to the internet and social media, customers have come to expect more out of companies…

Millions of businesses and brands are available to interact with at the click of a button, and with so much competition, not only do customers expect timely responses and relatable content, they also want to feel like they are your #1 priority.

Whether they choose to buy from you (and whether they choose to stick with you) all comes down to client experience. It’s super simple: if they have a positive experience, they’re much more likely to want to have a similar experience again. A positive customer experience can also lead to more clients too. Remember, people talk. That is: your clients talk to each other, and if they are not only satisfied, but WOWED, by your customer experience, they are highly likely to recommend you to their peers. 

In the age of the entrepreneur, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out in a sea of businesses, but upleveling your customer experience is a surefire way to see a rise in your recommendations and define what it is your brand stands for. 

Now before we dive deeper, let me explain the difference to you between customer experience and customer service, because oftentimes these two terms get confused. 

(Newsflash: they are NOT the same thing.) Here’s why…

Customer service is defined as: 

“The assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.”

In its traditional sense, customer service is something you only do once a problem has occurred/something’s gone wrong. The most obvious example that comes to mind for me is if you haven’t received an order, or have received an order but there is something wrong with it, you would need to speak to a representative at a company to have your issue resolved, whether it was via email, a live chat, or a call to a call center. In that way, customer service is reactive. It is the process you have in place for when the customer experience has broken down.

In this sense, customer service is a part of customer experience, because it’s one step in the customer journey, but customer experience is that journey as a whole. Plus, if your customer experience is polished to perfection, technically you shouldn’t ever have to fall back on customer service to repair it.

Customer experience (CX) is everything related to a business that might affect a customer’s perception—or thoughts and feelings—about it.

Annette Franz, Founder and CEO of CX Journey defines it as:

“The sum of all the interactions that a customer has with an organization over the life of the relationship with that company or with that brand.”

Customer experience is therefore proactive. It’s strategized and implemented ahead of the launch of a brand (and every product or service thereafter) to ensure that the customer is happy (and feels held!) throughout the whole of the process of the purchase… pre-purchase, during the purchase and post-purchase. For that reason, customer experience should be considered in everything you do. It’s not just about customer-facing things, it’s also crucial to the back end of your business too. 

Now, before I dive into my tips on how you can improve and implement a new customer experience strategy, let me break down exactly why this needs to be a priority.

Good customer experience:

• Helps you hold onto clients for longer
• Boosts brand loyalty
• Impacts your reputation
• Gives you a competitive edge

Sounds like something you need to get going with if you haven’t nailed it already, right?

Ok, let’s jump into some of the ways you can uplevel your client experience for your flagship offer:

1. Set the foundations

As I’ve said, customer experience is something that filters through into everything you do. It’s no longer just about the person answering the phone in a call center and reading from a script. The values that define your client experience strategy need to be instilled into each and every facet of your business. Of course, this starts with company culture. I’d recommend revisiting your vision, mission, and values to ensure that they put the customer at the heart of everything you do. (If not, they could be preventing you from serving your clients to the best of your ability!) In my opinion, a good vision statement, mission statement, and values should be specific (feel free to use numbers!), well-rounded (avoid overlap and repetitive language to ensure you are covering all bases), and customer-focused. They should highlight exactly the service you want to provide for your clients and describe the way in which you want to deliver it. 

Then, once you have defined each of these areas, it’s essential that this information is cascaded down to every single person that works inside of your business, from employees to contractors—yep, your technical assistant needs to know your brand vision and values just as much as your customer happiness manager! Why? Because once you’ve set the foundation of how you want to serve your ideal clients, and made customer experience a priority, it WILL start to show. When you come to a crossroads when creating your flagship offer and have decisions to make about the direction you should go in, your values will drive the way forward. And—when you create, promote and deliver it, your clients will feel completely valued.

2. Delight through your delivery

Simply showing your clients they are valued is, on its own, not enough. You have to remind them continuously that they have been considered each and every step of the way, and so my second point is all to do with delivery. No matter what your flagship offer is if it’s a retainer-based service, a course, or a membership—the way in which you deliver every component part matters. 

