If you want to make your customers happy, you need to take the time to create an amazing and memorable customer experience. The customer experience goes beyond the products and services you provide. Customer experience is about how those products and services make your customers feel. It’s about how they feel when interacting with your business and staff. If you’re not making a genuine effort to give your customers a memorable experience, they’ll go elsewhere. Here are a few simple ways your business can start enhancing the customer experience today.
Consider the Customer’s Perspective
Do you know where your customers are coming from? What do they need or want from your business? What do they value most? From your customers’ perspective, what are you doing to get them to feel as though they are receiving value for their business?
Each customer comes to your business with a specific goal and expectation. It’s your job to make sure they achieve that goal. Before you bring that new product or service to market, you need to have a customer’s perspective. At some point, you need to look at your company through the eyes of your customer.
Try to remember what your customers really want. Know their pain points, and then do your best to eliminate them. The best way to do that is to truly understand what your customers are going through. You will need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and assess your business and its processes from their perspective. This way, you will be able to identify and actually fix things your customers might encounter and ensure you are providing the best service and experience possible.
Make Sure Your Customers Have a Voice
It’s your customer’s right to be heard. In any business, it’s imperative to remember to ask your customers what they think. If they aren’t sure what to say, show them the way. Give them a call or take the time to meet them in-store and work with them directly.
Customers need to be given a chance to voice their opinions, and businesses need to be receptive. Don’t neglect listening to your customers, and put your customers’ needs first. Ask customers about the problems they have, and then make sure you implement an innovative solution that solves those problems. Listen for what your customers don’t like and fix those issues. Doing this will give you better insight into your customers’ needs and allow you to further improve on the customer experience.
Be Authentic and Personable in Your Interactions With Customers
People prefer to do business with companies that are authentic and personable. If you want your customers to come back again and again, show them that you are genuine in your dealings with them. Authenticity leads to trust and is the foundation of a strong relationship with your customers. From the initial contact, it should be transparent and genuine. When customers see authenticity and a human side to your business, they will trust you more and feel more comfortable interacting with your business.
You also want to provide personable, welcoming customer service. Take the time to become familiar with the customers you interact with. Build rapport by being genuine and talking to your customers like they’re your friends. Ask them about their interests or hobbies. It will make a positive impact on your customer’s experience. If you’re doing things right, customers will have a better experience with your company because they like you as a person.
Surprise and Delight Your Customers
Your customers are people. They want to be surprised and delighted. They want to be catered to and taken care of. Treat your customers like the VIPs they are, and your company will continue to be a top choice. If you don’t know how to get started, you can hire someone who can make you memorable and your customers will keep coming back for more.
Be mindful of the small things that can make a huge impact. Sometimes the simplest touchpoint can make the biggest difference. You can surprise and delight your customers in a number of ways. It could be as simple as always greeting them by name and asking how they are doing. You could provide them with coupons they can use right then and there or at a later date, if they so desire. You could offer special promotions and benefits. Or you could send them a card or gift for their birthday. It could be a small gesture, but customers often remember these things.
Thank the Customer for Their Patronage
An important step in creating a memorable customer experience is showing appreciation to your customers. Let them know how much you appreciate them for choosing to do business with you. Your customers are the ones who buy the product or service. You can thank them for their patronage simply by treating them with respect and dignity. When you treat your customers with respect, you show them that you value them.
Also, make sure you are always taking note of the big and little things that your customers appreciate. Consider adding a “Thank You” card or note to the orders and reviews section of your website. Even if you’re just sending an email, consider including a “Thank You” message to let your customers know that you appreciate their business.
Treat your customers well and your chances of getting repeat business will increase.
Handle Complaints With Care
It is inevitable that you’ll have some unhappy customers when running a business. You will receive complaints and negative feedback every now and then, but it’s important to handle the situation well and be responsive to those problems as soon as you can. You need to make a genuine effort to rectify the problem. Listen carefully and take into consideration what the customer is saying to you.
When your customers contact you with an issue, take care to help them the way they prefer. Whether they contact you via chat or phone, make sure they receive helpful, non-judgmental and empathetic responses.
Improve Convenience
You need to make it easy for your customers to find and access your business and your services. Customers don’t want to have to work through several individual interactions with your business before they get to the next one. Your customers shouldn’t have to fill out lengthy forms or go through hoops to get something resolved.
One of the best ways to increase your customers’ satisfaction is to ensure that they can easily and conveniently find what they need and do what they need to do to receive the services you offer.
It’s crucial that you eliminate any frustration points and simplify the whole process of doing business with you. Ensure that your website and other platforms are easy to navigate, customer-friendly, intuitive and visually appealing. Incorporating the following can further help create a better customer experience:
- Offer multiple purchasing options: in-store, online, BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) / Click and Collect
- Provide a secure and seamless checkout
- Provide multi-lingual support and content
- Improve your website page load speed
- Shorten delivery times
Create a Customer-focused Culture
Culture is an attitude that permeates the organisation. A customer-focused culture encourages your employees to put customers first and to do the little things that matter. Cultivating a customer-centric culture begins with hiring the right people who are confident, engaged and who view the customer experience as a given. Set up a system to help your employees better understand what the customer experience is and provide training on quality customer service.
A recent study shows that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that aren’t. If your customers feel that they’re not having a good experience with your business, they are likely to go elsewhere. So, it’s crucial that everyone in your organisation strives to make sure that every interaction with your customers is positive and memorable.
