After you have created a great product or you specialize in rendering a sort after service, the next step is to open your doors to customers. To show you the importance of customers, there is a saying goes is ” The customer is king – all power rests within the hands of the customer, whether you like it or not. “
A customer might decide to engage with your brand or go to your competition. Your ability to keep the customer will depend mainly one thing, the Customer Service Experience you provide them.
Not many understand what is customer experience and in spite of the current trends, improving customer experience is still something businesses have a hard time dealing with. And, we don’t blame them – it is not that easy to figure out how to deliver an amazing customer experience.
What is Customer Experience
Customer experience is defined by the interactions and experiences your customer has with your business throughout the entire customer journey, from first contact to becoming a happy and loyal customer.
Why is Customer Experience important
Simply put, happy customers remain loyal. In addition, a study by Oracle found that 74% of senior executives believe that customer experience impacts the willingness of a customer to be a loyal advocate.
In a sense, If you want your customers to stay loyal, you have to invest in their experience!
The happier you are with a brand, the longer you stay with them. So, if you treat your customers poorly or ignore their customer service emails, then they are more likely to stop doing business with you.
This is why companies that deliver a superior customer experience outperform their competitors – and this means they’ll be spending more with your business.
To provide a more clearer picture on the importance of customer experience, here are a few customer experience statistics that might interest you.
- Customer experience is set to be the number one brand differentiator in 2020 (and beyond)
- 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience,
- Customers are willing to pay a price premium of up to 13% (and as high as 18%) for luxury and indulgence services, simply by receiving a great customer experience,
- 49% of buyers have made impulse purchases after receiving a more personalized customer experience.
- Customers that rate companies with a high customer experience score (i.e. 10/10) spend 140% more and remain loyal for up to 6 years.
But here is another problem, most people confuse customer experience with customer service. In reality, they are different. Here is the difference.
In most cases, a customer’s first point of contact with a company is usually by interacting with an employee (either by visiting a store or by speaking on the phone). This gives your business an opportunity to deliver excellent customer service.
However, customer service is only one aspect of the entire customer experience.
For example, if you book a vacation on the phone and the person you are speaking with is friendly and helpful, that’s good customer service. Yet, if your tickets arrive early and the hotel upgrades your room, then that’s a great customer experience!
Now that we know what a great customer experience is and why it is important, let us now look at some ways you can create a great customer experience strategy for your brand.
Understand who your customers are
A very important first step to creating your customer experience strategy is to bring to life the different type of customers who deal with your customer support teams.
If your brand is going to really understand customer needs and wants, then they need to be able to connect and empathize with the situations that your customers face.
One way to do this is to segment your customers and create personas. Try to give each persona a name and personality. For example, Anne is 35 years old; she likes new technology and is tech savvy enough to follow a video tutorial on her own, whereas John (42 years old) needs to be able to follow clear instructions on a web page.
By creating personas, your customer support team can recognize who they are and understand them better. It’s also an important step in becoming truly customer centric.
Create a clear customer experience vision
The next step is to have a clear customer-focused vision that you can communicate with your organization. The easiest way to define this vision is to create a set of statements that act as guiding principles.
For example, Zappos use their core family values and these values are embedded into their culture; which includes delivering wow through service, being humble and embracing change.
Once these principles are in place, they will drive the behavior of your organization. Every member of your team should know these principles by heart and they should be embedded into all areas of training and development.
Create and maintain and Emotional Connection with your Customers
The best customer experiences are achieved when a member of your team creates an emotional connection with a customer. To help us better understand how to create an emotional connection with your customers, let us consider an example from Zappos.
When a customer was late on returning a pair of shoes due to her mother passing away. When Zappos found out what happened, they took care of the return shipping and had a courier pick up the shoes without cost. But, Zappos didn’t stop there. The next day, the customer arrived home to a bouquet of flowers with a note from the Zappos Customer Success team who sent their condolences.
A recent Harvard Business Review study titled “The New Science of Customer Emotions“, emotionally engaged customers are:
- At least three times more likely to recommend your product or service
- Three times(!) more likely to re-purchase
- Less likely to shop around (44% said they rarely or never shop around)
- Much less price sensitive (33% said they would need a discount of over 20% before they would defect).
Capture Feedback to better serve your Customers
The best way to know whether you are delivering a great customer experience is by asking the customers themselves. This can be done by capturing feedback from them.
You can do this by using live tools to have real time conversations and when done, send a follow up email to every customer using post-interaction surveys and similar customer experience tools.
Of course, it’s possible to make outbound calls to customers in order to gain more insightful feedback.
It’s also important to tie customer feedback to a specific customer support agent, which shows every team member the difference they are making to the business.
