You don’t last very long in business if you don’t take pay attention to what is important to your customers. While you can have a great mission or slogan, that culture must permeate throughout the organization. This is especially true when dealing with your customers. So what is important to users of your product or service? Since we all like lists, I decided to create the Three C’s to Customer Success.

Convenience

This one should go without saying. If you can’t make the lives of your customers easier or more convenient, then you probably should change tracks. I’ve never heard anyone profess their love for a product or service that makes accomplishing the same task take twice as long! This can be anything from a drive-thru (who hasn’t loved this convenience when shuttling a group of kids around?), to self-service kiosks, to the ability to share content on the go from a mobile phone. But just because you make things more convenient, doesn’t mean you can take advantage of that convenience.

Confidence

While some people may call this TRUST, ultimately the question of whether a customer has confidence in all aspects of your company will have sway. There are many examples of brands that lose the confidence of their customers, some managing to survive, but many of them not. Whether it is a result of a data breach, poor customer service, financial fraud or scandal/cover-up, when people lose faith they will begin to look elsewhere. As a small business, you have less wiggle room and resources to recover than the big guys, so ensuring you keep a customer’s trust is important.

Care and Compassion

All businesses will say they care about their customers, but do they act in that way? Do their actions reflect that they actually want to treat people right and honestly? I used to fly alot. After crossing over 250K miles on a major airline, I was sitting in economy class as usual, just wanting to get home. As I was deplaning, the Chief Purser asked my name and handed me a note while wishing me a pleasant day. Unsure what that was all about, the note was handwritten personal message thanking me for flying with the airline so much. An pleasant unexpected event and something that sticks in my mind a decade later.

Contrast that with a recent experience of mine on the flipside. I’ve rented hundreds of cars over the years, but recently came back with paint scratches from a parking garage. The agency wanted me to pay for the repair estimate and loss of use while it was in the shop. That would be acceptable, except they wouldn’t provide me a copy of the final repair invoice. Hmmm … why not? Was the final bill cheaper than the estimate? Did they not get it repaired but still want to collect loss of use fees? After weeks of requesting a copy of the final invoice before paying, they decided to escalate things. Finding similar reports from others online, will I ever trust, recommend or do business with that company again? They pissed me off … so definitely not!

So what is important to users?

Probably the same as what is important to you when you are the customer. That is to be treated fairly, honestly and in a manner that provides you confidence that the company respects you. If your organization is focused on the money and not the user, you will eventually pay the price.