This is a collaborate post by Ellie Jo about customers.
There are plenty of things that’ll contribute to business success, including, of course, the strength of your ideas and the execution of those ideas. However, while those things will get the initial interest of the public, they may not guarantee long-term success. Only creating a positive customer experience will do that. If you have repeat customers, then the future of your business will look a lot brighter! But how should you go about this? Below, we’ll take a look at some of the most effective ways to ensure your customers have nothing but good things to say about your business.
image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-earpiece-using-white-laptop-computer-210647/
How Do You Want To Help Them?
All companies should exist to help their customers in one way or another. This can be through alleviating a problem they face or helping them to become the best version of themselves. While the customer benefits of your core duties may be obvious, it’s worthwhile creating a mission statement that underpins your relationship with your customers. You can use it as a guiding light that influences all aspects of your customer dealings. In effect, you’ll need to simply ask: how do you want to help your customers?
Who Are They?
You’ll be able to help your customers much more effectively if you know who they are. The needs of an older person would be different from the needs of a millennial. You’ll find that you’re able to craft a much better customer experience just by having a deep understanding of the needs, aspirations, financial income, and more about your customer base. Even things like your website design and the language you use on your site would differ depending on who you’re talking to.
Ask For Feedback
You don’t have to second guess everything about your customers. Not when you can just ask them directly! Getting feedback from customers isn’t something that enough businesses make the most of. They will literally tell you about their experience of dealing with your company, and may make suggestions. Of course, you can’t take every suggestion or piece of feedback on board, but if you ask enough people, then it’s likely that, at some point, you’ll begin to see a trend emerging. You’ll have tested various aspects of your business yourself to ensure it’s beneficial to your customers, but you’ll still be looking at it through the lens of the owner/employee. Your customers will give you the truth and nothing but.
Redesign Your Website
Did you know that the biggest companies have a team of employees that change aspects of their website every couple of days? They’re minor changes, sure, but they’re still being made. They make them because they improve the customer experience. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that you can hire a team — or even one person — to solely focus on tweaking your website every week, but still, that doesn’t mean that your site should stay static for too long. If you’ve never altered your website, then it’ll be surely time for a change. It’s often worthwhile hiring an outside company to look at your site for you, since they’ll know what might be hindering the customer experience.
Easy Access
It doesn’t matter how well you try to optimize the customer experience: if your company is hard to reach, then the customer will suffer. Even the most extensive FAQ section won’t cover everything. At some point or another, a customer will need to reach out to speak to you. The question is: will they be able to do it? There are some companies that make it infuriatingly difficult to get in touch with a member of the team. Don’t make your company one of them! On your website, list as many methods for getting in touch with your company as you can. This should include things like email, telephone number, and your social media channels. It’s a simple thing to offer because in reality, it’s unlikely that you’ll be inundated with calls. Also, as well as making it less frustrating for your customers, having plenty of contact details on your site will also give your company’s trustworthiness a nudge in the right direction. People are rightly skeptical when they can’t find any contact information on a company’s site.
Go the Extra Mile
Try as you might, you will not have a flawless record when it comes to your customers. Even if 99% of things go correctly, there’s always that 1% waiting to slip through the net. Making a mistake and having an unhappy customer is not a crime; they happen to all companies and organizations. The test of the company is how they respond to complaints and problems. It’s a good idea to create a company policy for dealing with complaints, refunds, and other issues. The details of this policy will depend on the type of business that you run and what you’re realistically able to provide, but in general, it should be extensive. You should that you’re willing to go the extra mile to ensure your customer is happy.
Host In-Depth Tutorials
You’ll know everything about the products and services that your company offers. But your customers? They won’t know anywhere near as much. They’ll have a base understanding of how your products and services can help them, but it’s unlikely that they’ll know all the tips and tricks to really make the most of them. You’re the expert; they are not. So why not look at helping your customers understand your offerings on a much deeper level by hosting in-depth tutorials? If you have software that provides chat rooms for website, then it’ll be easy enough to do. With that on your site, you’ll be able to offer tutorials for your software, host question and answer sessions about a new product, or even talk more broadly about the applications of a new product.
Customer Loyalty Programs
Did you know that it’s much more effective to get an existing customer to make a repeat purchase, rather than try to win over a new customer? It’s much cheaper, that’s for sure. For some reason, many companies only offer their deals and discounts to new customers. Aside from everything else, this shows signs that you’re taking your existing customer base for granted. So while you should continue to offer new customers deals, don’t forget about the people who have supported you in the past. You already know that they’re interested in what you have to offer, so they’ll be even more likely to make a purchase if they’re presented with a good opportunity.
Invest In Your Staff
Your staff will have a big impact on the experience of your customers, in direct and indirect ways. Directly, they’ll be talking with them one on one. Indirectly, they’ll be making decisions that impact the overall customer experience. So while you’ll want to first ensure that you’re hiring the right team for your company, it’ll also be important that you’re providing ongoing training to your employees, either in-house or by sending them on courses.
Get Personal
Where possible, look at creating an individual experience for your customers. People like it much better when it feels like they’re getting a tailor-made experience, such as by being addressed by their name, seeing recommendations based on their previous purchases, things like that. Even things like remembering their key details will be helpful.
Be Consistent
People like consistency. They like to know where they stand, and that their expectations will be met. Don’t have your customers second-guessing your company: be consistent. Consistency is something that can flow through all aspects of your business. Your branding should be consistent, the quality of your products should be consistent, the tone of the language you use with your customer should be consistent. This won’t just help to create a more pleasant customer experience, either: it’ll also make things much easier for you when it comes to running your business too.
Carry On Improving
However, while you should broadly stay consistent when it comes to your business, it’s not as if everything should stay static. You’ll lose some of the faith of your customers if it feels like you’re no longer looking to the future and making progress. Trust is a much bigger part of the company/customer dynamic than many people realize. If a customer no longer has faith that your company is the best around, or that you’ve given up, then their experience will suffer — and it won’t be long before they look elsewhere.
A Friendly Attitude
Finally, let’s not forget about the most basic thing that’ll contribute to a positive customer experience: having a friendly attitude! You could do everything else on this list, but if you weren’t friendly with your customers, then it’s unlikely that you’ll get all that far. Of course, no-one’s saying that you need to be over the top enthusiastic all the time. There’ll be days when you’re low energy and things like that. However, even on those days, you should be kind and pleasant and friendly. It costs nothing!
