The relationship between businesses and their customers has changed completely in the last few years. It’s no longer about merely buying and selling; it’s become about providing the customer with a great experience whether on a website or in a physical store. While brands are constantly improving their customer experience, customers are more aware of the fact that they now have options and they will look for alternatives whenever they have a slightly bad experience with a business. Customer experience can boost business growth significantly and that’s why it’s essential to improve it. Read on for 6 tips that will improve the customer experience at your business.
Why Is Customer Experience Important?
Customer experience is different from customer service. While customer service focuses on solving problems and explaining products to customers, customer experience creates a blueprint for interacting with customers from the moment they come to your store or access your website till their next purchase.
Fostering an excellent customer experience will boost sales conversion as customers will feel they are being treated well. Customer experience helps you retain customers as they want to have this experience and feel good again. Additionally, it increases customer loyalty which not only makes them want to come back but they’ll also feel inclined to refer your business to those within their network.
1. Provide an Omnichannel Experience
Customers interact with your business in various ways. Since everyone can access everything from their mobile phones, it’s easy to contact any business they want through their favorite communication channels such as Facebook and Whatsapp. It’s essential to provide your customers with the same quality experience on every possible channel considering always that every channel has its own dynamics.
You should provide consistency on all channels and make sure your customers receive the same experience no matter how they interact with your business. However, it doesn’t mean repeating your messages through all channels, as according to information found on NICE offers, it will make your business appear robotic and impersonal. Your messages should align with the customer’s buying journey to keep them engaged and increase sales opportunities.
2. Know and Understand Your Customer
Before setting plans in motion, you need to know who your customers are and what motivates them to buy your products or services. Define a customer persona based on age, gender, location, interests, income, and any other information you can get.
Knowing your audience will help you define the customer persona, and you might come up with different personas. This will help you segment your audience and know how to attract them to your business. It’s also essential to know their pain points so you’ll be able to solve their problems before they arise and offer them a flawless customer experience.
3. Empower Your Customer Service Agents
We have all been there when we are on the phone with a customer service agent and they are looking for their manager to solve a problem. It’s frustrating for both sides and makes for an awful customer experience, especially if the problem doesn’t get resolved in the end. If your employees can have more freedom and power to deliver a better experience, it will make the interaction with customers more pleasant.
Review your customer service system by conducting employee surveys to know the pain points that stop them from delivering an excellent customer experience. Take a look at the relationship between managers and employees and whether the company culture is healthy. Fix any underlying issues and give your employees the power to solve more complicated problems for the customers.
4. Personalize the Customer Interactions
Personalization is essential to provide a satisfying and unforgettable customer experience. Customers will forget what you did or said in previous interactions, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. When the interaction between you and your customer is personalized, it increases the chances of a purchase. Customers need to be understood by businesses and know when and how to approach them.
Personalization means you are familiar with the customer’s buying journey and therefore know when to deliver your message on their preferred channel. Personalizing interactions will make you think of what your customer needs and offer them what they’re looking for. It will also increase customer retention as people tend to go back to businesses that made them feel acknowledged, remembered, and understood.
5. Be Reachable All the Time
Customers expect businesses to be working 24/7 to help them with any questions or problems. Although the idea might seem absurd, it’s essential to be reachable at all times by your customers. It means you have to be online 24/7 on every possible channel to solve queries and problems while increasing sales. Technology made this approach easier by introducing AI and chatbots.
Chatbots are excellent for answering frequent questions and solving simple issues. Customers can purchase through your chatbot so you’ll be making money while you’re sleeping. Chatbots are available on all channels such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and other channels which makes your business reachable at any time.
6. Analyze Performance
Providing excellent customer experience means you need to develop the system regularly and improve areas where it falls short. Customers’ needs change, your staff changes, and technology changes, and you must be able to keep up with everything. You first need to measure the effectiveness of your customer experience system by having Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) not only for your staff but also for your system.
Analyze customers’ behavior to tailor a personalized experience for them to meet their expectations. Business analytics, big data, and artificial intelligence are your best friends when it comes to improving customer experience as they help you measure customer satisfaction in real-time and apply improvements immediately. Measuring, analyzing, and improving customer experience is an ongoing process that you should focus on to attract more customers to your business.
Providing exceptional customer experience and going the extra mile with your customers is a must in today’s business environment. Falling short in this aspect will leave you falling behind your competitors. These tips will allow you to set up an evolving system that keeps on improving itself with your supervision. Be available to your customers all the time on every possible channel they use to show them you care and to give them a personalized experience.
About the Author
Martin Brown is a freelance writer, business enthusiast, a bit of a tech buff, and an overall geek. He is also an avid reader, who can while away hours reading and knowing about the latest gadgets and tech, whilst offering views and opinions on these topics.
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