Customer experience is a sought-after strategy since it is seen as the key to company success. With the growing use of social media and online review sites, there has been an exponential increase in the importance of customer experience.
Customer experience is often talked about as a sort of magic potion for businesses. High customer experiences are seen as the holy grail of business success, driving everything from increased sales to lower churn rates and everything in between. However, even with all the attention given to customer experience, it’s not always easy to achieve it.
Many businesses struggle to give their customers a positive experience from beginning to end. Even simple things like making sure that your front desk attendants answer all phone calls correctly or that your website has up-to-date information can be difficult, especially when you have so many other things going on at once. Now, it’s true that most businesses can’t just snap their fingers and achieve a perfect customer experience every time.
But there are many small things you can do, day in and day out, to help make your customers happy with the services you provide. Here are five ways you can optimize your business for great customer experiences at every touchpoint:
Start with the basics
No matter how great your website copywriting is, how flashy your marketing campaigns are or how many bells and whistles you add to your product or service offerings, the customer experience must be spot-on if you want to succeed, so start at the basics.
Every great business starts with strong customer service, excellent product quality, and a clear understanding of what its customers need or want. If you’re struggling to provide excellent customer service, for example, you’re not going to be able to make up for that with flashy marketing campaigns. You’re going to drive customers away.
A customer experience depends on the basics: a positive attitude, clear communication, and a willingness to go the extra mile. While these are essential for any business or workplace, they are especially important for brands working in the service industry.
When customers are spending money on a product or service, they expect to be treated with care and consideration. That means hiring individuals who truly care about the brand they represent and treating customers with respect, dignity, and courtesy. It may seem like a small thing, but a smile and a “thank you” go a long way towards improving the customer experience.
Train your employees
Having great employees is one of the best ways to ensure that your customers have a positive experience with your business. When you train your staff members (including your front desk attendants, customer service staff, and managers) on the best practices for customer service, they’re more likely to be able to help your customers and make them happy.
There are many benefits to training staff to deliver great customer experiences, including:
- Improved customer satisfaction: When staff are properly trained in customer service, they are better able to handle customer inquiries and complaints. This leads to improved customer satisfaction levels, as customers feel they are being heard and their concerns are being addressed.
- Increased sales: Happy customers are more likely to make purchases, so training staff in customer service can lead to increased sales for a business.
- Improved reputation: Good customer service can help to improve a business’s reputation, as satisfied customers are likely to tell others about their positive experiences. This can lead to more people patronizing the business, which can in turn lead to increased sales and profits.
- Reduced employee turnover: Employees who feel valued and appreciated are more likely to stick around, so training staff in customer service can help to reduce employee turnover. This can save business money in the long run, as it costs less to train new employees than to constantly be hiring and training new ones.
Overall, training staff in customer service can have numerous benefits for a business, both in the short and long term.
You can also use customer service training to make sure your employees know how to deal with hard or challenging situations. For example, you can train your employees on how to deal with unhappy customers, how to handle difficult conversations, and how to solve problems for customers – including when to refer customers to someone else in the company for resolution.
Measure everything
You’ll never know for certain how your business is doing unless you measure it. That goes for customer experience metrics as well as overall business metrics. You may want to measure customer satisfaction, for example, or the percentage of customers who are satisfied with your product or service offerings. You may also want to track metrics like customer retention rates, customer acquisition costs, or customer lifetime value. There are several to track, measure and improve your understanding of business data.
When choosing your key performance indicators, make sure they align with your company’s goals. If you’re targeting growth, for example, make sure your KPIs reflect that goal. You can also collect data on the types of customers you want to attract. For example, if you’re targeting enterprise customers, you may want to track the number of enterprise customers who sign up for your product or service.
Set up smart automation
You can take many steps to optimize your business for great customer experiences. You can train your employees, measure customer satisfaction, and even adjust your product offerings based on customer feedback. But there are many other things you can automate, too.
Automating customer support emails, for example, can help you reduce the time it takes to respond to customer concerns. You can also simplify your customer onboarding experience by using automated check-in procedures, like automated account creation or automated welcome emails.
Automating simple tasks like these can save you and your team a significant amount of time and effort. You can also use automation to streamline your internal communication. For example, you can set up an email notification to alert your team whenever a new lead comes in. This way, you don’t have to rely on a single person to track incoming leads.
If you use a group chat or collaboration software, you can also set up automated notifications to make communication more efficient. With these tools, you can receive notifications whenever a new lead comes in, and your team can start the conversation whenever they’re ready.
