Episode Summary
In this solo episode of Creating Superfans, Brittany challenges you to see the world through a different lens.
A confusing website? Yep, that’s experience.
A parking lot that’s too dark? That’s experience.
A dressing room with only one hook? Believe it or not… yep, that’s experience.
Customer experience isn’t just what happens when someone talks to customer service. It’s every interaction that shapes how people feel about doing business with you—before, during, and long after the sale.
Through dozens of rapid-fire examples (some obvious, some surprising, and some you’ve probably never thought about), Brittany reveals how tiny moments of friction quietly influence trust, loyalty, and referrals. You’ll walk away looking at your business with fresh eyes—and spotting opportunities to create superfans that may have been hiding in plain sight all along.
You’ll learn:
- Why customer experience belongs to every department—not just customer service
- How tiny moments of friction can quietly cost you customers
- Simple ways to improve your experience before, during, and after the sale
- Why “neutral” interactions are often your greatest opportunity
- How obsessing over the little things leads to unforgettable customer experiences
The next time you notice a broken link, a confusing sign, or an employee who goes above and beyond, you’ll probably find yourself saying…
Yep, that’s experience!
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Transcription
[00:00:00] How many times has something seemingly small had a big impact on the way you felt about a business? Maybe their hours were wrong on their Google My Business profile. Maybe they said something was in stock, but it wasn’t in stock.
Maybe the temperature was wrong, or something else just felt off about the experience. None of those things are about the product. Many of them aren’t even about the service, and yet they all shape the perceptions we have and the way we feel about brands. And that’s because experience isn’t one thing, it’s everything Welcome to the Creating Superfans podcast.
I’m your host, Brittany Hodak, and today I wanna talk about one of the biggest misconceptions that I find in businesses, the idea that customer experience belongs to or is owned by a single department. Spoiler alert, it isn’t, and it doesn’t. Customer experience isn’t just customer service. It’s not a help desk or a [00:01:00] loyalty program or a survey.
It is every single interaction, every touch point, every moment that shapes how someone feels about doing business with you before, during, and after they become a customer. In fact, I believe one of the most important truths in business is something I say all the time. Experience is everything, and everything is experience.
That’s why today’s episode is gonna be a little bit different. In fact, I’m thinking about calling it, Yep, That’s Experience. We’ll see. Uh, but that’s the idea that I’ve had in my head because what I’m gonna do is share dozens and dozens of rapid-fire examples of things that really impact your customer experience that you may not be thinking of.
Some of these are pretty obvious, some of them are surprising, and some of them seem so small that many organizations never think about them at all. But here’s the thing, customers rarely leave you because of one catastrophic major failure. More often, [00:02:00] they leave because of friction, tiny annoyances, small disappointments, little moments that communicate, “We don’t really think that much about you.
We’re doing this as an assembly line.” Sometimes I compare these to, like, a splinter or, um, a blister. I had a crazy blister on my foot about two weeks ago. Um, TLDR, I had to run out and buy a new pair of shoes for something, and I probably should have worn socks with them. I didn’t. I got this blister. It was so small, and yet it was so painful and annoying, and I happened to be traveling to Hawaii, and so dealing with, like, the Neosporin and the Band-Aids and the sand and the snorkeling and, like, all of the things, I spent an outsized amount of attention thinking about that blister.
Blisters are caused by friction, just like the friction in business. And if you’ve ever had a blister or a splinter, you know that even though it’s objectively small, once it’s there, you can’t stop thinking about it, and customer experience works the same way. [00:03:00] Once those customers see the confusing sign or the broken link, or they see that unexpected fee or that automatic tip that they weren’t thinking was going to be there, the long hold time, the email that never came, the check-in they were expecting that they didn’t get- Individually, these things may seem minor, insignificant, but together they determine whether someone becomes a customer, stays a customer, or most importantly, tells their friends about you.
So whether you’re a CEO, a frontline employee, a business owner, a marketer, or just someone who wants to look at the world a little bit differently, I hope this episode helps you realize how many opportunities you have to create an amazing customer experience. The reality is many of the experiences all of our customers have are neutral touch points.
Check the box, move on. Complete the task, move on. And by examining these neutral or even negative moments, you can creatively and intentionally elevate them into positive [00:04:00] experiences that people don’t just remember, they refer. Fans come back, but superfans tell their friends. They create more customers.
