Retain customers and grow your revenue by learning what matters the most to them
Without customers, your business isn’t worth much. As a business owner, you may have heard the phrase “customer experience” a lot recently. It’s more than just a buzzword — more and more, customers want to feel valued and listened to, and not just when they get in contact with you. Communication with your customers should be a two-way street — giving good customer service is no longer enough. Keep reading to learn the difference between customer experience and customer service, and why it matters for your business.
Customer service is the assistance you provide when customers reach out to you with problems or issues. Customer experience, on the other hand, is the sum of all the interactions a customer has with your company. This includes the initial discovery of your company, usually through advertising or word of mouth, through to the purchase and use of your products or services. So while customer service is an integral part of the customer experience, you must focus on the whole journey in order to truly put your customers first.
Be proactive
By the time someone calls your support hotline, you may have already lost them as a customer. If they’re calling to report a problem and aren’t satisfied with your response, they might seriously reconsider doing business with you in future.
With the right customer experience strategy in place, however, you can identify and resolve issues like these behind the scenes, before your customers even notice that anything is wrong. To do this, test your processes from start to finish. If you have an online store, for example, follow the whole journey from sign-up to checkout and see if there are any areas for improvement. By regularly checking your processes you will nip any potential issues in the bud, before customers have to reach out to you.
Learn what matters
A big mistake often made by businesses is to assume that everything’s fine when you don’t hear from your customers. By contacting your customers to ask how things are going, you will learn a valuable insight into what’s important to them. If you’re concerned about annoying people, don’t worry! A recent study has shown that nearly 9 out of 10 U.S. adults want to be proactively contacted by companies. Think about checking in with regular phone calls or sending an email survey with a small incentive to say thank you.
Customers love to be heard, and they love to feel that their opinions are valued. When you learn what matters most to your customers, you can feed this into making your customer experience even better. Put the effort in and you will be rewarded — companies that score highly on customer experience have shown boosted revenues compared to those that scored poorly.
Be committed to change
Creating excellent customer experience is all about how you deliver, not just what you deliver. What people want is always changing, so companies need to be constantly evolving. As a business owner, you must be able to recognize the need for change, and embrace it.
Use your customer experience strategy to monitor satisfaction and detect problems, and then you can offer solutions. Empower your employees to do the same — the right training will educate and motivate staff, to ensure that customers will experience the same level of quality in all aspects of your business.
Creating an outstanding customer experience will set you apart from the competition. Be proactive and learn as much as you can about your customers, and watch your retention rates and revenue soar. Voxtell has all of the tools your business needs to successfully communicate with your customers — contact ustoday to see how we can help your business grow.
