Accountants routinely look at 12-month swaths to measure the financial pulse of a business. The most recent month’s report isn’t the only important one.

Today, we need to apply that same principle to assessing customer experience.

Before the pandemic, we mostly paid attention to the final report — the client’s satisfaction with the event. But events have changed. And our interactions with clients have changed.

Today, pulling off a stellar event isn’t good enough anymore. Today, we have to pull off stellar customer interactions all the way through the process.

Redefine Customer Experience

Pre-pandemic customer engagement took place about 20% before the show and 80% at the show site. Post-pandemic flipped the script. Today it’s more like 80% pre-show and 20% at the event.

What does this mean?

This means you have to put a lot more energy into the customer’s pre-sale experience and sustain that energy all the way through to the final delivery.

Customer experience is how the client feels about you during every interaction at every step along the way, starting from the very beginning.

Before the pandemic, our measurement of the customer experience really focused on how the project concluded — the event itself. If at the end of the event, the client said “good show” and shook your hand, you were pretty happy. But now that only measures 20% of the experience.

(In reality, I don’t consider “good show” to be great feedback. It’s just a polite way of responding when there’s nothing better to say. But that’s a topic for another time.)

Today, looking only at the final result isn’t enough to gauge 100% of the customer’s experience with your business.

If the customer’s pre-event experience was like walking over broken glass, they may have a good event, but all they’ll remember is how much their feet hurt.

Why Has Customer Experience Changed?

Pre-pandemic, the reason for the emphasis on the post-sale stage was that the nature of events was different. There was a more predictable process with more predictable deliverables.

When a prospective client who needed to set up an event contacted you, both parties had a pretty stable understanding of what an event looked like.

The client wanted to know if you could deliver what was needed for a successful outcome. You took down the details and drew up the proposal. The client came back to you with one of two answers: “Yes” or “No.”

If the answer was “Yes,” you did what needed to be done to set up and deliver a winning show. You measured customer happiness by how satisfied they were with the final product.

In the pre-pandemic scenario, you didn’t have to put too many resources toward customer experience until after the proposal was signed.

But that doesn’t work anymore.

In the post-pandemic world, the nature of what we’re doing has changed. The prevalence of hybrid and virtual events means much of our work is now front-loaded.

Before, you showed up on event day with gear and personnel and went to work. Now you have preproduction, video recording, registration setup, and all kinds of elements you didn’t have previously. And they all take place before the event.

On top of that, clients might contact you knowing they need an event, but not knowing what putting on an event entails anymore. Part of your job becomes helping the client understand what they need so they can get what they want from you. This happens in the pre-sale stage.

You have a multitude of touchpoints with your customer from before a sale even occurs all the way through to the day of the event.

Because of this, I’m redefining customer experience as beginning before a prospect becomes your customer. Before they even engage with you, when they’re just browsing your website, the customer experience begins.

Today, and for the foreseeable future, you have to take care of the totality of the customer’s experience at every touchpoint along the way.

Tips To Improve Customer Experience

Customer experience is cumulative. Every touchpoint contributes to the customer’s overall feeling about their experience with you.

So if a customer’s early experience with your business is poor, that will color their opinion of working with you regardless of how their event turns out.

With this in mind, you can begin improving the customer’s experience before they even have a conversation with you.

Examine Early Touchpoints

To start improving customer experience from the get-go, take a close look at the things you don’t directly interact with, but the customer does.

For example, what is the first touchpoint a prospective customer has with your business? Many times it’s your website. If your website is frustrating to use, you may lose a client before the conversation even begins.

Interact with your website with fresh eyes. What impression does it give? Is the navigation intuitive? What is the path for a customer to engage with you? How much friction is there?

You can do this yourself or have someone else test out the site and give feedback. This will help you discover any points of dissatisfaction early on in the customer’s interaction with you.

Understand Their Needs

If the prospective client has a pleasant experience with your website and thinks you can get the job done, they’ll contact you. This is your first opportunity for a direct conversation.

Take the time to build a relationship with the customer so you fully understand their needs.

One big mistake businesses make at this stage is rushing to the proposal. There are too many variables today to write a proposal for someone you don’t have a relationship with yet. Then you’re trying to fit a client into a premade solution before you know what they really need.

This does not create a good customer experience.

So consider, how much time are you spending with prospective clients to understand their needs? Are you listening? Are you understanding? Are you meeting their expectations?

Let’s say the conversation starts with an email inquiry. You answer the client’s questions, and then you ask some questions of your own.

You find out their needs, their expectations, and their goals. You discover they haven’t considered some elements of their event yet. You ask more questions.

The conversation keeps going.

In this model, the proposal is the end of the conversation. If you rush to the proposal, you’re stepping out of the conversation before you really know who you’re talking to.

Optimize Stages of Engagement

One of the exercises I do with sales teams is to ask who their best client is and how they came work together. When you identify your ideal client and their path to you, you can optimize the stages of engagement along that path for future customers.

Maybe your best client found your website, reached out via email, had a conversation on the phone, then brought their team to meet your team at the office. They were thoroughly impressed, and you started talking about all sorts of things that weren’t on the table before. You became great partners and have been doing business together ever since.

The key here was that every conversation set up the next conversation. And most of these conversations took place before any talk of proposals or sales negotiations.

So what are you doing to set up the next conversation?

Every stage of engagement, every touchpoint, is a conversation.

When you optimize your website, your email, your phone calls, etc., you make sure each conversation is a positive experience that leads to the next conversation. You develop a relationship with the client.

Then, after all this, you write a proposal which defines the business side of your relationship.

Increase the Number of Touchpoints

There are so many things you can do before you ever write a proposal.

You have your discovery calls, learning the client’s streaming platform, digging into event details, and more. Every one of these is an important touchpoint.

But don’t forget about the Bow Tie Effect.

The Bow Tie Effect means you only have one point of contact between your business and the client. This creates a small, fragile connection.

A better strategy is to flip the bow tie around to create a diamond with multiple touchpoints between the client’s people and your people.

Before you write a proposal defining what it is you’re going to do for the customer, ask yourself these questions:

• How can I introduce their team to more of my team?
• How can I introduce them to more of our capabilities?

If you can find answers to these questions, you can greatly strengthen your relationship with the customer.

Don’t Forget About the Event

The event may only make up 20% of customer engagement today, but it’s an important 20%.

Despite all the tips above, I’m not telling you to ignore the post-sale experience.

The post-sale experience is crucial.

Every interaction matters, but the last interaction — the show itself — carries more weight than all the others. Clients will remember a technical glitch during the show longer than they’ll remember a glitch on your website.

Think of the final interaction as a gourmet meal that has taken you days, even weeks, to prepare for an important dinner party.

If the steak is over-cooked, all the good times that came before it — the wine, the song, the laughter — will be overshadowed by the lingering taste of burnt meat.

You’re only as good as your last customer interaction.

Don’t let a poor final product spoil all the positive experiences and productive conversations you worked hard to create. Cook that steak to perfection.

You’ll leave your client with a positive and lasting impression of satisfaction.