Customer is certainly an undisputed King in the digital age. If you are developing a product or provide a service to the customer, it is of utmost importance that the customer is satisfied. Otherwise, they will switch to your competitors and the business will suffer a big loss. It is the prime reason companies leave no stone unturned to improve customer experience (CX).
Even the statistics suggest that nearly 52% of customers do not mind paying 10% for excellent customer experience. Moreover, this number soars to 70% when facilitated with exceptional customer experience in the shortest time possible. Talking about companies, well, 89% of them consider that CX is important in attracting and retaining the customers. If you successfully build a loyal customer base, then there are 50% more chances of them trying your new products and their average spending on your product is 31% more than that of the new customers.
Customers make another purchase based on their previous experience with the website or app or eCommerce store. If they had an excellent experience buying from a certain site, then they spend 140% more than on those sites that resulted in a bad experience. So, a finely crafted, customized CX enhances the LTV of Customer LifeTime Value, which is vital for any business.
Creating new customers is seven times costlier than retaining the existing ones. To save this operational cost and to build a long term association with the customers, it is advisable that companies should target to improve customer experience. As per Temkin group, a company with annual revenue of £1 billion records a surge of revenue by £823 million stretched over a period of three years, just by enhancing CX. This is a huge profit and businesses cannot afford to ignore it by any means.
Customers are naturally driven towards brands and companies that offer them excellent experience along with a good product. They will continue to buy from a trusted site or app rather than trying new ones that might feel uncertain. For this, companies should take all measures to provide incomparable customer experience.
It goes without saying that any business cannot undermine the importance of CX and must take all possible measures to enhance it to the hilt. Let us glance through a few tried and tested tips from experts.
Employees are the key to delivering great results. Empower them by giving them strength to take independent decisions without following the hierarchy. Train them for skills required to sort out customer queries in the shortest possible time. This will lead to quick turnaround time, which makes customers happy. Find out what is lacking in employees and any bottlenecks in the process. Remove these hassles to create a customer-centric approach from top to bottom.
2) Ideate strategies with employee feedback
Employees are the first point of contact for customers, value their feedback and let them come up with new ideas. Incorporate their suggestions to create concrete, fail-proof strategies that give results. Let them suggest how to deal with customers and engage them within the process of finding accurate solutions to customer queries. Employee suggestion boxes and feedback forms should be studied for analytics and the marketing team should come up with novel solutions for extraordinary customer experience.
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3) Use the best of technology to give desired results
Create personalized customer experiences by using technologies like AI and chatbots. These take little time to respond which makes the customer feel valued. These gestures suggest the concern and care of any company for its customers. Therefore, it is advisable to use technology to its optimum. Moreover, it reduces the pressure on employees who can filter these communications and craft more refined solutions. Creating a team of technology and employees will work best for generating best customer experiences.
4) An Omni channel approach pays up
With more than 50% traffic from mobile apps, businesses must have an all-encompassing approach that covers desktop websites, mobile apps, social media platforms, offline product promotions, branding and more. Such a comprehensive approach will result in creating a fantastic CX, which is the need of the hour. Remember that everything done to improve Customer Experience is a new leaf in the marketing as well. It will also help businesses to come up with novel ideas to market their products.
5) Focus on optimizing customer service
Work on augmenting your customer service, be it about training employees for the relevant skills and more. Reduce response time between query and resolution. Next, make sure to keep a check on the metrics and see what support and services are actually helping customers happy. Use CSAT, CES and other tools that help to keep a check on results whether it is from a particular campaign or service. Basically, not just improve the support, but keep a track of what works best for the company.
6) Chatbots and AI are great to connect customers
The idea behind using AI technologies or chatbots which reply instantly to a customer query, is to create a good first impression. When you respond instantly, it connects with the customer. Again, chatbots are a low cost option which reduce the overall customer support cost by almost one-third. Also, it paces up the response time by 80%. Most importantly, train employees to collect data like name, contact, email to follow back on the query.
7) Create a personal rapport
When you send an email or message to the customer, ensure that you address them with their name. This creates a first impression where they feel the company knows them. As per Experian Marketing Services, personalized emails have 29% more chances to be opened, 41% more product clicks and 6 times more transaction rate. It is again a bonding point when your team reaches out to customers as a mark of support which involves asking them what best you can do for them. Whether it is a form they submitted or enrolled for free trial or purchase a product, create a personal rapport for a long lasting association.
8) Fix client’s mistakes by creating wonderful experiences
Well, this is a mantra to show how much a company or business cares about its customers. If they make any mistake, don’t even out things; rather find a way that creates a win-win situation for both ends. This is the best way to build a company’s reputation in the minds of a huge customer base. Show genuine care as that remains in their happy memories forever.
9) Create opportunity for self help
Customers may not choose a one-on-one conversation or mails or meetings. Instead, offering them with self-help services like an elaborate FAQs section that answers most if not all of their queries, will do. Create an online knowledge base about your product so that customers can access it anytime, at their leisure. A survey by Zendesk suggests that nearly 53% of people choose to solve service related issues on their own. This is a huge portion and therefore, it is recommended to support them through an effective knowledge base online. Create self-help tutorials, articles or blogs that offer solutions to common customer queries about the product and its utility. Your team can come up with more ideas of the same nature and bring out a revolution in customer engagement.
10) Product guarantee helps to build trust
When a product comes with a guarantee, it is more reliable than those that don’t. It is highly important that your brand offers some safety against risks of damage. Refund or money-back guarantee makes one feel more secure in buying that product. Anything that gives them an assurance about the product or its validity, will help. Market the product with this guarantee to spread a word about it. Big brands are following this principle to win more customers and succeed at it.
11) Voice of Customer programs for genuine feedback
Create more and more VoC programs to know what customers think about your product or service. Get to know about their expectations and improvise the product accordingly. Whatever insights you get from these programs should be incorporated in the product, without fail. Realign your company’s goals as per this feedback to build a business empire that puts customers at the centre.
12) Create a customer journey map
To give the best customer experience, chart out a map which illustrates customer journey including all kinds of engagement, online and offline. Again, it’s advisable to include a pre and post sales approach to build a solid customer experience.
13) Factors that reduce number of customers
Companies need to introspect on the factors that keep customers away from taking their product or service. They need to list down these things which may include price, after-sales service, social media engagement and more. By minimizing these aspects, they can reduce loss of customers and improve customer experience.
14) Optimize digital domain and UI/UX design
Bad UI is the easiest way to lose out a huge chunk of customers. Make sure that your website or app is easy to navigate otherwise, a customer may not return to it. Optimizing the site’s UI/UX part for smooth navigation and it will help retain customers.
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The Conclusion
Above all tips and techniques can help build a good reputation as well as engage customers for a long run. Apply them for better customer experience, increase in sales and revenue. If you are looking to optimize a site or app or want to strategize a customer retention plan, feel free to connect with us as our team is expert at elevating customer experiences.
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