11. My exact process for designing irresistible customer experiences

EPISODE 11 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

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In this episode, I flip the script and answer a question I was originally asked to answer during a recent guest podcast interview:

“What’s the process you follow for designing standout customer experiences?”

There was only so much detail I could get into as during my chat with the podcast host, but this is where I walk you through my step-by-step framework for designing and improving customer journeys—whether you’re launching something brand new or optimizing an existing offer.

I share how I use audience feedback, intentional design, strategic automation, and data to create customer experiences that build loyalty, spark joy, and drive repeat business—all while being manageable as a solo business owner and mum of three.

If you’ve ever wondered how to turn your customer experience into your competitive advantage, this is your behind-the-scenes look at exactly how I do that.

What we cover:

Why Customer Experience Is Your Competitive Advantage – And why it should start well before the purchase and extend long after.
The 4 Essentials of a Standout Brand Touchpoint – Every customer interaction should be valuable, relatable, actionable, and manageable.
How I Design Customer Journeys for New Offers – Including how I co-create with my audience before launching anything.
How to Optimize Existing Offers Using Data and Feedback – Real-life examples of what I added or improved in my offers based on client input.
Why Automation Doesn’t Mean Impersonal – How I create automated systems that still feel human and strategic.

Soundbites:

“When I book that time with myself, I have a look at what I have on offer and what is going to have the highest impact for me right now. And that’s how I prioritize those updates. I’m not going in and radically revolutionizing all my funnels and all my sales pages in one go. I literally look at the lowest hanging fruit first with the highest impact and then the rest, whatever I don’t get done, stays on that list. It needs to be manageable. As much as there are always opportunities, they need to fit into your busy schedule and not feel like you are just on this hamster wheel with a never ending to do list. Look at it as an ongoing process that you can chip away at. That’s the beauty of customer experience. Little tweaks can have huge impacts on the experience in itself, but also on your customer retention.”

“Every brand touch point that I create in my business needs to be valuable. I don’t believe in sending something out just for the sake of sending it. Everything needs to add value. Every brand touch point needs to be relatable. So there needs to be some sort of personal connection to me. It needs to be relevant to the recipient. That’s where behaviour-driven email marketing comes in, for example, making sure that what you’re sending is relatable to the person on the other end. Every brand touch point also needs to call to action. So there needs to be a clear invite to do something. Whether it’s to buy, whether it’s to read a blog post, whether it’s to listen to a podcast episode.”

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Episode Transcript:

Welcome to today’s episode. Today is a slightly different starting angle because I’m not answering a listener question. I am diving into a conversation that I had during a recent podcast guest interview.

The podcast host asked me the following question. What’s the process you follow for creating standout customer experiences? And I thought, what a genius question. Obviously there was only so much I could unpack as part of the broader topic of the episode. So I thought I’ll take it to my podcast, it to my listeners and unpack how I go about creating, refining, tweaking my own customer experience.

because it can seem somewhat mysterious and I personally love behind the scenes tours so let’s have a look at my processes and how I felt about my experience. So let’s start with my mantra and something that is front of mind whenever I

touch my customer experience, my customer journeys, anything in my business really. So I believe that the customer experience doesn’t just happen during the checkout process. So when someone clicks that buy email button, it really starts well before the purchase in the pre-sale period, during the purchase and definitely, most definitely continues well after the purchase and really should continue for as long as someone.

in your universe. So in this episode today, I’m going to take you behind the scenes of my exact process for designing and improving, because you’ve never done, my own customer experience and customer journeys so you can really adopt this process in your business if it aligns with how you operate. So we’re going to look at two different scenarios today because they’re both highly relevant.

I’m going to take you my process for creating new offers and infusing strategic customer experiences into the process. But also we’re going to look at how you can optimize existing offers and customer journeys strategically. Before we dive in though into the integrity, let’s start with an important question. Why does this process matter?

by? Is it important to have a framework, a strategy, a strategic approach behind making tweets the customer experience or designing customer experiences in the first place? Ultimately, having a process and a strategic process eliminates the need for assumptions. As online business owners, unfortunately, we are

operating based on assumptions far too often because we want to quickly, we want to launch the perfect product. We think we know what our customers and our audience needs. What often really doesn’t match in real life. So having a process really makes sure that everything you create in your business, whether it comes to office, customer journeys, emails, messaging,

is based on first-hand insights and first-hand data. So real data that you have at your fingertips. And I like to look at brand touch points from four different angles. So every brand touch point that I create in my business needs to be valuable. So I don’t believe in sending something out just for the sake of sending it.

