When your customers are happy, so are you. Truthfully speaking, there is no exact formula to deliver a winning customer experience. However, we can all agree that great customer experience includes making things easy for your customers when they interact with your business. A few clicks, a few words, and they get what they want.
Above all, customers prefer nothing more than to do business with companies that they find easy to deal with. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, shared that his secret to success is to think of customers as guests that you’ve invited to your party. And your job is to make things all aspects of customer experience a little better, every day.
According to Dimension Data 2019 Global CX Benchmarking Report, the top two benefits of providing winning customer experience are piling up the tally of loyal customers that a business has and increased profits and revenue. It’s no secret that customer experience has become the deciding factor for businesses to succeed, but what exactly is needed to hit the bullseye?
Winning Customer Experience: Mapping Out Customer Journey
An incredible customer experience begins by mapping out the customer journey with several steps that can be easily applied. It includes every step that customers take when interacting with your business.
Each stage involved must be seen through the customer’s point of view. It’s even better when you put yourself in customer’s shoes and go through the same journey that they would take. But for this to work, everyone involved in the process must be on the same page.
Once all the cogs and gears are set, you need to know what your customer needs and wants. You can identify anything that might pose problems to your customers through an exhaustive research on the market. Data from price comparison, features, reviews, and feedback will provide you with invaluable insights to understanding what your customers want.
Still, it doesn’t end there. After the purchase was made, your next task is to monitor customer experience when they are using your products or services. Be in mind that you should always be ready to provide customer support to help with any issue your customers might face. CX expert, Shep Hyken, strongly pointed out that companies that provide excellent customer support will set a benchmark for the rest of the market.
Winning Customer Experience: Meeting Customers Where They Are
A survey by Genesys found that customers want to be able to connect with businesses via various channels – 63% by phone, 17% via company website, and 7% through social media.
Despite the high percentage of those who prefer to connect on phones, it doesn’t mean that businesses should only focus customer support for phone interactions. It is the provider’s responsibility to recognize what customers want and meet where customers are.
In an interview with Ray Wang, principal analyst, founder and chairman of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research, it was highlighted that excellent customer experience involves delivering a set of immersive communication experience for customers. Average customers don’t really care which channel they can use to connect with a business, as long as it’s the one they’re using.
In the end, it is up to businesses to take the extra mile and reach customers on whichever channel they prefer, deliver what has been offered, and minimize the number of actions that customers have to take during the interaction process.
Personalizing Customer Experience
How well do you know your customers? Do you know what they want? Often we think about delivering personalized customer experience without knowing what customers’ needs and wants are. As such, personalizing customer experience should be done from customer’s perspective.
Put yourself in customer’s shoes, and see all the spectrums that customers belong to based on their different preferences. Once you know the challenges that may come up when customers use your services/products, you will be able to truly tailor your services to reflect your customers’ lifestyle.
Delivering personalized customer experience means more than just greeting your customers by their name. It is true that customers will expect dynamic offerings that they could not get elsewhere. However, it is more important for businesses to be consistent when interacting, in order to set consistent expectations for customers. For instance, if your promotional email uses a unique style to address customers, keep the style going until it becomes a signature to your brand.
Surprising Your Customers
Customers love it when they are presented with unexpected gestures from their service provider. It doesn’t have to necessarily be anything over the top. Rather, something that would make customers feel that their service provider actually gave attention to customer preferences.
A better way to look at this is through Spotify’s suggestion algorithm. The system gives possible tracks that the user might enjoy based on the music that they’ve been listening to for certain periods. This way, users are able to discover new tracks that suit their listening buds. Plus, the suggestions are not forced on the users. They may choose to simply ignore the suggestions or take a look at what has been tailored for them, making it a great way of delivering personalized and refreshing experience for customers.
The example above highlights one important aspect that businesses have to carefully consider. Instead of being reactive, businesses are now required to take a more proactive approach to gain an ongoing and wholesome control of customer experience. If you run a hotel and a guest has just arrived, why not offer them a simple cup of coffee? Even if they chose not to drink it, the gesture will still leave a positive impression on your services.
Conclusion
Many things can be said when it comes to delivering a winning CX. But at its core, customer experience is about human interactions. Your job as a provider is to do everything in your power to create lasting bonds between customers and your brand.
For that to happen, understanding customer behaviour is exceptionally crucial – what or why they buy a product, and what they want from the interactions and experiences with your business. Take great care of your customers, and they’ll keep coming back to you for more.
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