145: Smoother-Than-Butter Buyer Experiences: Elevating The Delivery Of Your Digital Programs
Customer journey and buyer experience strategist, Stacy Coyle, shares her Sorbet Parfait Methodology™ for improving program and product delivery in the world of digital business.
Stacy emphasizes the importance of dedicating time and attention to the delivery of a program or product, alongside launch materials and the program itself. She offers tips on addressing common struggles in program delivery and recommends periodically placing oneself in the buyer's shoes, asking for constructive feedback, and constantly updating and improving the delivery experience.
Through small tweaks and consistency in communication, digital business owners can create an enchanting buyer experience that leaves their ideal clients exclaiming, "OMG, they get me."
If you're a digital business owner looking to elevate program delivery and create a smoother buyer experience, then this podcast episode is a must-listen.
Summary:
In the world of digital business, customer experience and buyer delivery are key elements that can make or break a program or product. Stacy Coyle, a customer journey and buyer experience strategist, advocates for dedicating time and attention to the delivery of a program or product as the third pillar of success, alongside launch materials and the program itself.
Stacy's Sorbet parfait methodology helps digital business owners improve their customer journey and buyer experience, resulting in a smoother buyer experience that preemptively answers potential questions and creates an enchanting experience for the customer.
Common struggles in delivering programs or products include a lack of clarity and a disjointed delivery post-purchase that can create dissonance between the promotional materials and the actual buyer experience. Signs that a program or product may need attention include low attendance at live events and customers asking a lot of questions about event times, access to materials, and reminders.
To ensure customer satisfaction and retention, Stacy recommends periodically placing oneself in the buyer's shoes, asking for constructive feedback, and constantly updating and improving the delivery of the program or product.
Small tweaks such as adding resource areas or important links to emails, sharing a calendar with all program events and links, and consistent naming conventions and communication can have a high impact on elevating program delivery. Consistency in communication is key to avoiding confusion and ensuring that participants know exactly what they are receiving.
Connection and communication are crucial to successful program delivery, and being open to feedback from participants can help improve the program and elevate the delivery experience. To help with curating program information into one email that goes out consistently, either monthly or weekly, Coyle offers a free overview email template.
In conclusion, dedicating time and attention to the delivery of a program or product is crucial to creating an enchanting buyer experience and ensuring customer satisfaction and retention. By following Stacy's Sorbet Parfait Methodology and making small tweaks to elevate program delivery, digital business owners can create a smoother buyer experience that leaves their ideal clients exclaiming, "OMG, they get me."
Mentioned In This Episode
Where to find Stacy: Website and Instagram
Stacy's free gift: Buyer Delivery Email Template
Unlock your business potential and get on our wait list for our next online learning summit
Pin this and save for later
Transcript:
Destini Copp 0:00:02
And my special guest today is Stacy Coyle. Stacy is a customer journey and buyer experience strategist, and she is behind Workplace Lemonade. Using her Sorbet parfait methodology, she helps digital business owners give their customer journey the magical glow up that makes your ideal clients exclaim. OMG, they get me. And yes, that includes rolling out the red carpet for an enchanting buyer experience, too. And Stacy, I am super excited to chat with you today, and we're going to be talking about smoother than butter buyer experiences elevating the delivery of your digital programs. But before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the audience just a little bit about you and how you help people?
Stacy Coyle 0:00:57
Thanks, Destini. Thank you very much for having me on. Hi, everyone. I am Stacey Coyle. As Destini said, I am a customer journey and buyer experience strategist. And basically what that means is I help you take a look at your customer experience in general. So presale and post sale to make sure that you're connecting with your audience, that your goals for your business and your goals for your potential clients are in alignment and that that attention to detail carries through the point of purchase and into how you deliver your products and your courses as well.
Destini Copp 0:01:30
And Stacy, I'm excited to jump into this topic. Like I mentioned when we were talking before we started recording, this is something that I think a lot of us overlook. We put so much emphasis on the front end in getting people to know us and getting them to buy that we little bit ignore after they have purchased and kind of that onboarding type experience. But can you tell us exactly when you're talking about a smoother buyer experience, what exactly do you mean by that?