And if right now you’re nodding along and saying, “Yeah, like that’s, that’s experience. Those are the things that matter,” then mission accomplished. That’s your task. Let’s get into it Now, in thinking about the way to organize this episode, there are so many things that I wanna talk about, um, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna jump around a little bit.
But let’s start with before someone has decided to become your customer at all, before they arrive. Now, if you are doing business predominantly online, you can think of this before they’ve hit your website, before they’ve hit your social channels. If you’re doing business in real life or an omni-channel business, then this can, like, physically be before they, um, arrive on your site.
Here are some of the things that I want you to think about. And because it may have been a while since you’ve thought about these things or looked at these things [00:05:00] through the eyes of a prospective customer, I challenge you to look at all of them right now. If you have listings online, so maybe it’s a Google Maps listing, maybe it’s other online business listings, are they accurate?
Are the things like your hours up to date? If not, fix that. What about your business number? Having your business phone number and your address are some of the most powerful signs for AI that you can use to help with your AI discoverability right now to make sure that you are being surfaced in search results.
But you’ve gotta make sure that the phone number is easy to find, that your website loads quickly, that it’s mobile optimized. So all of those are sort of like the table stakes, the basics. Make sure that you are as discoverable as you need to be. Then start to ask yourself, “Can people really tell what I do?
Is it obvious what my products or services are, or is it very confusing?” Ask yourself, would an elementary school student be able [00:06:00] to not just read your website or your social listing and understand what you do, but then tell a friend about it? If not, you may have some room for improvement in talking about what you do.
Not only do people need to know what you do, they need to understand if there is social proof. Do you have recent reviews? Do you have testimonials? Because guess what? All of those things are experience. If someone doesn’t have the benefit of being referred by a friend who’s been your customer, that social proof is oftentimes the next best, so we wanna make sure that that is clear Now, here are a bunch more rapid fire.
Is your pricing transparent? Is there information about the logistics, like parking or fees? Are there clear directions? Is someone going to answer the phone to help you? Now, what about when they show up? Is your parking lot well-lit? Guess what? That’s experience. There are two supermarkets about the same distance from my house.
One of them I will [00:07:00] not go to after dark because I do not feel safe. Even though they have a larger assortment and usually better prices, they don’t get my business because I want to go to the one with the well-lit parking lot. Now, speaking of your parking lot, are your spaces clearly marked? Has it been a few years since they were painted?
Have you made them a little bit bigger? I always notice the width of parking lots in Tennessee, uh, or parking spaces in parking lots, because my husband has, like, a huge… It’s, like, a Yukon XL, and I am always nervous about parking it ’cause it’s so much wider than my vehicle. Everybody in Tennessee seems to have, like, giant SUVs and pickup trucks.
Are your parking spaces built for the size vehicles that your customers are driving now? Is it easy to find which entrance people are supposed to go to? There’s nothing more annoying than having to go to, like, three different doors that are all the wrong door when you’re going to a business for the first time.
Now, what about when they walk in? Is there somebody there to greet them? Because guess what? That’s experience. You know what else [00:08:00] is experience? The music. Is there music? If so, is it, is it loud? Is it soft? Is it instrumental? Are there lyrics? Is it fading into the background? What about the temperature? Is it too hot?
Is it too cold? Does it feel muggy, like the air is stale? These are some of the things that people only tend to notice if they’re wrong. They create friction. They make the experience less enjoyable than it should be Guess what? It’s a whole experience. What about the people helping in those moments? Is it easy to identify who works at the store?
I was at a huge big box retailer, uh, just a couple of days ago, and I needed something that cost, like, $6, and it was behind a glass case. And there was a little bell. I ring the glass case, or I ring the bell on the glass case. I waited and waited. Like, three or four minutes went by. My son, who was with me, was like, “Can we just go?”
And I was like, “No, I really want this product.” So I walked around, found an employee, said, “I’m trying to buy this.” And he said, “I’m sorry, only the manager has the key.” And I was like, [00:09:00] “Oh my gosh.” Like, I’ve been waiting for so long for someone to show up. And somebody listening to this might be like, “Yeah, but what about threat, theft, or shrinkage?”
But you know what? I left that store and went to another store where I bought not only that $6 item, but the rest of things that I would have bought there if I hadn’t been so annoyed by waiting so long for someone to show up and unlock that case. Everything is experience. What are you empowering your employees to do to help your customers?
Are you creating unnecessary friction or annoyances for those customers? What’s your payment experience like? What’s your digital experience like? How many clicks does it take for someone to go from starting point to finish point? Part of the reason Amazon has become one of the biggest companies on the planet is because of that one-click buy, add to cart, buy, all of the things that they’ve done to engineer the friction out of those experiences.
