Satisfying your customers should always be a top priority. They play a huge role in the success of your business. Studies reveal that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. In addition, many businesses now consider customer experience as a competitive differentiator. For this reason, you need to devise ways to improve your customer experience.
Customers expect a lot from your business in order to ensure their loyalty. Just how important is customer experience to your business? Well, 96% of customers have stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service. This only goes to show that happy customers will remain loyal. So read on and find out how you can take your customer experience to the next level.
Boosting Customer Experience
- Focus On The Customer
- Personalize The Experience
- Create Self-Service Options
- Respond To Customer Feedback
- Go The Extra Mile
- Be Honest And Transparent
- Leverage Technology
- Create An Omnichannel Experience
- Create Emotional Connections with Customers
How To Boost Your Customer Experience
Customer experience is high on the radar of buyers right now. Their experience with your company is essential in building customer loyalty and increased revenue. Delighting customers can make a difference in the success and growth of your business. Check out the following ways to boost customer experience.
1. Focus On The Customer
Customers want to feel valued and important and you would want to validate that feeling by delivering a positive customer experience. Focusing on the customer ensures a 60 percent increase in your revenue. This means putting the needs of the customer in mind. They come to you with an issue and they expect you to address it as soon as possible,
Start with understanding their needs. By doing so, you can offer them products that will address their needs and preferences. Customers expect you to exceed their expectations and ensure a positive customer experience. Focusing on the customer drives repeat business and customer loyalty. In fact, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that aren’t.
You can use data to understand customer behavior and interests. From there, you can identify the best opportunities to offer customers. Delivering a great customer experience is already a challenge and making it tangible adds to the challenge. Nowadays, it can be easy to arm yourself with important data because of artificial intelligence and big data.
2. Personalize The Experience
As we have said time and time again, there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. Each customer is unique and may have a different need from other customers. 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience. In addition, 72% of customers expect businesses to know their interests. Aside from that, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions.
Use customer data to tailor interactions and offer personalized recommendations and solutions to the individual customer. You can create a more relevant and engaging experience for them, thus increasing satisfaction and loyalty. You can check their previous purchases or browsing history. From this, you can make product recommendations or customize product options.
The needs and habits of customers continuously evolve thus you also need to keep with these changes and adjust your strategy accordingly. Consistently review their preferences to ensure that you will keep offering a personalized experience. Keep leveraging customer data in order to determine the proper strategy for boosting customer experience.
3. Create Self-Service Options
Without a doubt, having a customer service team can help you resolve customer’s concerns. However, there are times when your agents cannot resolve the customer issue right away. The good news is you can help customers become proactive with their own issues with self-service options. In fact, 70% of customers now expect websites to have self-service options like a knowledge base, video tutorials, or case studies.
Self-service features eliminate the need for customers to have to wait in line for a customer service rep to be available to resolve their concerns. It expands the customer’s knowledge by providing them with the tools they need to solve other similar problems in the future. Having a self-service channel can greatly reduce the workload of your support team. Nowadays, customers want to resolve their issues themselves 81% of customers try to handle issues on their own instead of calling customer service.
However, it is important to implement some best practices with your self-service option. It should be easily accessible or your customers will only become frustrated. It should be placed in an easy location on your website such as your header, menu, or footer depending on the user interface. No matter how great your website design is, it does not mean anything if the customer struggles to find it.
4. Respond To Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is another important thing you should not ignore. It is another way you can understand the needs and preferences of your customers. It is worth noting that only 1 out of every 26 customers are likely to bring up their complaints. The other 25 will simply take their business elsewhere. Customer feedback helps you understand the thoughts and feelings of customers.
However, you should not just collect feedback but you should also act on them. By doing so, you are showing customers that you value their feedback and opinion. Acting on feedback increases customer satisfaction and conversion rate. You can use the feedback to make changes and improvements to your customer experience.
Ideally, you would want to do the collection on a 1:1 basis. However, doing wo might take forever. Luckily, you have technology at your disposal so you can quickly collect feedback from customers. There are many tools that can help you sift large volumes of feedback. It can help you identify the big picture and plan for the future based on your data.
5. Go The Extra Mile
When improving customer experience, you need to learn how to go the extra mile. This means doing more without being asked. Sometimes we need to put in extra work to satisfy customers and exceed their expectations. Going the extra mile can help you become successful at work. According to Marketing Donut, only 2% of sales occur at first contact which means you have to put in extra time for the other 98%.
