Turning Customers into A Community Around Your Brand Starts with Welcome

Turning Customers into A Community Around Your Brand Starts with Welcome

Considering the customer experience before, during, and after the sale allows your business to get more value from its existing customer base and creates a welcoming environment for new customers. The customer experience starts with understanding the needs and motivations that drive the customer's purchasing decisions.

Welcoming starts the process. Welcoming is seen in the visual appeal of your storefront or website. This is the first impression that a customer has about your business. I have heard that a person can come to major opinions about you within 6 seconds of seeing you. This is the same time a person surfing the internet decides to look at a website.

It is important to provide an experience that customers will remember and recommend to others. You are more likely to get customers to return to a store with a clean, welcoming building, good night lighting, and friendly, knowledgeable greeters. A website with clear navigation options makes it easier for customers to find and purchase products and services.

Customers today demand convenience. Long check-out lines, poorly laid out stores, not accepting credit cards, hard-to-read signage, and out-of-stock products are all signs of asking customers to shop at another store. I have heard up to 59% of customers will not return after a bad experience.

Poor ecstatic design. Slow response, poor navigation, and user experience are reasons websites perform poorly. 42% of people will only buy from a well-designed website. Customers only engage with a company that provides them with basic conveniences. I didn't mention social media, but you must have a good customer experience at all your customers' touch points. This should occur if you get the sale or not.
Critical information can be learned from a customer that had an unsatisfactory experience or did not buy.

To do this, you must listen. Customer surveys and data gathering are your listening tools. Customer data comes from many different sources and in many other formats. A CRM system must be able to manage these variables, or your data will not give you the feedback required for an exceptional customer experience. Data should not be a mystery in your marketing plans. Use these customer insights to continuously strategize and plan products, services, and activities.

This is where the plan changes from what you have heard in the past. To maximize your bang for your marketing buck, develop sustainable programs that delight the top 20% of your customers. You want to turn them into superfans. These are the folks who will grow a community around your brand. This group will not only tell their friends about your business, but they will also buy more of your products and services because of the experience.


As you identify and set up policies and procedures around superfans, a strange thing will happen. All your customers will benefit, and non-superfan customers will want to be a part of the elite superfan community.