Forbes: Good weather improves customer experience, but is it enough? 

Heikki Väänänen | Founder, Exec. VP of Growth

Customer Experience (CX) Day took place this year on October 5th and provided a platform for my latest Forbes article, in which I look at the ways in which CX impacts the success of a business. 

Knowing what makes your customers satisfied and what does not is crucial to winning them over, and keeping them loyal over the years. Of all of the factors that affect CX, perhaps the most intriguing is the weather, which plays a surprisingly large role in influencing purchasing patterns. 

The impact of weather on human psychology and mood is well-established. Sunlight causes the brain to release serotonin, the hormone that leads to improved mood and greater calmness, which has then been proven in multiple academic studies to improve customer experience when making purchases. 

Expand Your CX Toolkit 

Yes, good weather is an excellent way to help improve customer experience. However, may not be the most reliable. Instead, businesses should look to expand their toolkits to ensure they are able to influence the multitude of other factors that improve CX. 

• It’s no secret that happy employees equals a happy work environment, which, in turn, contributes positively to the work they do and the service they give to customers. Ensuring that the workforce is happy is one of the biggest contributors to good CX results. Given the link with good weather, maybe sending the whole company on a week-long retreat to the Bahamas might help with morale at the very least.
• Improving product/service quality
• Ensuring customer service is swift and efficient (and any negative reviews are handled well)
• Having good omnichannel integration to ensure customers can do everything they would in-store online and vice-versa 

Focus On What You Can Control, Not What You Can’t 

While the weather can have an enormous impact on customer experience, relying on it alone is not the best way to ensure success. Instead, businesses should look to focus on perfecting the things they can control, such as implementing processes that ensure, among other things, that customers are treated with courtesy and empathy, that their problems are listened to properly and dealt with in a speedy manner, and any questions are answered in an expert manner. This will go a long way in making sure that customer satisfaction levels are high, rain or shine.

• Monitor the experience customers are having and continuously examine CX data to monitor how consumers behave and feel in different situations.
• This can be incredibly useful to ensure that businesses are adopting the right strategy in response to these varying factors, including very unpredictable ones like the weather. 

 Read the in-depth Forbes article here.