Do you take great pride on your company’s customer service department? Are you aware how your customer service personnel treat customer service calls? Do you sometimes confuse the customer experience with your primary branding efforts? How do your customers experience dealing with your brand? Knowing the answers to these questions is crucial to determine how your customers feel about your business, your products and the services you provide to them.
Defining "Customer Experience"
Primarily, customer experience is meeting your customers’ wants and needs, while creating long-term, loyal relationships. First, you must understand what your customer expects when dealing with your company.
Once you know what your customers want, give it to them. You must deliver this level of service consistently, every time they call, visit or write. Christine Mauro, writing for MarketingProfs.com, outlined valuable tips for creating a consistently positive customer experience. Consider using these features to build the long-standing customer relationships you want:
Meet Your Current Customers’ Wants and Needs – Surprised? Probably not. First, understand your customer base. Are they 20-, 30- or 40-somethings? Teenagers or seniors? Wants and needs for these groups differ widely. Understanding the difference helps you create outstanding customer experience features. This, then, generates loyal, buying and engaged customers.
Understand Your Desired Customer Outcome – How do you want your customers to feel about your company? Define the result you want for your customers and take all action to make it happen exactly as you envision it. For example, if you want to make it easy for customers to exchange one product for another, make it easy for them to do so. They will be happy and you will have achieved your customer experience goal.
Make Their Experience as Personal as Possible – Customize your operations to make customers feel that they are important as individuals, not just revenue producers. For example, sending or responding to emails involving customer questions should, whenever, possible include their name and any other personal information you have that is pertinent. Your customers will, consciously or subconsciously, feel good about your organization.
Additional Components that Help Your Company Achieve Wonderful Customer Experience
Be Clear and Understandable – Do not communicate with customers by using intercompany codes or insider slang or jargon. Concentrate on being clear, using a “voice” and words that should be understood by the majority of the population. Answer customer inquiries pleasantly and conversationally. This further enhances the “personal” customer experience quotient.
Understand That Customers View Your Company as One Entity – Your organization may have many departments and diverse groups responsible for different functions. However, your customers see your company as one, integrated organization. Mauro describes this as “aligning touch points.” All functional departments should operate as one fine-tuned machine when relating to your customers.
Address All Details – Even if your website looks totally fabulous, your customer experience level could suffer if you forget to address all details on various pages. Proofread and examine each word or graphic image in every area of your website. Be sure your site is easy to navigate, filled with useful information. Don’t neglect your terms and conditions page or agreement. Emphasize to your legal counsel that, while you want to be legally protected, you want your non-attorney customers to read – and understand – your terms of use. These simple details, often overlooked, can improve, or detract from, developing loyal customers.
Keep Your Superior Customer Experience Goal at the Forefront of All Policies – Keep your “eyes on the prize.” Give your customers multiple reasons to become loyal, engaged fans of your company. Even those people who are only subconsciously aware of how they “feel” about your organization, become more or less loyal based on their customer experience.
Treating the customer experience factor as only a branding effort lowers the value of the entire customer service, focus and full experience feature. While important to your branding strategy, improving your customer experience quotient delivers long-term benefits – including increased revenue – to your company.
You’re probably aware that keeping current customers happy and engaged is much less expensive than creating new fans. However, focusing on outstanding customer experience features will keep your loyal, happy fans, while also generating new, soon-to-be-happy customers who then should become pleased with the relationship over the long term.
Consider integrating these suggestions into your branding, marketing and customer service strategies. If you currently use some of these tips, continue or increase them. Evaluate those suggestions that you feel are not current components of your strategies. Implement those elements that you believe will enhance your customer experience level. Your bottom line will be as pleasant to read as your customers are to tout the wonders of doing business with your organization.
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