When improving customer experience, businesses often focus on customer service. However, with the necessity of online presence and the creation of online user experiences that are separate from the physical world, these have become distinct things. Where customer service is concerned with the interactions that support and help build trust between a brand and its consumer base, the definition of customer experience is much more expansive.
Customer experience is a term that refers to all interactions between the brand and the consumer. Marketing, customer service, and online user experience all fall into this category. As eCommerce has become more important and more interconnected through mobile devices and apps, creating an overall top-notch digital experience for your customers is essential to business success.
With over 50% of consumers reporting that they change brands after one poor experience and COVID-19, forcing businesses to build digital experiences to stay afloat, improving your customers’ digital experience is imperative for success. Research and analytics can help fuel your improvements, ensuring that you are creating the right experience for the right customers. Focusing on engagement, personalization, rewards, and anticipation of customer needs can massively improve your customer’s experience with your brand.
Improving Customer Experience and Service
Customer experience and service go hand in hand and are integral to building the tone and maturity of your company. As eCommerce platforms have become more necessary, it is exceptionally important to put a mature, professional face forward. To do this, you will need to refine how users experience your company and how you respond to their needs.
1. Customer Experience Tip: Anticipate What Your Client Needs
Anticipating needs is a necessary part of any relationship, and this is especially true when it comes to your customers. On a customer service level, this can mean having information regarding a customer’s purchase and service history available for reference and extrapolation. This can be useful for both an in-person customer service department and using automated response systems.
On a customer experience level, this means investigating each of the interactions that customers have with the brand as a whole. Tracking where a customer comes from — your social media postings, email blasts, etc. — can let you target where you show that customer your marketing materials. You can also offer anticipatory offers to your clients based on their interaction history, products that they already use, and trends in their data.
This contributes to the feeling that your brand knows the customer on an individual level. Rather than receiving blanket offers, you are tailoring them to what your client needs. You know what they want, and you are ready to offer them the solution before they even know they need it.
2. Engage With Your Customer
Dynamic, genuine engagement with your customers is the challenge of any business online. Focus on giving them as close to the same experience as they would experience in your brick-and-mortar store. Interconnected devices and apps are an increasingly popular way of staying engaged with customers and keeping them coming back.
Developing mobile-based accessibility for your company can greatly improve the overall customer experience. Not only are you making it easy for them to connect with your product, but you can also use the analytics that you have begun tracking to ensure that you are creating a tailored experience for them. You can also increase satisfaction by building in helpful tools.
For example, if your company sells paint, include features that calculate how many gallons of paint are needed for different sized walls or projects. For any industry, including an interactive chatbot or frequently asked questions section can let users get quick answers to common or potential questions. By going past accessibility into convenience, you improve the overall customer experience while providing high-quality customer service.
3. Customer Experience Tip: Reward Interactions
Rewards programs have been around for a long time because they are effective tools for deepening customer experience and loyalty. Customer-business relationships are not logical and statistical, they are emotional. Use every customer interaction, sale, or email sign up as an opportunity to reward positive interaction. This can improve the customer experience as they see an immediate personalized response from the company, making them feel seen and personally taken care of.
Arguably, it is even more necessary to be responsive and attentive to negative interactions. If a customer completes a one-word survey after interacting with your company and rates it one star, the customer service team should immediately follow up in person to see what they can do to improve the relationship. Not only does this establish your company as having an attentive and effective customer service department, but establishes that all interactions are important to you.
Follow-up on negative interactions rewards the customer for interacting with your company more extensively and demonstrates a desire to provide them with the best experience and support possible. Building this into your digital experience can improve both your customer experience and customer service.
Improving Your Business Through CX
Creating an improved customer experience is an endeavor that touches every part of your business. From mobile accessibility to marketing, the customer experience is built into every interaction you have with your current and potential customers. It even includes the design of your logo and website; staying abreast of trends in CX and UX design will keep you at the forefront of business development.
Studies have shown that businesses that focus on customer experience have more satisfied employees and higher revenue. This environment and these results are created by focusing on the experience that everyone has with your company, from its marketing to its customer service, to its online presence. By designing your digital customer experience to be responsive, mature, and interactive, you can improve every aspect of your business.