While going the extra mile can make you more successful in life, this is most especially true in business. Persistence is a vital component of going the extra mile. It means not giving up when the customer says “no.” Unfortunately, 44% of salespeople give up after the first “no.” Going the extra mile means helping out a colleague who is struggling to resolve a customer issue or informing a customer that their order is arriving soon.
Going the extra mile means taking the time to get to know the customer. 72% of customers expect companies to know their purchase history. Thus, your customer does not have to tell you what they will order because you already know it. Also, going the extra mile means offering discounts for brand loyalty or giving gifts during special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries.
6. Be Honest And Transparent
Transparency is very important regardless of the organization. Let’s face it you can’t know everything and you need to acknowledge this to ensure successful conflict resolution. Thus, if you cannot solve a problem, tell this to the customer. You can always say “I am sorry ma’am/sir but I do not know the answer to your question. However, I think my associate can help you.”
Transparency with customers is a sign that you value their loyalty. A study by Label Insights reveals that 94% of customers will stay loyal to a transparent brand. In addition, 75% of these customers will be happy to pay more for products and services of a transparent brand. On the other hand, customers have no tolerance for brands that lie through their teeth.
Customer service is a game of trust and according to data, nearly two-thirds of customers say that a company being honest to them on how they plan to use their personal data would help that company gain the trust of customers. According to Sprout Social, consumers demand more transparency from businesses now more than ever. In its Social Media and the Evolution of Transparency Report, 86% of customers think that it is important for businesses to be transparent.
7. Leverage Technology
Customers expect a lot from businesses these days. Recent research reveals that 67% of customers have high expectations for customer experience. With the digital age, businesses now have technology at their disposal to ensure a seamless and positive customer experience. Technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and live chat can help businesses achieve their goal of delighting customers.
Using technology for customer experience can help your customer service team from becoming overwhelmed with handling too many customers. It is also appropriate because customers want to solve their problems themselves. This is where technologies like live chat and bots can come in handy. In addition, technology can relieve agents from handling simple and repetitive concerns. This can save them time and allow them to handle more complex cases.
Technology can help turn customer experience into a seamless and effortless one. It can save both the agent and customer time and effort. As usual, you want to make sure that your team is properly trained and knowledgeable about the technology they are using. Otherwise, whatever money you invested for the technology will simply be thrown out of the window.
8. Create An Omnichannel Experience
Customers will be coming to your store from different channels hence you want to make sure that you have them covered regardless of which channel they are coming from. Building an omnichannel experience is important in ensuring a smooth and seamless customer interaction. 9 out of 10 customers expect an omnichannel experience between communication channels. They expect every interaction to be a similar experience. Unfortunately, only 24% of businesses offer omni channel communication.
Just how important is having an omnichannel strategy? Well, it can yield 89% customer retention. An omnichannel experience helps provide you with a better view of the customer journey. It streamlines all customer interactions into one platform while giving you an insight in to the right action for improving your business. In addition, it can also boost customer lifetime value. Omnichannel customers are 30% more valuable to your business throughout their lifetime.
An omnichannel strategy is not a “nice-to-have” but is essential if you want to become successful and offer a seamless customer experience. First, you need to understand your customer’s needs and then see everything from their perspective. At the end of the day, you will be rewarded through brand loyalty and continuous business.
9. Build Emotional Connections with Customers
The phrase “It’s not what you say but how you say it?” is very much applicable to customer experience. You can say everything you want about your product or service but customers are looking for you to back it up with action. The best experience is best achieved when you create an emotional connection with a customer. According to the Journal of Consumer Research, more than 50% of an experience is based on emotions since they drive decisions.
Creating emotional connections with the customer results in brand loyalty. Optimizing your business for emotional connection can lead to an 85% growth in sales. One survey revealed that emotional attachment was the biggest driver of value. According to the survey, emotional connection accounted for 43% of business value. This is because emotional branding targets a customer’s ego, emotional state, needs, and aspirations.
It is worth noting that 90% of buying decisions are made subconsciously. Unfortunately, 89% of consumers do not feel a personal connection to the brands they are buying. Thus, it is important to tap the emotions of your customers for them to make a purchase. You should only appeal to their emotions but connect with them.
Boosting customer experience should be your top priority. Customers are very vocal when it comes to their experience with a store or website. One bad experience can have an impact on your business so make customer experience count.
Boost Your Customer Experience with airisX
Companies come to us to optimize existing customer support channels and/or to leverage new ones. We focus on incorporating existing processes into your desired channels, and help you scale to other ones as your requirements grow. Get in touch with us at contact@airisx.com to get a customized solution for your needs.