I understand what your days looks like, what level of responsibility that you carry through your days and what your pain points really look like. I know that you are simply looking for honest and effective partners to help you keep your employees happy, make your business easier to run and to grow your brand to increase revenue. I don’t make it complicated and try to dazzle you with fancy presentations. I do give you very honest, very attainable and very simple design plans to move your business in the right direction.

Just like you, I have a target customer. The kind of customer that I will work best with is the kind that will do their research. They will understand that nothing that you can do for your business will contribute more directly to profits than an exceptional customer experience. I will not have to ‘sell them’ on this concept. They will have a solid understanding of the importance of a memorable customer experience, even if they need a partner to help them to get the ball rolling. If that’s you, than you have found a truly valuable partner in me. We should connect and make something incredible happen for your business.

Like the relationships and customer experiences that I will design for you, I want you to feel like you had an excellent customer experience with me, before we even meet. I want to make sure that I answered all of your question and maybe even questions that you didn’t know that you had. I want to put my pricing right here for you to see and then make it simple for you to bring me onto your team and get started right away. That’s what an excellent customer experience is. It’s an experience where you don’t just get what you came for, but you get more, before I ever ask you to invest anything in me.

Companies spend a lot of money on R+D (research and development), and you should look at designing your Customer Experience (including your website and social media channels) the same way. Where research and development create products that customers may want to buy, an excellent Customer Experience Design makes the customer want to learn more, buy more, and be a part of, not just your products, but your brand.

You can build the most amazing product in the world, but if customers have difficulty navigating your store or website, can not understand how to intuitively use your product, don’t connect with your brand, or they feel that your customer service representatives are indifferent to their needs, you are going to sell a lot less product. That’s not speculation. It’s a fact.

This is where I come in. Sometime I feel that it is easier to simply provide you with a case study to show you the benefit of my services, rather than to sit here and give you some long boardroom pitch about why you should choose me. I try to speak to people from a very real and authentic place. I save all of the fancy MBA talk for board meetings and venture capitalists, because it really has no place here.

Customer experience is about connecting to a very basic principal-how do you improve the human experience for your customers? How do you add value to their life? How do you make them feel special? Most importantly, how do you keep their business by earning it each and every time that they interact with you? It is a highly researched and very science based field that I work in.

There are specifics steps that are involved in designing every customer experience: understanding your company’s current perception in the marketplace, understanding what your business is trying to accomplish in the marketplace, developing a customer experience strategy, designing specific customer experiences, implementing the strategy, and finally, watching, listening, monitoring and improving the strategy over time.

This is not ‘pie in the sky’ work. It’s very technical in some ways and very intuitive in others. My point is, a good Customer Experience Designer has to bring both their own unique vantage point to the design and then marry it with the well defined steps of our field to bring that incredible customer experience to life.

I have found that starting with the actual current perception of your company from your customer’s perspective is vastly more effective than asking the business leaders what it is. The reason for this is simple. We all want our business to be perceived a certain way, and we may even think that is happening. The litmus test is if the actual customer perception lines up with your intended brand promise.

This is why my company is named ‘Your Customer’s Shoes’. I research, build, and test how your company is perceived online and in person through the eyes of your customers. You know, the people who are buying or using your products or services. I am not trying to be flip when I say that, I am trying to make sure that you and I never lose sight of who your business is supposed to be serving, the customer.

Whenever I agree to work with a company, I keep it simple right from the beginning. I ask only one question to get started, “What is the name of your company?” I don’t ask where you are, whether you are a brick and mortar (physical store) or click and mortar (website). I don’t ask what you do or who your customers are. I don’t ask what your brand promise is or how your customers feel about you? I don’t ask what you sell or what service you provide? I don’t even ask where I can find you on the web.

Why do I only ask that one question? It’s very simple. That is the only thing that I should need to do the first part of my job. If I am not able to figure out where to find you, what you do, how to connect with your social media channels, etc., then we need to start right there. This is because all of my work is customer-focused, meaning that I design from your customer’s perspective. We live in an age of instant gratification and information. If a customer hears your business name and can not figure those things out in about three minutes, that’s the very first place where we can improve your customer experience.

If your business doesn’t have a website, Facebook page, Youtube channel, Twitter, or Instagram, your customers are going to have a much more difficult time connecting to your product or service. It is all about making the customer experience simple, usable and enjoyable. They shouldn’t have to struggle to find you, connect with you or to understand your pricing and hours of operation.

After I conduct my initial ‘State of the Search’ where I really understand your business from your customer’s perspective, I will ask you questions like; what service do you think that you provide to your customers, what is important to your business, what is your brand promise, etc. I will then design a customer experience that aligns your current operations and assets with your brand promise (what you want your customers to expect and feel about your brand).

I work very autonomously and I do not require a lot of your time. I understand that businesses are going full throttle all of the time and they simply do not have time for long meetings and complicated structural implementation. I keep it very simple. I go through your business, both digitally (online) and physically (in person), and then I quickly create a plan with clearly defined steps to implement your Customer Experience Design.

I don’t tell you about your problems. I design solutions. Then I teach you how to implement them within your business. I help you to set up a team of people inside of your business that will have the authority and responsibility for phasing these improvements in. Without accountability inside of your business, all of my designs will only exist on a piece of paper. People are naturally resistant to change, so I understand that you can not just make a sweeping move to overhaul your business overnight.

This is about the systematic improvement of your customer experience, which should happen in such a fluid way that your customers and employees don’t really notice it happening. They should simply wake up one day and find that they enjoy doing business with you more or that they are happier as an employee. It should not be a painful process for anyone. It’s a subtle shift towards excellence. It should be enjoyable. I will give you a map, but you will be driving the car to get there. Don’t worry, I will be here anytime that you need to stop the car and ask for directions.

As someone who has started several businesses from nothing, aka Bootstrapping, I understand the financial constraints placed on any business. I always attempt to design customer experiences where you will be able to add value to the customer relationship without breaking the bank. You would be very surprised how much a seemingly small action will do magical things for your business, so let’s take a look at just such a customer experience case below.

Just like I will teach you to find and add value to your target customer’s lives, I hope that you feel that I have done that for you. If you are the kind of customer that feels that I would add value to your business, please choose your design services here or read the case study listed below to learn more. Thank you for spending some time with me.