In today’s world, where cutthroat competition exists in almost every industry because of many substitutes or alternatives, the only thing that makes customers buy again is how you make them feel.
Customers today are more informed than ever before; thus, their loyalties are fickle. American Express found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. Businesses worldwide are now recognizing the power of customer experience to win their loyalty and are investing heavily in every customer touchpoint and after-sale service.
Here is the list of five tips on improving customer experience to win their loyalties and scale your business.
Covered Topics
Hire a Marketing Agency that Knows your Business:
A marketing agency can take care of so many things that your business might not have the infrastructure, technology, and expertise to do on its own. Companies today rush to digitalize their operations by realizing the importance of digital platforms; they often overlook the essential part: does the marketing agency understand your business?
There has been a meteoric rise in the number of marketing agencies offering services for any business under the sky over the last decade. Companies, however, often make the mistake of hiring a general agency not specialized in a specific business side.
To provide the best customer experience, you should look for an agency specializing in your business area. For example, Forbes reported that the Self-storage industry boomed in post-pandemic trends.
As a result, marketing agencies started offering specialized self storage marketing to businesses looking to rent out spaces. This technical marketing service further contributed to the industry boom and helped companies to achieve their objectives.
Empower Employees and Value their ideas:
This might surprise a few, but empowering your employees has an essential connection with satisfied customers and goes a long way in winning their loyalties. Think about this scenario, you spoke with a customer service employee for 15 minutes, asking to accommodate your unique request or offer a small discount.
The agent then responds he’s not in a position to fulfill that unless he gets permission from his superior. This can kill your entire experience, and you may want to end the conversation. Thus, an empowered employee who can judge the situation and take action accordingly is essential for the overall customer experience.
Research has shown that employees are twice as likely to feel disengaged in an environment where they think their manager ignores them. Thus, it is crucial to make employees feel that their ideas are valued because they interact with customers and are in a unique position to offer creative solutions.
Employees play a pivotal role in understanding and perceiving your customers’ expectations. So, when your employees feel down or suffer due to lack of acknowledgment, does your knowledge of customers.
Leverage the power of technology:
Global research firm Garner has predicted that virtual chatbots will manage around 85% of the customers’ interactions by 2020. A chatbot can go a long way in enhancing customer experience in the following ways:
- Chatbots can easily be integrated with your website and Apps, allowing your customers to interact with your company instantly as if they are interacting with a human.
- Another great thing about chatbots is that they can continuously operate around the clock and handle unlimited queries without getting distracted.
- They can direct your customers to your products and services’ relevant pages and fetch information instantly on request.
- Chatbots are not emotionally driven, and their responses are consistently reflective of your brand’s persona; thus, customers receive a measured response each time.
- Time is of the essence in today’s fast world. They provide quick responses and deal with queries in the shortest time possible, crucial for a great customer experience.
Personalize, Personalize, Personalize:
Sending personalized messages and knowing your customer plays an integral part in customer interactions. A study conducted on the importance of personalization found that 81% would like their brands to know them better, such as when and when not to approach them, instead of 80% of customers who were more likely to purchase from brands that offered better customer experience.
Personalization based on knowing your customer better and adapting to their behavior strengthens the bond between the brand and customer and makes the customer journey smoother.
Suppose you received an email after visiting a particular website section with recommendations and vouchers, based on your search and purchase history. In that case, that means your retailer understands the power of personalization.
Stay Customer-focused:
Innovation-driven companies are always on the lookout to provide the best possible experience to their customers by staying customer-focused. Many large companies have already embarked upon digital transformation to improve customer experience, gathering takeaways from individual customer journeys to enhance the brand.
Customer expectations about personalization are more than ever as personalization is being adopted at a rapid pace. A company that equips its workforce with the right technology will respond quickly and flexibly to customers’ demands.
For instance, your company just launched a new brand with which even the employees are not yet familiar. If a customer walks into a store and needs information related to the brand from an employee, generating that information will be quicker for a digitally transformed business.
This quick and flexible approach to customer experience will make every customer feel, seen, and valued in every touchpoint with your brand/company, reinforcing loyalty and positive impressions.
Conclusion:
Today customer expectations are higher than ever since customers are more informed, empower, & electronic word of mouth (eWoM) travels quickly. These high expectations further increase the importance of customer experience, which is an area that requires constant nurturing and care.
This quote from Maya Angelou perfectly summarizes the importance of customer experience, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Thus companies that strategize about improving customer experience using a top-down approach see a positive impact on customer loyalty, higher retention, and increased growth.
