One of the most important things that you have to consider for your business to be a success is the opinions of your customers. Without customers, you don’t have a business, which is why it’s so important that you make sure that they are as happy as can be at all turns. You need to make their experience of interacting with your business and your brand as easy as possible, and that means looking at how you can improve the way they see you from day one. Customer experience will have an impact on your profit count at the end of the year, and even just one happy customer can impact those numbers. If you ensure that you are watching the way your website works and your employees interact, you’re going to see a rise in profits and an increase in loyalty from people.
The thing is, improving your customer experience is not just a one-time thing. There is no one way to make this experience a positive one: there are many. The more you keep on top of your customers’ opinions and experiences, the better you will be able to improve in the future. It’s up to you to ensure that you are working towards a positive impact on people, and we’ve got some hints to help you to make it happen. Let’s dive in!
- Start With Your Staff
If you want your customers to have a good experience with your brand, you need to start with the people working for it. Your staff have been hired by you, are paid by you and are trained by you – which means that they should be excellent with customers! If you want to win at the customer experience, then you must start with the people who interact with them every day. No one wants to buy from a company that only has rude and abrupt employees, but they do want to purchase from companies where the people on the front line are smiling and when the voice at the end of the phone makes them feel good. We’re not saying that your teams have to soothe the customers and give them compliments, but no one likes to feel stupid when they call with a query. Empower and train your employees to be able to answer queries, approve discounts and offer new services where applicable. Starting with your staff is vital, as this is going to stretch out in your face-to-face dealings with customers, your online encounters and even your business social media.
- Ask Your Employees For Feedback
Going off the point above, you need to talk to your staff. Ask them what the customers are thinking and feeling. Ask them what the most popular queries and problems are that come through. You cannot make improvements to your business without knowing what is going wrong in the first place. You will be able to kill two birds with one stone when you do this. Asking your employees for feedback makes them feel valued, and that their ideas matter. You also gain valuable insight into the mind of the customers who are trying to find a solution to their problem. When you ask your employees for help, they feel more willing to engage at work and know that their suggestions hold weight with you. You can go one better, too, by asking your employees for suggestions about how you can do better for them as individuals. It’ll help to keep people motivated.
- Embrace AI
Have you upgraded your website to include website chat software yet? If not, you’re one of the few companies who haven’t! AI was made for the customer experience. Chatbots are there all the time, answering queries in the hours that your business is closed but your customers are up. They’re there to help you to understand what people mean in text form, which bridges language barriers. AI can also offer you the chance to gain insight into what your customers want, and if you want some real life examples of AI in action, think about Dominos! A huge pizza giant, Dominos offer customers the chance to order via a bot on Facebook Messenger. This can save them so much time trying to call through, especially if they know their order. AI is transforming the way that customers are interacting with companies, and you can make the life of your customers much easier when you embrace it, too.
- Mobile-Friendly Is Key!
More people are on their smartphones today than they ever have been before. If you are embracing being online, then you need to make sure that your main website is smartphone friendly, too. From ensuring that your website can be optimized to Android and Apple phones, to creating your own app, mobile technology has to be at the forefront of your mind. Your customers are likely to be on their phones the very first time they interact with your brand. You need to be able to exceed expectations that your customers have, and you need to meet and exceed them every single time. Being mobile-first, you will earn their loyalty and prove that you put the customers first.
- Get Personal
If there is one thing that all customers want from every business, it’s to feel special and wanted. For this, you need to personalize their experiences. You want to understand your customers, so get deep and ask them what would make their experience with you a good one! You can use data to personalize survey questions to your audience, and you can even personalize it all by geolocation. If you have a subscription box on your website and people have signed up, you can see their past purchases and start offering discounts based on those! Getting personal doesn’t mean asking for their intimate details, it means being personal in the way that you follow up with them and their experience. When you can offer dynamic content, you are going to be able to make customers happy – and that’s what you want after all!
- Go From the Top Down
If you want to improve the customer experience, start with your company partners and other leaders. You want to make sure that there is a “lead by example” approach here, as your employees cannot do their best unless they can see you doing the same. They need to observe how your management team treats customers to know how to do it themselves if your leaders are customer-focused, this will inspire the employees working on the floor. They will start to work in the same way, which is going to be the best possible approach for your customers.
- Make a Visual
Have you ever mapped the journey your customers go on? From the way they “meet” your brand to the way they buy from you, you need to look at your customer experience from the moment they encounter your business, through to a complete purchase. You can improve your current customer experience and envision ways to do things better at the same time.
- Ask For More Feedback
Do you know what customers love to do? They love to tell you what you are doing right and wrong. Open the conversation with them and ask them for the feedback you need to hear to get it right with their experience. Customers are always happy to give their opinions, especially if they can do it in return for a discount code or two! You may not be able to ask every single customer about your brand, but you can use open-text questions when you do your survey on social media, your website and via email. Once you have enough feedback, you can make positive, long-term changes. Analyzing the data will help you to make better decisions!
- Make Your Service Better
Your customer support is so important, and as it’s the backbone of your customer experience, you need to make improvements where you can. Customers who have a great service will buy more and stay loyal to your brand now and in the future. Customers don’t stick around just because you can provide the right product they do so because you provide the right service and support. You need to offer more channels for support, from online web chat to text messaging and more. You can optimize your waiting times on the phone with more people on the line and you can use the right metrics to measure the results!
- Embrace Social Media
People will look for your business on social media first, so you need to get online and get active. If you want to open a good conversation with your customers, then get online and set up social media on all platforms possible. The more you are available online, the better off you will be when it comes to offering the right experience to your customers.
Make experience the main priority with your business and you will maintain better profits and happier people working for you and using your products. Don’t believe it? Start today!
