You have come across the term ‘customer experience’ every now and then but do you really know what that experience is? Well, it is merely a perception that a customer has about your brand or product.
In your opinion, your brand and customer experience may be one thing together but if the customer perceives it to be different, then that is what customer experience is.
You may be under the impression that your products and services are the best and you give the best customer experience but when a customer receives a faulty product or services, then their perception towards you and your organization changes, which becomes the real thing.
Thus, creating a good customer experience strategy is one of the most important things to do for a company. Improving the existing customer experience has the ability to reflect in the company’s revenues. The CX index is a way of measurement to quantify things like service quality, sales, and loyalty.
Consider a scenario where an organization hires its store and call centre employees who are least interested in the job at hand. The obvious result would be poor customer interactions leading to a misconception among the customers that the brand has zero concern for growing big and does not care about its customers.
But this is not the reality. Meanwhile, suppose a company hires passionate people who are enthusiastic about the organization and its products and services. They will have smoother and better quality customer engagements. The customers will be highly satisfied and have a better perception of the company, in terms of everything that they provide.
‘Customer is the King’ is a very popular line that companies and brands use all over. Sometimes they forget that a king must be treated with utmost reverence and held in high esteem. A company trying to quickly cut down on some expenses is not bad, but what impact it has on the CX, is a thing to ponder over.
Why should an organization improve its CX?
Businesses have identified that a satisfactory customer experience strategies have 3 short term and long benefits:
Catering to these reasons has a great impact on the company’s overall revenues.
You may employ the best digital marketing strategies and tips but directing the customers through your web site, social media and mail marketing, still leaves space for some more improvisations. Once people start seeing you and recognizing you as a brand or company, their journey from then on determines how much money they are willing to spend on your company and contribute to its end revenues.
When does a customer approach a support representative? It happens when they have an issue, a concern, a problem or a complaint. This shows that the customer is experiencing something that is not positive. They would have tried to solve it on their own before reaching out for customer support. At this point, they are already frustrated.
Your organization should be best placed to address such issues. The easiest way for you, as the decision-maker of the organization, is to provide support from Monday to Friday, 9:00 pm to 6:00 pm.
But this is not feasible for all customers. Some of them prefer a phone call or a live chat. Some would like to send out an e-mail and there are some who would want an automated response.
Whatever the process is, it has to be quick, effective and user friendly. Nobody wants to explain the situation to one representative, only to be put on hold and transferred to another department and then again explaining the whole situation to him, once more.
It is not wrong to say that this way of customer support is not helping the organization in any way. You might even lose the customer. It is wise to offer multiple support options to keep the customers content.
Complaints from customers are not encouraging but they can be valuable. When a problem arises, try to inspect why it happened and instead of just solving it, correct it and never let it happen again. This approach will reduce the number of complaints as well as the cost to the company.
An efficient and smooth navigating web site has higher conversion rates. Do not clutter the web site with too many buttons, colours, menus, etc. Include the content in large font and make it easy to read for the customers. Use good quality visuals and graphics, which catch people’s attention and are retained for a longer time. Draw the viewers attention to the CTA section.
People usually tend to include ‘near me’ in their searches for everything. In the past years or so, the searches have become more detailed and accurate. To make the most of it, clearly show your business name, contact number and address. Use schema markup and set up your Google My Business listing correctly. Integrating Google Map with the listing is also a neat idea for CX and to get better rankings.
This is not only about the home page. All pages in your web site must load fast or else it will not see as many conversions. The customers’ time is precious, they would not bother to have another look at your web site, if it keeps taking time or crashes often. They will hop to another web site which might be your competitor and as a result you will lose business. If the loading time is to be decreased, then you may have to invest some money in it and get it done. This would be beneficial in the long run though.
Data, known as breakpoint analysis, tells the point at which it is no more profitable to enhance an existing CX. Take the case of a vehicle rental company. The breakpoint analysis revealed that customers did not mind if they waited in queue for 3 minutes or 5 minutes. Cutting short the waiting time from the present 5 minutes to 3 minutes would have cost a lot of finances, so the company decided against it since it does not matter much to the customer. Learn to gather such data and implement it accordingly.
Today, most of the global web traffic comes from mobile users. Mobile phone users are trending whereas the desktop and laptop users are losing ground. Ensure that you give equal importance to all users. Mobile phone usage is rising and it is convenient for a customer to accomplish something from a phone rather than wait for laptop or desktop. Be prepared to lose revenues when your site is not mobile optimized.
For many prospective customers, reviews are the only way helping them to take a final decision. Organizations and companies should realize this and gather good reviews. As a brand, try to get something good from customers on your most important products or services.
Sometimes, it is the individual product that matters more than the brand’s overall rating. Ask customers what they felt using the particular service or product that they used, with details. Encourage the customers to upload some photos along with the reviews.
They form a part of local content and are quite useful when someone else is looking for information. At times, your customers’ photos are better than what you have and these can be used on your web site.
Researches show that customer experience strategies are linked to 3 behavioural elements: eagerness to buy, not willing to switch and most likely to recommend to others. All these factors contribute to the company’s revenues at some point of time.
For example, in case of a huge hotel, customer experience alone can increase the annual revenue manifold times. Banks are another industry that gain immensely from their customers and the airline industry to gains the maximum by positive CX.
Every single thing that a brand does, the products it sells, the sales processes, the after-sales follow ups, its internal leadership, its services, etc., all boils down to one thing- CX.
CX is the summation of how the customers engage and become involved in your company and brand, not just in a given span of time but throughout the cycle of being a customer.
Customer experience is very delicate and tends to change with each interaction with the organization. So it is mandatory to maintain a strong CX throughout. If not the most, it is one of the most priceless aspects of a brand. And managing that in all of its forms is the topmost priority and should be the responsibility of every employee in the company.
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