Eliminate bad design early in your business
User experience (UX) is key. Website and app design matter of course, but customer experience design is crucial.
Customers pour in from all channels, all on the hunt for something your brand. They could be just one bad experience away from leaving you forever.
Plan every stage of the customer experience carefully, from discovery to purchase and advocacy, you can control the customer experience.
When your website traffic hits 500-2000 visitors per day, you can also turn it into a steady source of revenue with programmatic or contextual ads that complement user experience instead of interrupting it.
Here are 3 design tips you can implement:
- Create a consistent brand experience across channels – your website, apps, email, and social media channels.
- Eliminate unnecessary hurdles and streamline the process to purchase. Make it easy to find the right information or service.
- Factor in emotion. Wufoo included emoji faces in their app, ranging from super smiley to mega grumpy. Customers were asked to rate how they were feeling based on this scale.
Act upon regular employee feedback
Most organizations have an annual survey process where they capture the overall feedback of your team; how engaged they are and the businesses ability to deliver an exceptional service.
But, what happens in the 11 months between these survey periods?
Usually, nothing happens. And this is where continuous employee feedback can play a role using tools that allow staff to share ideas on how to improve the customer experience and for managers to see how staff is feeling towards the business.
For example, using project management software or social media tools, you can create a closed environment where your organization can leave continuous feedback.
Apply AI or machine learning to deliver a better experience
AI-assisted self-service portal:
More than 6 out of 10 U.S customers prefer a digital self-service tool (website, mobile app or online tutorial) over a call or video chat for resolving issues.
AI enables auto-responses to routine customer queries, guiding your audiences with carefully curated content.
AI customer service interactions reduce the need to attend every customer conversation, freeing up your agents to focus on more complex issues.
AI-assisted messaging system:
AI lets you segment your user base and increase personalization. With records of a subscriber’s email browsing data, web pages visited and past interactions, AI can auto-send personalized messages and even track their response.
Be relevant:
AI can draw on past interactions, making sure that the customer gets the most relevant experience.
Build systems for quick & effective resolutions
Having digested the customer feedback, it’s time to respond. Every stage in the customer lifecycle should have an unobtrusive support system in place.
Place control in the customers’ hands. Don’t force your support on them, but show them it is there and how to access it.
Here are some ways to provide customer support:
- Live chat platforms like acquire are convenient for customers browsing your website. Whilst unobtrusive, it’s there for easy access when needed. A quick response time can improve a prospect’s perception of your brand and even prompt a purchase. Add to this the opportunity to provide video-based assistance, and your customers will feel truly cared for.
- With customers taking to social media platforms in their droves, venting frustrations and on the hunt for information, it’s crucial to have a support executive active at all times.
- Traditional feedback forms still serve a purpose. You can even use the space on feedback forms for humor and fun.
Incorporate a memorable brand personality
Loads of smartphones can rival iPhone, but Apple remains the only smartphone company making profit.
Why?
It’s special being in the Apple family. A massive, loyal customer base has grown out of a unique brand personality. Customers buy into this.
Think also Charmin. Taco Bell. Old Spice.
Think about this. If your brand was a person, what kind of person would it be?
Develop your team
The next step is to identify the training needs for each individual member of your customer support team.
Many organizations assess the quality of phone and email communication, however, a quality framework takes this assessment one step further by scheduling and tracking your teams development through coaching, eLearning and group training.
Measure the ROI from delivering great customer experience
When you have put in all the efforts mentioned above to create your great customer experience, you need to be sure that it is really worth it. How can you do this?
The answer is in the business results.
Measuring customer experience is one of the biggest challenges faced by organizations, which is why many companies use the “Net Promoter Score” or NPS, which collects valuable information by asking a single straightforward question:
“Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?”
NPS, which was created by Rob Markey and Fred Reichheld at Bain and Company, is a highly suitable benchmark for a customer experience metric because a lot of companies use it as the standard customer experience measurement. And the fact that it’s simple to implement and measure makes the NPS a favorite with company boards and executive committees.
Continously Optimize your customer experience strategy
A customer experience strategy is an ongoing process. Adopt a continuous improvement approach. Measure, optimize, repeat.
Here are some tips how:
Don’t forget the little details.
Leverage customers to gather information on brand experience, design, product usage, etc.
Know your target audience.
Train staff about your products, how to deal with customers queries. Foster a customer-centric mindset.
Be prepared to continuously improve.
Reward employees who put a smile on the customers’ faces.
Conclusion
Customer expectations are higher than ever and word of mouth travels fast!
And as the customer becomes even more empowered, it increases the importance of the customer experience.
Customer experience is an area that needs constant nurturing and care and, with a greater focus on customer experience strategy, companies will realize a positive impact on customer loyalty, higher retention and increased revenue growth.