So everything needs to add value, whether it is giving information, entertaining, you know, it needs to serve a purpose. Every brand touch point also needs to be relatable. So there needs to be some sort of personal connection to me. It needs to be relevant to the recipient. That’s where, again, behaviour-driven email marketing comes in, for example, making sure that what you’re sending is relatable to the person on the other end.

Every brand touch point also needs to call to action. So there needs to be a clear invite to do something. Whether it’s to buy, whether it’s to read a blog post, whether it’s to listen to a podcast episode, it needs to get the recipient to do something. And most importantly here, coming from a mum of three who is a solo business owner, every brand touch point needs to be manageable. So it needs to work.

hard for me, it needs to ideally work for me on autopilot. So that means I create it once and it works for me on repeat. Not often possible, but yeah, it just means I’m not creating for the sake of creating, right? And really having those four brand touch point attributes in mind, whenever you are thinking of creating, whenever you’re thinking of making tweaks, really make sure that your customer journeys

really improve the customer satisfaction and work towards customer retention. So making sure your people are looked after, they feel valued and they are primed to place that next purchase. It really means your customer journey delivers on real customer needs. So again, it’s relevant. You are presenting your audience with opportunities to see results.

It also means that you are encouraging word of mouth, you are encouraging people to provide you with proof and it also encourages repeat business because you are showing up intentionally and in a way that evokes human, you know, the human touch evokes emotions and makes people feel awesome. And it also means it keeps your offers themselves relevant and fresh because if you listen to

know, the signals that your audience are sending you, can continuously refine your offer suite and how you package those offers. So they really deliver for your audience. And it just means you show up consistently. So your audience knows what you stand for, what they can expect for you, from you. And yeah, it’s beautiful because if you do it strategically, it can be automated.

So I really want you to look at your customer experience as your competitive advantage to stand out in a crowded market, which let’s face it, the online space is super crowded. So rather than something that you have to do in inverted commas and it’s a chore and it feels tedious, look at it as your opportunity to really leave a lasting impression and your opportunity to leave a mark on the people in your.

in your universe. So let’s start with a closer look at designing new customer journeys. So that could be if you’re launching a new membership, if you’re launching an offer, a new service, for example, because even though it’s new, it doesn’t mean you should ignore the customer. So as I said before, we want to avoid operating on assumptions. So we want to actually involve

our audience right from the start. If you co-create your offer with your audience, that just means it is very much what they want, not what you want and what feels aligned with you. And it helps you really make your customers feel heard and invested in your launch right from the start and you’re not creating a vacuum. How you can do that really is using social

media, so asking questions, polls, et cetera, in your Instagram stories, for example. You can also run ideas past your existing customers or if you want to, a pre-launch wait list, for example, so inviting people onto a wait list. You can ask for feedback, you know, what they’re expecting, what they think is hiding behind this mysterious new offer.

And really use that to spark your offer creation process. And you can also have just casual conversations in the DM. So if you know someone who would be perfectly positioned for this new offer as a customer, you can totally reach out to them, not pitch them. That’s not what I’m suggesting here, but ask them for 10 minutes of their time to chat about this potential new offer because they are the perfect customer in return for 10 minutes of your time.

on your expertise for their business. So it is again, just having intentional conversations with your audience so you can step away from those assumptions and really create something that is meaningful, valuable and gets your customers tangible outcomes. And how I like to approach it is I launch first, I get the offer out there and then

refined seconds. So I usually treat my courses as a beta version. And it starts with a lean version. And then during the process, I gather feedback from my one-on-one clients, my students. So feedback they’re giving me is then turned into additional course features, for example.