Stacy Coyle 0:02:06
Yeah, as you said, it's kind of natural that when we are creating our products and our services, we get really into the presale part because that's when you're thinking about your copy, your social media, you might be making investments into helping collaborators come on board to help you reach your goals. And then, of course, it's natural to get super excited about curating the product or the membership or the course and planning out what will those modules look like, how can I help people? But something that gets lost in the weeds a little bit or left kind of on the fly is often, how are we strategically delivering the program once someone purchases? So typically, like, an experience that's smoother than butter means that someone will not notice a shift in tone or quality or attention to detail once they put their credit card details in and hit checkout. You are doing a lot of the labor for them. And by labor, what I mean is that you're preempting their needs. You're thinking of the questions they could potentially have and getting those answers to them before they even start to wonder. So things like, oh, when is this taking place? How do I join this? How do I find that? You've done that work for them. So it's just super easy for them to engage with whatever you send to them or share with them and they don't have to do any of that work. And in terms of the quality, if someone purchases from you and the attention to detail is not there post purchase, what can happen is some people might feel or wonder, oh, did I make the right choice investing in this expert? They've presented such a clean, professional front up until now. But now that I purchased from them, I'm noticing a little bit of maybe something is just not quite feeling right.
Stacy Coyle 0:03:57
There's a vibe like a little bit of dissonance. And we want to make sure that when our buyers buy from us, that they continue just to feel very invested in working with us, that they're excited about what they bought, they're excited to learn from us. So by preempting everything and being strategic in our delivery, we can ensure that the feelings that they had pre purchase carry through into post purchase and then they can fully engage with our program and show up in the way that we intended them to.
Destini Copp 0:04:26
So I love what you said about pre emptying their needs. So it's really just anticipating the kind of questions that they're going to have and making sure that you answer them up front. I know that I've joined programs in the past where I got into and I couldn't find anything. Like I didn't know where to go and where to sign up for stuff. So I love what you said there. So, moving on, can you walk us through some of the struggles that people have when they're delivering their programs or their products? So the folks who are listening to this might have an online course, a membership, or some type of group coaching program. What are some things that they need to either think about or consider or mistakes you see other people making?
Stacy Coyle 0:05:13
Yeah, so like I said, we put a lot of effort into the pre purchase parts and actually into the contents of the course. And then often the actual buyer experience, the buyer delivery elements, is kind of created on the fly. So we're just doing the best we can. And if it's a live program or a live course or a membership, then what we can find is we've gone through the heavy lifting of a launch, we're super tired and it's just a little bit too much to stretch to being actually very thoughtful and strategic about how we deliver our program. So what can happen is we just do the best we can. We send the information when we have the bandwidth to think about it. But from the customers perspective, they might feel like, oh, I'm getting this information super late. They might be wondering like, oh, do I need to block stuff off on my calendar or when is this kickoff call? So what you have is clients feeling like they're a little bit in limbo, and it's just not a good place to have your buyers hanging out. You want everything in their calendar ready to get started, excited to kick off with you. So by going on the fly, we accidentally kind of kill a little bit of the momentum in the buyer experience by kind of leaving people hanging in limbo. And it kind of, as I mentioned before, it brings in that dissonance between how glossy the promotional materials might have been and then the slightly disjointed delivery post purchase, and it kind of leaves people feeling something's kind of a little bit off. So the common struggles are just a lack of clarity for your audience and that they don't feel super informed. But luckily, those are things that we can tweak quite quickly and help our buyers feel like, okay, no, I did make the right choice here.
Destini Copp 0:07:08
So are there any things that we need to look out for to kind of clue us in that our customers basically are saying there's something missing or our program might need some attention?
Stacy Coyle 0:07:24
Yeah, honestly, if you're getting a lot of questions like, oh, when is this event happening? What time is this at? Is that eastern? Is that? Pacific time. How do I access or find that material you mentioned? I can't see this in the course area. Or maybe if you have a lot of live elements of your program, you're noticing that people aren't attending live like you kind of hope they would. So it's kind of killing the momentum a little bit in that when people aren't present live, it doesn't feel as much as you would like it to feel as a community effort. And if you find yourself wondering like, oh, did we actually tell people about this? Or did we send that reminder? And the answer is like, I don't know. Let's go check. And then you're looking at it and you're like, oh, we did, but it's kind of like half an hour before the event took place, or, Whoops, we forgot. We'll catch it next week.