What does your checkout [00:10:00] process look like? If you’re using QR codes, are you using them well? Something that really frustrated me a few weeks ago, I was staying at a hotel, and they had all of these amazing, uh, like, experiences that you could do during the day. It was in Hawaii, and it was like, make a lei or, you know, go to a luau or do stargazing on the roof.
Some of the experiences were free, and some of them were paid, and there was a QR code in the elevator to see the schedule of all the things. And when I clicked on the QR code, the website that it took me to that talked about all of the experiences had QR codes for all the individual ones, and I was like, “I can’t scan a QR code while I’m on your website.”
Like, I’m already on the website on my phone. So I was, like, screenshotting them and then using my niece’s phone, who was with me, to, like, take a picture of that QR code because they didn’t hyperlink it. So think about the way in which your customers are going to experience all of the things that you’re creating.
Can they find what they’re looking for? Is it easy and efficient for them [00:11:00] to get where they need? Is your app reliable? Does it have fast load times? Does the search function work? If you have an AI chatbot, has it been trained on all of the most common inquiries? What about for all of those of you who have digital experiences, the things we know everybody is gonna do at some point, like they’re gonna forget their password, they’re gonna forget their login, they’re not gonna know if they used their business email or their personal email.
How simple do you make it for them to troubleshoot? Because, yep, that’s experience, all of it. Now, what about after the sale? We, um, it’s a funny story. Uh, we were just recently in Oklahoma, and my aunt and uncle decided it would be a great idea to send my two young sons home with a bunch of tadpoles from their pond.
They have this horse trough, and all of these, like, tadpoles were in it, and my two sons had the best time using a net to catch these little froglets and tadpoles. Uh, we put them in, like, a [00:12:00] five-gallon bucket and brought them back to Tennessee, and then immediately, uh, we were like, “Okay, we need, like, a terrarium or aquarium situation for all these little baby frogs.”
And so I went to the pet store, I got the terrarium, I got all the accessories. I’m building it up, and inside of the terrarium was all of this, like, uh, like sticky, goopy stuff that the ads were on, like the paper inside the aquarium that, like, tells you everything about it, of like how many gallons it is and all the, you know, like, lid th- like all these things.
And my husband was like, “This is so dumb. Why, why is it like this?” And I said, “Because all they thought about was the retail experience. They didn’t think about the experience after the sale.” So let’s talk about some of the things after the sale that show your customer that you’re not just thinking about getting the sale, you’re thinking about how they interact and engage with your product or your service after the sale is done.
So is your receipt [00:13:00] easy to read? Simple. Is it easy for them to find what they need? Is the text in, you know, a, a, a font size that most people can, uh, can interact with it? What about if you’re selling something complex? Like, do they know what needs to happen next? If there’s a confirmation email, is it clear what the expectations are on both sides?
Is it easy to get help if they need help after the fact? Is the reper- return process simple, or is it complicated? Now, does your customer feel more or less appreciated after the sale than before it? Because, yep, guess what? It’s all experience. Here are some more rapid-fire experience bullet points that I want you to consider.
Does your voicemail tell me what I need to do next? Yep, that’s experience. Does your out-of-office message communicate expectations? That’s experience, too. Did you receive conflicting information from two [00:14:00] employees, and if so, do you know what to do to remedy that cognitive dissonance that’s now been created in your mind before it becomes incredibly frustrating?
What if you received a confirmation email, and it answered questions that you didn’t know to ask? Do you now feel more confused or less con- less confused? What if something changed? How is the communication around that change being handled? Because guess what? Yep, that’s all experience. If you have an environment where people are waiting for you, is it a delightful experience like the immersive experiences of waiting in line for some of the new roller coasters at theme parks where you’re busy and you’re doing stuff, or does it feel like the excruciating, I would rather be anywhere than here, like loud, rowdy waiting room at a pediatrician’s office?
What are some of the things that are part of that waiting experience? Do you acknowledge that customer or client while they’re waiting? If there is a delay, have you explained to them why there’s a delay? [00:15:00] Have you given them an estimated wait time that is going to be accurate? Have you given them something useful that they can do while they’re waiting?
