Keeping your clients happy plays a significant role in how successful your business is likely to become – hence the reason why all business owners should be paying attention to optimizing customer experience. Remember that a single negative customer experience can do more harm than just cause you to lose that one customer. It can also result in a severely damaged widespread reputation due to word of mouth.
With that in mind, here are some great tips for optimizing customer experience going above and beyond for all of your customers and boosting customer loyalty when you do.
Make it easy for them to get in touch with you
These days, customers expect real-time responses and will be keen to contact you across a wide variety of mediums. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you included your contact details at the top of every page on your website?
- Have you included links to your social media pages on your website?
- Have you made sure that your customer receives a reply within the hour when interacting with your brand via social media?
- Is your company responsive to emails?
- Do you have qualified customer service agents answering your phones?
- Have you implemented a help desk self-service portal?
Invest in help desk software
Help desk software is no longer reserved for big businesses with big budgets. There are now a number of help desk software solutions for small enterprises, too. This software is created to make it easier to assist customers with any issues that they may be experiencing or any questions that they may have. It maximizes organization within your customer service team and promises happier customers due to a reduction in the time that exists between laying a complaint / asking a question and resolving the problem / answering the query.
Provide your customer service agents with adequate training
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how quickly your customer service agents respond to a customer query or complaint if they are not doing so in the most professional, accommodating manner. Therefore, providing adequate training to your team is vital – and it should be an ongoing process rather than a once-off task. Along with training them in how best to deal with customers, you should also make doubly certain that they have a good understanding of how to use the various resources available to them.
Look at various metrics
The analytics and metrics surrounding your business will provide you with insight into what is working and what is not from a customer experience perspective. Look at metrics such as customer cart abandonment rate, cost per customer acquisition, and bounce rate, and make improvements using this information as your guide.
Provide extra value
Considering how many other businesses you are having to compete against, simply providing a great product or service isn’t enough. You need to provide your customers with added value at every possible opportunity to keep them coming back for more. Think loyalty programs, exclusive discounts, ‘just because’ vouchers, and personalized communication. Make it worth their while to remain loyal to your business, and you will immediately see an improvement in customer retention rates.
Happier customers usually equal higher profits and maximum business longevity. Make customer experience a strong focus going forward, and your organization is sure to thrive as a result.