Stacy Coyle 0:08:18
Then you might at that point think, like, okay, we need to get a little bit more strategic about this and again, start anticipating what it is they might need to know ahead of time and then doing some of the work ahead of time to make sure some of those elements, like reminders, are in place so that we're not left wondering, like, oh, did we actually do that? Did they get that?
Destini Copp 0:08:40
I think that's a good point, is kind of looking at it from one of your customers perspective and say, somebody who doesn't know really what's going on, what might be missing here, because I think we think in our minds, oh, I've done all that. But when you really dig into the details for somebody who's brand new, not familiar with what you're doing, and kind of coming into the program, they might just be lost. So do you recommend that people interview or talk to some of the newer people that are coming into the program to find out, how do you feel, do you have what you need?
Stacy Coyle 0:09:20
I mean, anytime you launch a product or a service, I think you should always be looking for constructive feedback. I mean, it can be hard to put yourself out there because no one wants to hear like, oh, this wasn't what I thought, or I didn't like this thing. But we grow through knowing more about how our clients and our buyers, what they experience when they are connecting with us. And every time we get that feedback, that's a learning opportunity and something that we can take a look at and see whether, okay, do we need to make a change here or not? And in general, I think placing yourself periodically in your buyer's shoes is always a great exercise to do, even if it's a program you've run for a long time. It's easy to get a little bit complacent and just assume everything is working like clockwork. But it's always good to go back through those touch points and make sure that everything's up to date, that there's no tech glitches appearing that weren't there before, that the information is still correct and relevant and constantly asking for their feedback. I mean, there's always the advice that you should be asking for testimonials, but I think of course we should get testimonials because we want that social proof and we want to be able to share the wins people get from our programs. But we also want that feedback side of things too, to make sure that the quality of our delivery is there and ultimately that we are taking care of our buyers.
Destini Copp 0:10:48
And I was thinking about if somebody has a membership, and generally memberships, they pay on a monthly basis or there might be like a three month commitment or whatever, but if they have students or clients who are leaving the membership, that would be a really good opportunity to ask them why. And it may have been related to how the program was being delivered.
Stacy Coyle 0:11:13
Absolutely. You might find just by asking the question, especially for a membership that might have live elements, you might discover that maybe your live elements are not taking place at a time that's in alignment with your main demographic. So for example, if you're based in Los Angeles but it turns out 90% of your buyers are actually in the UK for some reason, but you're running your calls late in your evening, then of course people in the UK wouldn't be able to attend live. So just by asking those questions, you might find something obvious that didn't occur to you during the planning phase that has translated across to your delivery. And just knowing that information empowers you to kind of assess and decide, okay, how can I better support my clients? And just through being able to do that, you will find that your retention rate will increase because you're continuously placing yourself in your buyer's shoes and anticipating their needs and their wants in order to fully participate and kind of engage in your program or with you as an expert.
Destini Copp 0:12:19
Now Stacey, you've been doing this for a while, and I know you've worked with a lot of clients and seen behind the scenes of a lot of different programs. Can you tell us and walk us through some of the most high impact tweaks business owners can make to kind of elevate their program delivery there?
Stacy Coyle 0:12:39
Well, I think it's kind of obvious just from this conversation that I definitely advocate for thinking of your delivery as the third pillar. So if the launch materials and the sales are one pillar and the actual program itself and what's in there is the second pillar, then the delivery is the third pillar and we dedicate a lot of time to the presale and then the actual program or the product. So just having time carved out for the delivery of your program and that customer experience is kind of the first thing. And then the second thing I really recommend is assigning someone to take point to lead the delivery of your program. So if it's unclear within your team who's the ultimate person to deliver those, like schedule the emails, make sure that everything's ready to go, then it's definitely time to assign something. Now, if you're flying solo, of course that someone is going to be you. But if you have a team that includes maybe an assistant of some kind, making it clear to them that one of their responsibilities is to make sure that everything is going out on a timely manner and notifying you if there's an element missing so that you can strategically look at it and add it into the mix. Now, of course, that's kind of more strategic planning. But if you want small, high impact tweaks that you could make today, if you currently have a live program going, I would think that some of the things you can do is start adding the resource area or important links to any emails that you deliver so that people don't have to go looking for how do I access the course area? How do I change my credit card details or anything like that? That information is just one click away from them to share a calendar with people at the start of the program so that they have all the calls, the live elements ready to go to plug into their calendar and that those events also include the links, because sometimes we get the event, but we don't have the zoom link and it comes much later. And then people have it in their calendar and they're like, oh, there's no zoom link here and then they have to go searching in their email. So trying to be cohesive with that so that all that information comes at one time and then people can just plug it into their calendars. So that's using a Google Calendar or a tool like Ad event and then also a small tweak that's super helpful in terms of communication is pitting the name of your program or an abbreviation of it into the subject. Line of all emails relating to the program so that they can spot it easily in their inbox prioritize opening it and see what's happening.
