When you’re unhappy with a product or service, will you work with that company again? If you’re like 90% of customers, then you won’t: you’ll search for another business to work with.
Having a solid customer experience strategy can help you please your customers, encouraging them to spend more money while discouraging them to drift away to competitors. But how can you create a quality experience for the people who buy from you?
Keep reading to learn about what customer experiences are and how you can go about creating a fantastic one.
What Are Customer Experiences?
CX, or customer experience, refers to the experiences and interactions that people have with your business. It begins the moment they first contact you and continues for as long as they continue to work with you.
CX is an important part of customer relationship management or CRM. This is because a happy customer who has a positive experience working with a business is much more likely to work with them again in the future.
Studies have shown that customers like working with companies that offer quality customer service, respond to inquiries or issues, and offer a personalized service. Make sure to do all of this to help create a quality experience for people!
How Do They Differ From Customer Service?
If you read that and felt like it sounds like customer service, that’s because it does. Customer service and customer experience parallel one another, and in some places, intersect.
What sets them apart is the scope. If someone has an issue ordering a product, and you help them resolve it, then you’ve provided them with quality customer service. However, if the customer then receives the product early, as well as a coupon, then you’ve given them a positive customer experience.
Customer service is a part of the entire customer experience. Paying attention to both is important, and is the best way to retain customers.
How Important Is Customer Experience?
At their core, businesses exist to do two things: find new customers and retain existing ones. Business executives and leaders understand the importance of customer experience, with surveys showing that they consider it to be one of the most important strategic objectives.
Yet while most companies understand the importance of a quality customer experience, few are able to provide it. If you think about the brands you interact with on a regular basis, it’s unlikely that many stand out. Some may provide adequate service, and some may provide awful service.
So how can you craft a quality experience for anyone who does business with you?
Understand Who Your Customers Are
One of the first things you need to do is have a clear understanding of who your customers are. If you’re unsure, but tailor the customer experience you provide to what you think the average person is like, you’re going to run into problems.
In order to understand customer wants and needs, you have to be able to empathize and connect with them. One way to help your business do that is to segment and divide your customers into different groups.
For example, you may have an Alice customer, who is 25 and good with technology. On the other hand, Mark who is 55 may need some help when it comes to working with different devices. Having different customer models will help you know how to help them.
Have a Vision
Business values may sound cheesy, but they provide a sense of direction for your employees to follow. These can act as a sense of guiding principles for everyone in your business to follow.
For example, if you seek to provide people with a family-like customer experience where you treat each person with care, that’ll help your employees deliver service that wows people.
Make sure that everyone you work with is clear on your business values. If someone isn’t, they can tarnish the reputation that you’re trying to promote. You also need to control your product information, ensuring that it follows your company vision.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Emotions
Think about some of the best customer experiences you’ve had. Odds are it wasn’t what a customer service worker said, but what they did instead.
When someone makes a phone call to a customer service hotline, they expect the person who answers to be polite. They expect the employees to say “please” and “thank you”, and to resolve their problems. You need to go above and beyond that.
If you have a customer who needs help buying a pair of shoes to wear to the funeral of her late husband, how can you make her experience better? Being polite is a start, but providing her with free shipping and a note expressing the company’s condolences will be something that she’ll never forget.
Optimize Your Customer Experience
The best customer journey is one that continues to adapt and change with the times. A CX model from 10 years ago may not be able to cover all of the issues that people face today.
Many companies attempt to remedy this by asking customers to rate their experiences. Although this can help you get an idea of what people are thinking, most businesses do little in between the survey period.
Instead, take advantage of social media or project management software so that people can leave you continuous feedback that you can always use to improve.
Be a Business You’d Want to Work With
Figuring out how to provide great customer experiences is one of the best ways to get your customers to stay with you. Make sure that you and your employees provide anyone who works with you with a level of service that nobody is able to pass up.
Do you now have a better idea of how to create a quality experience for your customers each and every time you work with them? If you do, make sure to check out some of our other blog posts for more guides and tips.
