Sheldon Anthony IO

Sometimes, digital experiences are created with a focus on what businesses want customers to know or do, instead of what customers actually want to achieve. This can result in confusing experiences that make customers disconnect from the business or abandon the digital experience altogether. When digital experiences try to cater to everyone, it can cause frustration, distraction, and confusion. By designing digital experiences based on customer needs, creative teams can better defend against challenges that may distract from the main focus.

Gathering data, information, and insights is not enough

Even though we build digital experiences that automatically gather information and generate insights, it is not enough to truly understand what the customer wants. Although it can spark meaningful innovation and inspire doing things differently, the customer's wants are not understood by it. If we can learn to think this way, our customers will drive the digital experiences we build, and our businesses will remain relevant for years to come.

Create meaningful connections

It can be difficult for a business to establish meaningful connections with its customers at first since it requires them to be emotionally vulnerable. A commitment to vulnerability, consistency, and ultimately a willingness to go the extra mile without compensation is often required for the actions involved. The moment you begin realizing that every customer deserves a meaningful connection, a whole new world of interactions will open up for you. Technology can in some ways help us communicate more effectively with our customers, but it can also hinder our ability to connect meaningfully with them. This understanding is important for a business leader.

Go beyond listening and start a dialogue

Success for leaders depends on listening skills. Businesses can gain a competitive advantage by listening. By engaging in dialogue, businesses and customers can build a shared connection. As opposed to winning or losing, it aims to listen more deeply, understand more fully, and develop a collective perspective. When we get away from our assumptions and explore each other's viewpoints, we make connections and take each other seriously by paying attention to what we are saying.

Understand their experience expectations

Realizing that different customers have different experience expectations with a company can help your business deliver functions more easily. Analyzing what kind of experiences are most important to different groups of customers, can help focus the business's resources to improve or add those aspects of service. Understanding your customer's pain points and your product's role in solving them will help you deliver key business functions faster and with less hassle to the customer. Knowledge of the customer context and expectations allow organizations to build simpler, more resilient solutions that can keep up with customer demands and needs.

When it comes to understanding what your customers want, it is important to take a step back and consider the bigger picture. Understanding what your customers want is essential to providing them with an excellent experience. If a customer is the driver of a digital experience it will most certainly always stay relevant. Finally, by understanding what your customer wants and being able to deliver the experience, you can create a loyal customer base and create moments of magic in the lives of customers.