6 Laws of Customer Experience Apply to Nonprofits

I've recently been revisiting "6 Laws of Customer Experience" written by a former colleague, Bruce Tempkin. It's a treasure trove of common sense wisdom for nonprofits and companies alike. Simply change the business language to nonprofit-ese and it comes alive. The bottom line is that when constituents have great experiences with your organization, they're likely to become bigger supporters and more involved.

A few examples of the lessons for nonprofits:

- "Experiences need to be designed for individuals." Nonprofits (like companies) often design their web sites generically to serve all audiences and lose site of the individual. Bruce's suggestion? Humanize it! By giving a name, a face, and a story to individual "personas" that typify different constituent segments, an organization starts putting itself in its constituents' shoes.

- "Don't let company organization drive experiences." Your constituents don't really care about how you are organized internally -- program by program. They simply need their questions answered or their problems solved. Bruce suggests keeping an eye out for any time a staff member has to explain to a constituent how the organization is structured.

- "Employees do what is measured, incented, and celebrated." Actions by nonprofit executives speak much louder than words to staff. Define the kind of interactions your want for constituents and determine ways to measure those (e.g. inquiry response times, follow-up calls, staff helpfulness). Highlight exemplary interactions at staff meetings, track inquiry response times, and observe and rate interactions.