Have you given them a way to feel better, whether it’s through food or snacks or a TV or something else engaging in the lobby? Make the wait feel not just neutral or negative, but positive. Because guess what? When you can do that, the wait can actually enhance the experience. One of my favorite audience member stories came from someone who worked in customer experience at Disney Resorts, and he said he was looking at NPS data, and they found, like, a reverse correlation between two hotels, that people who had a longer check-in experience at the Polynesian resort had a much higher score than somebody with a quick check-in experience.
But the opposite of that was true at one of their other resorts. I think, um, the Grand Fl- Floridian maybe. Like, the longer people waited at the Grand Floridian, the lower scores got. And they said, “Well, what’s the difference?” And they went and [00:16:00] visited both hotels, and when you’re at the Polynesian, there are characters.
Like, Moana might be there, some of their other … Like, Lilo and Stitch I think are there. Uh, there are people giving you hula lessons, helping you make leis. Like, the wait is delightful because they engineered that experience. At the Grand Floridian, there wasn’t so much. So what they did was use that insight to say, “Okay, well, what’s something that we could do to help people waiting at the Grand Floridian?
And also, do we need to intentionally slow down the check-in process at the Polynesian? If there aren’t a lot of people in line and it’s going really quick, are there things that we could train our team to make take a little bit longer so that they still have the benefit of getting the complimentary, you know, tropical drink that’s being served and the, the hula d- Instruction and all of those things.
So think about your waiting experience because it is part of it. So is the physical environment. Yep, that’s experience. That’s part of it, too. Does someone know where they can put their purse, their backpack, or their briefcase? Was there a hook on the bathroom stall [00:17:00] door? Were there enough outlets near their seats?
Could they find the restroom? One of the things that just blows my mind is how many department stores don’t have hooks for trying on clothes in the dressing room, or they have one. And anybody who’s ever been in a department store trying on clothes knows you need at least three hooks. One for the clothes you haven’t tried on yet, one for the clothes that you’ve tried on that will be going back, and a third for the clothes that you’ve tried on and decided to keep.
And I’ve never found any studies on this, but I am willing to bet big money that the department stores that have at least three hooks in their dressing rooms sell more clothes than the ones who don’t. Because that little bit of friction, yeah, it’s part of the experience. And in today’s environment where we can buy anything digitally, having a great physical experience is the thing that’s going to set you apart.
So I want you to think about your physical environment, if you have one, and all of the things that contribute to the experience. Another [00:18:00] thing I want you to think about is your employees. Do they seem like they want to be there? Are they making eye contact? Are they taking time to introduce themselves?
Are they owning the problem instead of passing it along to someone else? Have they been empowered to help? Because guess what? Yep, that’s all experience. Let’s think about trust. Do the photos people see online of your business or you accurately represent reality? Yep, that’s experience. Does the invoice match what they were expecting it to, the price, the quote, et cetera?
That’s experience. Are you doing what you said you would do? Are people confident that you have their best interest in mind? Yep, that’s all experience If you want loyalty, if you want advocacy, if you want people creating more customers for you, I want you to remember this mantra, experience is everything, and everything is experience.
Every touchpoint that I’ve talked about in this episode, and hundreds more, are all giving your customers the body of evidence they need to decide if they’re gonna do business [00:19:00] with you again, if they made the right decision by choosing you. So my invitation to you right now is to take five minutes and think about parts of the experience that you’ve never intentionally engineered.
What can you do to be a little bit more intentional, a little bit more creative? What are some of the moments pre-purchase, during po- purchase, or post-purchase that you can make something feel special? Come up with a handful, and then choose one that you’re gonna implement right away because I promise when you obsess over the details, people notice.
When the little things happen, they are the stories that get shared. When things go viral, it’s not because of some giant, like, 100 carefully connected events that led to this huge thing. It’s the little things. It’s the, “I can’t believe that when I told the waiter I was cold, and he changed the AC, and I said later I was still cold, he let me wear his jacket.”
Right? It’s the, “I can’t believe someone walked me to my car with an umbrella in the rain.” All of those [00:20:00] small moments that if you think about, if you design for, if you control for, people will be so delighted when they experience them that they absolutely will tell their friends. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Creating Superfans podcast.
If you have, make sure you subscribe so that you get the next one delivered to you automatically, and I would really appreciate it if you’d take 30 seconds to like and leave a review. That is how podcasts get discovered, and it is incredibly helpful, not just to me, but to every other podcast creator.
Thanks so much for listening to all of these fun ideas that you can do to improve aspects of your experience. I hope to see you right back here next time for the next episode of the Creating Superfans podcast.
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