When we are in the world of running a business, we spend our time and money providing our services at the best level to make our customers satisfied. On the other hand, getting new customers is an important concern for most businesses and they endeavor to resolve this issue with their marketing strategies. In this article, I looked at the importance of prospect experience in growing businesses.
For most businesses, their focus on customers’ experience is only for the people who start using their business services or products, but the fact is, that the experience starts from the time that people are not your customer yet (i.e. the prospect experience matters).
Last year, I wanted to use a service for my business, so I started searching the Internet to find businesses that provide that service. I found a couple of businesses, looked at their websites and read the reviews about their services (Thank goodness for search engines such as Google; it makes our work much easier. However, for business owners, it can be a double-edged sword).
I finished my research and selected 10 businesses that I thought would be suitable for me and started to contact them to get more information about their services. I called to ask my questions and the results were very interesting, so I would like to share them with you in this article.
– When I made my calls, 6 out of 10 of the businesses had a voicemail, so I left them a message. With 2 out of 10 of the businesses, someone took my details to pass on to someone from their team so they would give me a callback. With another 2 out of 10 businesses, someone answered the phone and talked with me about my request.
– 5 of the 8 businesses that I put the message on returned my call the same day that I called. 1 out of 8 businesses returned my call after 24 hours and 1 out of 8 businesses returned my call after 72 hours and 1 out of 8 businesses never returned my call!
– During my phone call with them 9 businesses (1 out of 10 never returned my call0, I asked 6 questions that I prepared. 4 out of 9 businesses, the person who gave me a call does not have enough knowledge to answer my questions properly. 2 out of 10 businesses, they even did not know the right price for their services and they just repeated “It depends what you expect” we can just let you know the minimum and when you start working with us then we go with the final cost!
– 6 out of 9 businesses, it looked like the person was in a rush and they tried to answer my questions very quickly or just refer me to their websites or at the end, they asked me to send them an email. 2 out of 9 businesses, the person did not have any enthusiasm to answer. However, 1 out of 10 businesses was full of energy. I felt her energy during my conversation. She listened and took notes (as she told me) and check with me to be sure she understood what I am looking for.
– 5 out of 10 businesses let me know that they will send me an email with more information about the questions that I asked. 2 out of 5 businesses, did not send me the email. 2 out of 5 businesses sent me the email after a couple of days (I cannot remember the number, but I am sure it was after 2 days) and 1 out of 5 businesses, they sent me the email the same day (I think it was around 6:30 PM).
– Of the 3 businesses that sent me emails, 1 business followed up and two others did nothing.
Let’s look at the numbers above. What do you think? I was not one of their customers as I had not used their services yet. I was only a potential prospect who was looking for getting more information to make a decision.
The way that they treated me (they created the prospect experience based on their actions) gave me a lot of information about how they work and how they would take care of me when I started using their services.
When I look at all the touchpoints that I had with those businesses, they created my experience with them and more importantly, my feelings about them.
It is crucial for all businesses (especially service-based businesses) to create a great experience for people, even when they are in the stage of being only a LEAD or PROSPECT.
The fact is that regardless of whether people will start using your services or not (for any reason: time, budget, distance, etc.), they will remember the good or bad experience AND feeling that your business created for them for a long time. Quite simply, if they have a bad experience, they will move on and not come back and will also be reluctant to recommend you to others who are looking for the services that you offer.