How To Build Personality Into Your Customer Experience

Let me try to illustrate the main point here from the start: you should let more of your personality flow to the customer. And so it happens that the place where it is most rarely done is the first place where it should be done: customer experience.

There are, however, some modifications or rather rectifications that must be done to the concepts involved. Well, pardon me if writing like that makes it sound like rocket science or brain surgery, because it most certainly isn't. All you need to do to really understand the point is a few adjustments in your world view, a simple change in perspective.

What the heck is customer experience?

The first adjustment has to do with what is usually called customer support. I'm changing the wording to customer experience, because I don't want to be restricted by the usual idea of “support”. Some people still call it customer relationship, and thus we have many customer relationship management (CRM) solutions out there, but I also wish to stay away from that idea.

Customer support sort of implies you're talking to customer in the frame of communication where something went wrong, and it ought to be fixed. That frame is too restrictive. Customer relationship implies you're trying to remember the guy's name so that you can trick him into buying more, suck more money out of him, and that's also not what I'm going for. I choose to call it “customer experience”, because business nowadays is all about giving the client an amazing time.

Customer experience is what you provide to the people putting down the money. Not all people out there, mind you, but only those who allow you to keep running your business, big or small.

For a small cafe, customer experience starts with that great coffee scent that you feel when crossing the street, continues with the nice smile across the counter, but it can go all the way to the decoration and atmosphere of the place. For big e-commerce websites like Amazon, it starts with website design, continues with great pricing, but it goes all the way to how they package and deliver the products.

In short, customer service is everything that influences the buyer experience but that can't quite be called “product”. We're on the subjective side of business here. Customer experience is the subjectivity of business: the elusive side.

Ok, so now let's dive into the elusive side of business: branding. This is where the big bucks are.

Whenever I say branding, you may think of it as personality. Not that they're one and the same, but brands greatly benefit from assuming a specific personality that relates to their clients. By adopting personality traits, brands can talks to straight to the heart of the client, and seamlessly create an unspoken connection.

I'll give you an example: Nike. Even if you never bought anything directly from Nike, you know they're all about young athletes. They're all about high tech gear for however wants to practice the coolest sports. And even if you're not young, wearing something from Nike instantly qualifies you as someone who is young in mind and spirit.

Also, keep in mind that Nike probably manufactures their gear in the same factories where knockoffs will later be manufactured. The product is virtually the same, but people buy the Nike version because of the brand. In other words, they choose the original over the knockoff because there's personality embedded in those products. The markup in branded products is huge, because what these products represent is also the subjectivity built around the brand. They're paying ten times as much because of the subjectivity embedded in the product.

Note, however, that not all parts of your personality-brand are born equal.

For the amazing book-turned-movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the author Douglas Adams created a character that carved out some parts of his personality in order to become the President of the Galaxy. No joke. The guy literally cut out parts of his brain and put them in another head. The good parts stayed in the main head, whereas the “non-presidential” parts were relegated to the secondary head.

This is a metaphor for how to do branding. You want to keep the ugly parts out, and put the spotlight on the pretty parts.

Albeit simple, this can be a little tricky to do, especially if you had to base your decisions solely on guesses and on your own perception of business. That's why you want to look at your clients, and let them tell you what to put in each box. No need to do surveys or even ask anything. That is not necessary to figure out what your best bet in branding is.

The input you need is already within your reach, and waiting to be harnessed: your clients. Your client base is like a mirror you can look at to figure out what are the top-selling subjective parts of your personality. Think about it for a second: we all buy from people we like. We will pay extra dollars to have the pleasure of doing business with men and women whose company we enjoy.

If you're a small business, you know it's not easy to compete with the big sharks. Nonetheless, the one place where big businesses are at a loss is when the subjective side is perceived as important by the client. Walmart has to rely on lower prices because it can't be picky with his clients. A small shop, on the other hand, is already infused to a large extent with the personality of the owner or manager. People in town know the owner, and might even call the shop “Joe's shop”. They're not looking at the price and product, but they're buying Joe's image. If Joe's customer experience is good enough, he may charge extra and still grow his customer base.

Instead of trying to be Starbucks, the small cafe should be making itself even more exclusive, more remarkable.

There's a lot to be digested in the previous paragraphs, but I'll assume you're sold on the idea of straying from the flock. If you are, the rest is almost effortless.

When you're in possession of a particular mix of personality-brand, it's time to commit to it. Your blend should stand out from the rest, but it should also be something that creates a following, that stands for something, and that converts a few clients into believers and brand ambassadors.

Back to the literary analogy, creating a brand is like creating a character. A character that is similar to the reader will be relatable, and will give the reader a voice inside a novel. Characters that are different from the readers are more interesting and mysterious, although they're not as important to the reader, because there is a larger gap between them. One example of this are aliens and nazis: they make the best villains, because we can't really care that much about them.

The particular blend of personality that goes into your brand needs to balance these two elements. If Nike's personality was too exclusive to the point only Olympic athletes felt comfortable using, all other customers would be alienated. Conversely, if Nike was about people who got out jogging once a month, there wouldn't be much appeal in it. Another awesome example are cafés that go for a fancy hipster style. They become more relevant to a select crowd by pushing a bit on the personality. Make sure you get this blend right, but don't take too long before putting it out there. You can always course-correct as you go, and being perfect is greatly overrated.

Think about it in terms of small changes over time. Talk to your employees about these “changes”. Appreciate how they relate to it, and give them permission to become evermore remarkable. Rewrite the copy in your website, sales pages, brochures and menus. Infuse everything in your business with the best of your personality-brand. Don't try to be deliberately polarizing, but if you are, roll with it.

Sometimes, the best way to impress the client is to allow your brand some self-expression.