know, aspects, additional aspects of my service to deliver better outcomes or also to help people overcome potential objections. So in my business, for example, I recently revamped my VRP day, so I’m for a day service, which initially was seven hours with me and absolutely no revisions. And I felt some people who had just never worked in this capacity were slightly

Slightly unsure, like what if the copy doesn’t sound like me? What if I want to make some changes? And while we obviously catch up on a strategy call beforehand, so we’re totally on the same page before I start writing, this little niggling doubt, I’m sure, cost me business where people just didn’t feel ready to trust me enough in that first instance. So what I’ve done is added a one-hour debrief call a week after I hand them over.

copy and that means they have one week to digest it all, to leave comments in there and for 60 minutes we can make those tweets together. And that has been a game changer for the trust in my offer but also for that confidence to hit the buy now button and invest in my offer. When it comes to my courses for example as well, I have a course called Hidden Gem that helps you launch a

a super fun scavenger hunt on your website as a way to grow your list, sell your offers and really delight your customers. And it’s totally self-paced, but I thought why not create a custom GPT for people to help them with a brainstorming process. Why not give people ideas of instances they can run with this particular scavenger hunt promotion in their business, which is a great starting point.

Some people just aren’t mentally wired that way. They can’t visualize what that could look like. So my custom GPT is briefed on my framework and how I approach this particular strategy in my business. And so in a matter of minutes now, people are given this full strategy by my custom GPT that sets them up for success in a matter of minutes.

started. So this again has been a game changer and a great selling point for this particular resource. While it’s self-paced, it still comes with an element of support, if you know what I mean, as much as it’s AI, but it’s just fast track things. yeah, collecting feedback along the way and actually using it to improve your offers is so powerful and it really means that you can let your

early adopters are people who are really a prime to buy your offers, you know, no matter what, you can use their feedback and their results and their little roadblocks to make the offer even better. really insights-based improvements and data-based improvements, conversation-based improvements are much smarter as a way to run your business than trusting those

pre-launch assumptions where you are sure that’s what people need, but once you launch it, no one buys and people aren’t actually getting the results they need. So that is for new offers. When it comes to improving things, because we’re never done, it again comes down to gathering feedback. So again, not ignoring your customers and continuously checking in with them after the purchase. So really looking out for what people are loving.

which then means you can double down on that sales messaging, in the features, you can highlight it in the inclusion section. You can also pay attention to what questions come up all the time. So if someone reaches out to you before the purchase because something is unclear in your messaging, or on the sales page in the checkout card, someone’s clunky, something’s clunky, you can use that feedback and those questions that are coming up.

to make it crystal clear in the leader so people don’t have to reach out to you. And also pay attention to what’s missing. So people get even better results, which is what I just talked about the chat GPT here and that extra debrief session at the end that just means it just goes deeper and resonates much better with you all.

with your customers and you can do that by onboarding surveys, offboarding surveys for one-on-one projects, but also for courses. So I think surveys are underrated in self-paced courses and really checking in at very strategic times. So onboarding, know, when they should have quick wins and long-term to really get a full picture of what happened in their business when they bought from you or in their lives.

You know, those instant wins once they started using your framework or your course. And then also long-term. So what has that long-term shift looked like for them? And it really just means that you can, again, use that feedback to improve your offer, to really speak about that transformation to potential customers and make it a part of your onboarding process and sales process as well.

Then I always, always, always review the data behind that experience. So I regularly look at my evergreen funnels, have a look at conversion rates, how are those going, the click-through rates, open rates, which emails could do better. Also website heat maps. So my sales pages, like the key offers have heat maps, heat map tools on the backend, such as Hotjar. So it’s a little bit of

So you can actually see how far people scroll on your page and where they’re dropping off. And that is super handy to see where those friction points might be and how you might have to shift things on your sales page to make the point clearer. And ultimately, looking at the data, what works stays in my process. Don’t tweak things that are working. But things that seem…

broken or underperforming, I haven’t looked at how I can improve those. And your customer journeys really are evolving all the times with what’s happening in the world, with how you are evolving your office as well, with other products entering your office link as well. That might shift how you are connecting the dots in your business. using the data and the performance.

of those touch points is super helpful when it comes to optimizing things and making things even smoother. And one of my favorite things, again, a nice side effect of having those off the cuff conversations with people is that I constantly gather fresh social proofs, testimonials, screenshots, DMs from people are going, my god, Nadine, I meant to reach out. I’ve just had another inquiry who said the copy on your website, for example.

