You always hear us telling you that you must prioritize your customers. It might sound cliché but the truest essence of an exceptional business or startup lies in that. When you closely check any success story in business or entrepreneurship you notice a customer-centric culture. We are now in a New Year and you have another opportunity to improve how you treat and handle your customers. It is all about improving customer experiences. Customer experience is the totality of interactions a customer has with a brand and its products or services. Grasping the concept of customer experience is needed for effective customer relationship management. Here are tips on how you can improve customer experiences in 2022.
First Things First – Step Into The Customer’s Shoes
The idea behind is this is that you want to get a hang of what customers go through when interacting with your brand. This ranges from your marketing channels, the ordering and purchasing process to after-sales areas such as customer query handling. You must also get a hang of who is involved in every aspect of all those interactions a customer goes through. These are just the basics but you will notice that they expand and extrapolate to even more points of discussion. You might be wondering, why is all of this necessary?
You have to do all this to get an appreciation of the status quo. That process helps you identify valuable insights about the present state of your customer experiences. Assess the present state of customer experiences from 3 angles. The 3 angles I am pointing to here are marketing, sales, and customer service. You will realize loopholes, weak links, and shortcomings. This will paint a picture of what needs to be worked on moving forward.
Leverage On Insights From Customer Churn
I am amazed at how many businesses or startups casually take customer churn. Some arrogantly say that if you lose customers you can always get other customers. The unfortunate thing is that most enterprises think customers leaving are not their fault per se. This is a careless assumption that is not borne out of the empirical investigation. When customers leave or stop regularly doing business with you, make a conscious effort to find out why. Of course, you can end up bringing some back whereas others might never come back. However, what is most important is to get insights into why they left. It sucks to hear negative comments about your brand but it pays to know so that you improve. Customer churn is a clear and obvious indicator that there is poor customer experience somehow. Thus the wisest thing to do is to learn from it.
Make Sure Employees Are Fulfilled
Like it or not most of the customer experience is tied to employees. How good or bad employees interact with customers defines the greater part of their experience. That is why you must solicit some employee feedback. Get to understand what their work experience is like. Are they able to do their job well? Are they satisfied with their remuneration and overall treatment? Is there anything they need to improve their working conditions? These are examples of the areas you must investigate so that you understand your employees’ experiences. The end goal is to then ensure that employees are fulfilled and have all they need to do their job well.
Personalization
If you want to know the best way to please customers it is through personalization. The forms personalization can assume are so many – it is up to your creative imagination. Let me just cite some examples. Imagine the positive impact it has when you send out appreciation messages to customers after they make a purchase. You can do so via SMS or email; it feels so personal and customers love this. Ironically, very few businesses do this yet it can build customer loyalty. Another example can be sending out birthday messages or even gifts when it is key clients’ birthdays. These are two inexpensive examples but I am sure you get the idea of what personalization is all about.
Continually Improve Your Products Or Services
All else might not matter if your products or services are poor. Products or services are meant to address people’s problems. If they fail to do that then you cannot expect customers to be satisfied. Products or services that work play a major role in positively boosting customer experiences. If you invest time and resources in continually improving your offerings your customers will stick with you always. Involve them in this process so that what you make and offer consummately meets customers at their point of need.
Let me reiterate that you must constantly work towards knowing your customers well. You must consider that they tend to have busy and demanding lives. This must inform your speed in dealing with or attending to customers. Customers want service that is quick and efficient. It is vital to appreciate that when a customer comes to you they have a challenge or pain point. You will only impress them if you and what you offer addresses their issues. Customers crave to be prioritized and paid attention to; be sensitive to their needs. In so doing you significantly improve customer experiences for your brand.
