My role with HeyNow! Media is to ensure that our Client Experience is not only best in class, but constantly evolving and improving to suit the needs of our clients.
Digital marketing is a world of constant evolution and trying to translate and educate on the work that we do and the value that it brings to folks outside of this industry can be challenging.
I have provided helpful tools and resources that we use to enhance not only the client experience but the experience of every single person that interacts with our company.
Note: Throughout this blog, client and customer experience is used interchangeably.
Customer Experience
“Customer experience, also known as CX, is your customers’ holistic perception of their experience with your business or brand… Everything you do impacts your customers’ perception and their decision to keep coming back or not—so a great customer experience is your key to success.” –Hot Jar
There are a few main areas that our client team concentrates on in order to ensure a great experience. First, it starts with the Employee Experience. To put it simply, if employees of a company don’t enjoy what they are doing and don’t feel appreciated by their company and management, they are not primed to deliver a positive experience for customers.
Employee Experience
Our top 3 focus areas for creating a better, long lasting, and fun employee experience are:
1. Focus on Onboarding
Did you know that according to Deloitte, “on average it costs roughly $4,000 to onboard a new employee?” This investment can be astronomical if you are experiencing high turnover.
Additionally, you can experience deferred productivity from an employee if they are unsure of how to perform their role.
Concentrating time, energy, and resources on the Onboarding process can help mitigate many issues and allows new employees to feel welcomed, productive, and committed.
The HNM Approach to: ONBOARDING
- Providing structure and a plan up front and a weekly schedule of what to expect in the first month
- Setting clear expectations and encouraging the employees to be a part of that process
- Creating access for new employees to speak with and get to know everyone in the company, including the ownership team
- Getting any and all set up needs taken care of rapidly
- Daily check-ins in the first two weeks and weekly check-ins as the employee gets more comfortable.
- Following up with new employees on their onboarding experience.
- Delighting new employees with HeyNow! Media swag and goodies!
One of our coveted Hey Now! Media mugs, modeled by owner Anne Brower.
2. Consciously Prioritizing Connection
Since the Pandemic began in March 2020, HeyNow! Media has been fully remote. This has created unique challenges and opportunities for connection, engagement, and Company Culture.
There are a few consistent themes that we have seen that work among these ideas.
Asking staff members to be involved, ensuring that all team members are accessible, and continuing to be creative and agile as people’s needs change. A good theme never hurts either!!
The HNM Approach to: CONNECTION
- Zoom Daily Check-in Meetings
- Surveying employees on whether or not they wanted to return to the office and listening to their responses.
- Zoom Happy Hours with virtual games
- Care packages with snacks and branded goodies shipped to employee’s homes
- Monthly, in-person events at varying locations
Our Fall Festival at a local pumpkin patch!
- Daily Inspiration provided by a different staff member each day.
- Increased usage of Slack, Asana, Zoom, phone calls, etc.
3. Feedback
Having an open line of communication for feedback is incredibly important to our team and helps to continue to push growth, quality of work and allows for team members to have a space in which to share their needs and recommendations.
The HNM Approach to: FEEDBACK
Daily Staff Check-ins
Each morning we check-in with one another via Zoom and share our top three goals for the day. This allows our team to check-in with one another, ask questions to other team members and share feedback from staff or clients.
Weekly Project Meetings
Each Wednesday afternoon, representatives from each team come together to review every project that we’re currently working on and provide project related feedback, discuss any questions, and ensure that project expectations are being met.
Weekly Client Team Meetings
Every Tuesday morning, the Client team holds a check-in meeting to discuss client feedback, issues, questions, delight, and big picture client projects.
Weekly Creative/Design Check-in Meetings
This meeting includes a review of new projects and production for the week and following week, discussing coaching and assistance for the design team, updates on project processes and discussion of professional development opportunities.
Weekly Marketing Check-in
This meeting includes a review of new projects and production for the week and following week, discussing coaching and assistance for the marketing team, updates on project processes and discussion of professional development opportunities.
Coaching/Mentoring
Every staff member has been assigned a coach/mentor that they meet with bi-weekly or once monthly. Each coach runs these meetings a bit differently, but they allow for each staff member to have time outside of their day-to-day work to think about their goals, personal and professional development and future, and any issues that they are having in the workplace. This is also a time to examine their strengths and how they’re tapping into them and their opportunities for growth as well.
Monthly Metrics/Reporting Meetings
Each month, the entire staff reviews the data and metrics for each of our clients to provide feedback on what’s working and what’s not and make agile recommendations to continue to better our work.
Customer Experience
Alongside Employee Experience, our Customer Experience is one of the MOST important aspects of what we do. There are so many great examples from other companies to learn from in this space and we have utilized those along with our own practices to continuously improve upon and provide a stellar customer experience. One that concentrates most on creating, building, and maintaining truly positive relationships with our clients. So, how do we do this? What’s the magical science behind a truly terrific customer experience??
- Setting Expectations
We work to set clear expectations for what clients can expect from us and what we expect from them. Much like owning a home, setting clear expectations requires continuous maintenance and upkeep. At the start of a project, we clearly outline the project scope, steps that we will be taking throughout the project timeline, and provide weekly check-ins to ensure that our clients always have a pulse on what is going on with their project.
A slide from our kickoff deck where we address expectations front and center!
2. Consistent, clear, and positive communication
In the digital marketing and branding industry, the work we do relies a lot on the expertise of our clients in their industry and their success can rely heavily on our ability to market that expertise. When we experience easy communication, discussion, and feedback, our work is at it’s best and our clients are getting the best results. Consistent, clear communication is one of the most important aspects of what we do on the client side.
From sharing weekly updates to ensuring that we respond to client communication in 24 hours or less, consistent and effective communication results in more sales, committed clientele, and great results.
If we have established a strong foundation to stand on, we have built-in trust in the partnership and are able to communicate when something isn’t working.
We want to make sure that our clientele understands our commitment and excitement toward their business and success.
3. Fun and Delight
Marketing is a creative and fun industry and we work to bring that energy into the client space as well. We have found that getting to know our clients, building strong relationships, and paying attention to what’s going on in their world can lead us to creating additional ways to delight them!
We are always looking for fun, personalized and thoughtful ways to show our clients our appreciation and to help them feel special.
Our relationships extend beyond business and being able to celebrate our clients personal and professional celebrations and successes with them is very important to our team.
Some branded swag created by HNM for a client celebrating the birth of a child.
There is no magic formula for providing a best in class customer experience. However, there are a few common denominators for companies that excel in this space:
- Quick Response Time
- Listening to Customers and Understanding their needs
- Having Empathy
- Personalizing the Customer experience
Employee and Customer Experience is truly one of the most important aspects of any business and one in which more and more companies are focusing time, energy and significant resources.
