Customer Experience for Wedding Pros

For any wedding pro, customer experience is a critical component of your business. How couples interact with you and business will determine how they feel about you. And of course, those feelings determine whether you will make the sale, get the review, or get referred to their friends. To create a great customer experience, you need to think about the entire experience a couple will have with you from start to finish. Naturally, it begins from the moment they find you (and your marketing), and only ends when they decide to end it. (More on that later.) So, how do you intentionally create an experience that will wow your clients? Here are my top tips for crafting a stellar customer experience for every single one of your couples. 

Know the feeling

First, take some time to think about how you want your couples to feel when they interact with you and your business. Obviously, we all want our clients to feel cared for and confident about hiring us. But what other feelings should your brand evoke in them? Maybe it's security, luxury, whimsy, or romance? Those are all very different feelings that a wedding pro's customer experience might evoke.

Later, once you know what kinds of feelings you want to stir, brainstorm what kind of customer experience will help them feel that way. For example, if your brand focuses on luxurious weddings, every touchpoint in your client experience must also feel luxurious - or the spell is broken. Aligning your branding, marketing, and anything you put in front of your client with those feelings will make sure that your customer experience remains cohesive. (And if you need help, hiring a brand designer is a great idea, too!)

Map the journey

Additionally, mapping out your customer experience journey is key to creating an experience that people will understand and enjoy. For example, what happens after your client submits your contact form, or reaches out to you? What are they sent next? When do you talk to them, send a proposal, or meet with them? Are the next steps super clear? What software do you need or use in order to send files, photos, and notes back and forth? (I use HoneyBook, and I love it! I'm a HoneyBook Educator, and this is my affiliate link.)

Mapping all of this out will help you get so much clarity on your customer experience. In fact, I have my own giant flow chart for my business, which I do tweak sometimes to test new things out. Naturally, I have also automated a lot of this over the years, including reminders to myself for checking in with clients. As a result, mapping your customer experience journey will not only make things easy for your customers, but also easier for you, too! 

Surprise and delight

One of the most effective ways to elevate your customer experience journey is "surprise and delight," aka, making your clients feel super special. It's a surprisingly simple way to create forever-fans who will continue to promote your business long after the wedding is over. When a couple interacts with me, my business, or my brand, I want them to feel delighted. And I want to surprise them - pleasantly - along the way. Of course, there are a million ways to go about this, but my favorite is snail mail. I love to send my clients handwritten notes, surprise gift boxes, and other things in the mail. Honestly, when was the last time you got something fun and unexpected in the mail? It's such a great feeling!

In addition to this, you should approach every customer experience touchpoint with this intention. How can you surprise and delight your clients on your consultation call, when you check in, or on the day of the wedding? Sometimes, I will do little things like deliver a handwritten note on the wedding day, bring someone coffee for an in-person meeting, or make a wearable flower for the mother of the bride without being asked to. To be honest, these are the things your customers will remember when they think about the experience of working with you. Yes, your service delivery will be amazing - but they will also love you and your business for constantly going out of your way to make them feel special.

Keep it going

As I said earlier, the customer experience starts even before they contact you. It starts when they see your marketing materials, check out your website, and make a quick judgement about whether or not you would be a good fit. By the same token, the customer experience does not end with the wedding day. At the very least, you have to send your clients a farewell or wrap-up email and ask for a review.

However, I would also encourage you to keep the relationship going. Remember, your couples are your biggest fans - so how can you stay in orbit with one another? You might offer classes that they can be invited to, follow each other on Instagram, add them to your email list, or celebrate their anniversaries. However you decide to do this, remember that the client is the one who will end the relationship - not you! Sometimes, I get referrals from clients whose weddings were two or three years in the past. In the end, keeping those lines of communication open with your biggest supporters will lead to more work.

I hope these tips help you craft an amazing customer experience for your wedding clients! If you're intrigued about how to do this in a systematic way with your clients (and through automations, so it's less work than ever!), I'd love to work with you.