Stacy Coyle 0:15:18
And if you need them to take an action that they're more likely to have seen it than if it's kind of coming in in the general mix of your newsletters or your general promotional emails.
Destini Copp 0:15:29
And I like the tip you just said about putting the name of your program in the email and I would also say do that in your calendar too, like you're at event or whatever, put the name of the program. Because I've had meetings on my calendar, I'm like I can't even remember what this meeting was for and it was for one of the programs that I was in.
Stacy Coyle 0:15:49
Oh yeah, I mean, being super mindful about how you name things, consistency in your delivery and in your naming convention is like king when it comes to communicating. If you have a variety of ways that you refer to your program, just choose one that's customer facing so there's just no confusion as to what it is you're communicating to them about and just making sure it's consistent. Across the resource area, the program area, the calendar links, the emails, et cetera, so that people know exactly what they're receiving and what it's about.
Destini Copp 0:16:22
And to follow up on that, Stacy, this is just a pet pee of mine. I know that some people use like acronyms or they shorten a name or they do like Ric or whatever. I'm making that up, but they put that in the meeting invite and I'm like, I don't know what Ric is. They do because it's their internal name that they're using for their program, but I don't know what it is necessarily. So I think that's some really good tips. Any last minute tips here, Stacy, before we wrap it up?
Stacy Coyle 0:16:52
I mean, when it comes to delivering your program, your digital product, at the end of the day, connection and communication is everything. If you are connecting and communicating in good faith with everyone and doing your best, that will always shine through and you will have an open channel of communication with your buyers. It's kind of like you talked about asking for feedback. When you're genuinely open to feedback, people will genuinely share their feedback. If people get the vibe that you're not receptive, then you're less likely to hear about these things. And I know it can be hard to hear something that you put so much effort and time into and someone has what feels like, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world. They didn't like this thing to kind of rethink it as this is an opportunity for me to do even better. My program is already great. Your delivery is likely already great, but it's just a chance to kind of take it to the next level to elevate. It's just part of the growth of being a business owner. Embrace the idea of progress, of a perfection. And kind of any chance that we have to learn more about what our buyers need and want can actually be great, because sometimes we give them things that we don't need and there are a lot of effort on. Our part, so we might find that even in the mix of all this, it can end up ultimately working out better for us as the provider too. In addition to working out better for our buyers.
Destini Copp 0:18:20
Thank you so much, Stacy, for joining us today and bringing up a topic I think that we oftentimes just kind of put on the back burner, which is delivering our programs. Can you let people know how they can find you? And I believe you have a free gift for them also.
Stacy Coyle 0:18:39
So yeah, as I said, my name is Stacy Coyle. I am the founder of Workplace Lemonade, so you can always find me@workplacelemonate.com or over at Instagram at Workplace Lemonade. And today I have a little freebie to help you with especially for memberships when you need like a weekly or monthly overview of what's happening and you want to curate it into one email that's going out consistently, either monthly or weekly. So it's an overview email template and basically it's a plug in play template to help you elevate your buyer experience. It helps you kind of anticipate their questions and what's coming up and make sure that that information is getting to them. And it's designed to help you quickly lay that out and email it out to your participants and Stacey, we'll make.
Destini Copp 0:19:30
Sure all the links are in the show notes so people can easily click on them and find you. And thank you so much for joining us today. I love chatting with you about this topic and I love hearing about all the wonderful insight you had about buyers experiences.
Stacy Coyle 0:19:45
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.