So having those conversations and constantly getting fresh testimonials means you can constantly update your sales page with awesome, awesome results from your clients. You can also come up with fresh free sales emails where you can use case studies and client examples to prime people to be ready to receive your offer. You can add them to evergreen funnels, right? Make them current.

add them in the PS. Super easy way to build trust in your office and optimize things without having to reinvent the wheel. And also, you know, don’t forget the checkout card. You can totally include little screenshots in your card to get that final yes and the click of that buy now button. And those results, the testimonials and screenshots really just fill your customer with more confidence that they are

in a position to get results from their investment and they improve the perception of your offer. So how do I do that? So I still serve clients in a one-on-one capacity. I have a membership, I run courses that are self-paced, but still, you know, my brain never stops and I’m a mum of three. So how do I juggle all of this? So I don’t always have to do things right away. I book time with myself.

on a regular basis and tick off a list that I create as I go along. So whenever I have a conversation with someone and I’ve got Nadine like, this was so helpful or Nadine like, I would invest but XYZ came up for me. I make a list of all of those things. Any testimonials that I get, any screenshots of conversations that I have, I add to a folder. And when I book that time with myself, I…

have a look at what I have on offer and what is going to have the highest impact for me right now. And that’s how I prioritize those updates. So, you know, I’m not going in and radically revolutionizing all my funnels and all my sales pages in one go. I literally look at the lowest hanging fruit first with the highest impact and then the rest, whatever I don’t get done, stays on that list. So as I said before, it needs to be manageable.

So as much as there are always opportunities, need to fit into your busy schedule and not feel like you are just on this hamster wheel with a never ending to do this. So really just look at it as an ongoing process, but you can chip away at that’s the beauty of customer experience. So little tweaks can have huge impacts on the experience in itself, but also on UI.

your customer retention. So, you know, adding another testimonial, for example, into your evergreen sales funnel can absolutely boost that conversion rate and that amount of evergreen sales that you’re making on autopilot in the backend, just as an example here. So that was my process. I hope it’s been helpful and quick heads up here. If you enjoyed this behind the scenes episode, I am

actually going to share a practical application of this process in my business next week. So make sure you subscribe to the podcast, follow the podcast. I’m actually taking you behind the scenes of the evolution of my membership, which will be launching as next week’s episode drops. So highly relevant if you want to hear how that evolution came about, what that looks like, make sure you tune in next week.

excited to share it and I hope it is just as enlightening as you know this process as well. So actual takeaways for you today as per usual. So I would love you to do a few different things. So if you want to optimize or launch, sorry, if you want to launch a new offer you can ask yourself, so how can you

Today, involve your audience before you launch your offer. So I don’t know where you are at in that launch process, but it’s never too late to involve your audience. So have a think about easy ways to get some feedback from your audience that you can incorporate in this new offer and in the launch of this new offer. If you have existing offers that absolutely could do with improving, which let’s face it, most of them can.

Ask yourself, so how can you gather some fresh feedback or alternatively gather some fresh data this week that will help you to optimize that customer journey for an existing offer. And if you are pretty happy with things at the moment, maybe take a broader look at your brand experience in general. So it’s the experience that you are delivering

aligned with how you want to be perceived by your customer and how you want your customer to feel. So pick one customer journey, one product, one offer and start with a mini audit and I’m sure it’s going to spark a whole bunch of ideas for you that you can act on today. So if you also want to submit a question for a future episode that I

mind to and give you some actionable ideas for. Submit your question by the link in the show notes either anonymously or with your name and business details for a backlink to your website and a little shout out. And if you enjoyed this episode, as I mentioned, there’s something super juicy coming next week. Subscribe, follow and potentially share it with people in the community who might be interested as well.

Thanks so much for tuning in this week and I will see you next week.