The key is to make sure that every process your customer goes through is smooth and seamless so that they feel truly supported at every stage. This will also help to position you as a leader who’s got everything together, so they’ll feel that they can trust you to help them, too! Plus, if it requires minimal effort from them, they’re much more likely to move through the process efficiently, which means less hassle for you in the day-to-day running of it. Win-win!

A great example I want to give here is that of an onboarding process, as this is the perfect place to show your clients how much they mean to you. Say you have a membership. Once someone signs up, you don’t want to allow them to log into their portal and be greeted by tumbleweeds, you want to give them a warm welcome! You could do this by having a series of automated emails that goes out over the duration of their first week to make sure they are making the most of their membership, reminding them of all the incredible benefits and features they have access to. You could script and record a welcome video to tell them how happy you are to have them inside the community and show them around the membership area. You might even consider sending them a welcome gift, such as some flowers or a planner to use as they move through the months with you. This is ALL part of your customer experience strategy. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that this ends once you’ve welcomed them. To reinforce what I said above, your client experience is ongoing—all of the time. You’re going to want to be consistently and continuously engaging them as this will allow you to keep your members for longer, after all!

3. Use copy to connect

Of course, the way in which you speak to your ideal clients and customers is all part of their experience of working with you. Speaking to branding more broadly, it’s important to work on your tone of voice to ensure that you’re speaking their language and that what you’re sharing is accessible, but also distinctive and recognizable. And when selling your flagship offer, it’s no different… you’re going to want to make sure that they feel seen, heard, and understood every step of the way. As I’ve said, pre-purchase is just as important as during or after, so your sales page should really be focused on making sure that the people that read it feel a connection to the copy. Make sure you’re speaking about problems and solutions. That requires you to dive deep into the pain that your ideal clients are experiencing, before going on to demonstrate exactly how you can relieve them of it with your flagship offer and the vehicle it uses. When they are able to feel truly understood by you, they will be much more likely to buy into you and feel empowered in their purchase, too.

While we’re on copy, a stand-out section on your sales page that can make all the difference to your client experience is your FAQs. It can be incredibly easy to discount these and see them as unnecessary. (In fact, many people see them as a ‘nice to have’ when they are in fact a NEED to have.) You may even be tempted to copy and paste from a template or try and mimic what someone else has done in their Frequently Asked Questions section, but let me be transparent and tell you that this is a BIG mistake. Your FAQs section is a really great place to overcome objections and prep and prime for the purchase, and so the information you provide here needs to be really specific to you and your offer. Not only is this section another space for you to sell (and therefore you should be investing time and energy into it), it’s also an amazing opportunity for you to connect with your ideal client and help them feel held and supported by you… so I’d definitely advise spending some time to put yourself in their shoes and really think about what questions they might need answering before they sign up. 

4. Ramp Up the Wow Factor

Finally, I’d recommend thinking about all of the things that make your company stand out from the crowd and really ramping that up in terms of your client experience. For my Emily Williams and I Heart My Life brands, it’s our obsession with the finer things in life. We serve women who want to build incredible businesses so that they can live the lifestyle they’ve always dreamed of. That’s why we’ve always hosted events in 5-star locations, because it elevates the way in which clients get to experience working with us. Anyone can host an event at the Hilton, but we choose the most breathtaking locations as we want to show our guests what’s possible for them when they work towards their money goals.

As well as this, we send our Mastermind members gift boxes when they join to show how much we appreciate them (because we really truly do) and I frequently send my private clients flowers, and handwritten cards—all of that! Think about what makes you and your business different. Is it your generosity of spirit? Your due diligence with checking on them and holding them accountable? This is a great opportunity for you to sprinkle in what you love and who you are as a business owner into your business. If you are (or were) your ideal client, which is often the case, this will attract them too!

I really hope these 4 tips help you elevate the client experience of your flagship offer. Remember, your clients are your reason for being, and there would be no business without them. So it’s really in your best interests to make sure they have a positive experience from start to finish!

Have you got any tips for upleveling their experience that have worked wonders for you? I’d love to hear them!

Love,