Nowadays, almost every business faces the challenge of acquiring new clients and taking care of existing ones.

Stiff competition does not make this job easier.

Customers have a vast choice, and you need to give them a reason to choose your brand.

No matter what industry you are working in, what your product or service is, whether your company acts locally or globally – there is a way to win the customers’ hearts.

Although probably every marketer heard about customer experience, it is still uncharted waters for most brands. Read on to find out how to stand out from the competition.

 

What is the customer experience?

Before we start, let us take a moment to establish the grounds, so there is no confusion.

The customer experience (CX) is a result of all interactions that a customer has with a given brand. This holistic impression is based on the whole customer journey (including all touchpoints).

Practically, it is a customer’s perception of your brand. Are they satisfied with a product? Did they receive needed help from customer support? Do they find your website intuitive? Everything you do impacts customer experience.

 

Why is customer experience crucial for your business?

According to one survey, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for excellent customer experience. It affects the customers’ behavior, so they become loyal, buy your products, and even recommend them to others.

What is in it for you? More customers and returning clients equals increased revenue 😉

 

Who is responsible for the customer experience?

Although we used to think that only marketers should focus on creating a customer experience, in fact, every department ought to have a customer-centric mindset. Every little detail matters when it comes to impressions.

 

6 steps for improving customer experience

Let us reveal a few ideas that can help you create an outstanding customer experience and, as a result – boost your company’s revenue.

 

1. Define what excellent customer experience is

Before you start working on your strategy, think about what perfect customer experience means for your clients. Create a set of values that drive your company. Get inspired by your brand’s mission and create the ideal perception of your company. That will be your goal. Everything you will do later should bring you closer to that vision.

Make sure that every member of your organization knows these statements and tries to use them in his work. Your vision should be presented on every training and implemented in every touchpoint of the customer journey.

 

2. Identify touchpoints

That brings us to the next stage: finding when and how your customers can interact with your brand. Think about who has contact with your clients, what departments impact the overall impression, what channels your brand uses for communication. Touchpoints include every part of the customer journey.

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Remember: it does not end with a purchase. What is equally significant as the process before buying, is what happens after the transaction. That can include a handwritten thank-you note added to your package, friendly customer support, or a newsletter with suitable content.

Once you identify touchpoints, you should figure out how you can improve them. That is also the right moment for a feedback survey for the major touchpoints. That way, you can find out what is working and when your customer experience is poor.

 

3. Provide top-notch customer service

It is one of the crucial aspects of customer experience, and companies very often underestimate it. Here is what matters.

First of all, give your customers the option of self-service. Nowadays, customers prefer to solve their issues without having to contact a customer support team. Upload a bunch of useful articles or videos (preferably both) on your website, prepare a detailed FAQ section and engage automation in the process. Chatbots can help you solve issues in no time, if you take your time to set them up properly.

When it comes to more complicated inquiries, you need to prepare your team and tools to deliver the best possible customer support. Provide omnichannel support to meet customer’s expectations. You can use, for example, social media, email, live chat on your website, phone, and knowledge base software to communicate with your customers.

TOOLS:

• CloudTalk – is a call center system with many handy features. Thanks to call cueing, the Interactive Voice Response menu, automatic callback and real-time customer cards, you can automate some processes and let your team focus on excellent support.
• LiveAgent – is a help desk software that enables integrating all channels.
• Chatfuel – is a chatbot platform for Facebook Messenger. Thanks to it, you can set up a chatbot without any programming skills.
• Harmonizely – is a system for scheduling meetings, hassle-free. Without exchanging tons of emails, you can schedule a meeting with clients to personally take care of their issues.
• CallPage – is currently the biggest international provider of automatic callback solution in the world. It builds a suite of cloud phone products that help companies in generating more business and get insights from sales calls.
• Helpjuice – is knowledge base software that allows your business to provide a reliable self-service option. This enables customers to quickly find answers to any questions they may have as well as more easily troubleshoot their issues. Not only does this reduce the number of support inquiries that your customer support team has to field, but it also allows your customer support team to better help customers with more complicated inquiries that can’t be resolved with self-service.

 

4. Eliminate customer frustration

Find factors that can potentially frustrate your customers before, during, and after purchasing.

Besides products defects and customer support, there are many opportunities for brands to fail in delivering customer experience. One of the examples can be your own website. Everyone experiences slow-loading or unintuitive webpages, and we all know how frustrating it can be.

LiveSession can help you understand customers’ digital experience by analyzing their behavior across your sites and apps. Make sure your website is responsive so that it is mobile friendly. Take advantage of popups that (if well designed) can improve your conversion rate. Use Poptin to create a smart popup.

One of the most significant pain points for customers is the need for explaining their history with a brand and describing the same issue to another agent. You should gather customers’ data in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system such as LiveSpace. Every essential information about your client will be at your fingertips. What is crucial here is that you can integrate many customer support apps with a CRM system or your productivity tool and have an overview of the order history as well as communication.

 

5. Make the experience more personal

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Customers appreciate personalization because it makes the experience more human and pleasant. But personalization is not only about adding a name to the newsletter. You can personalize content so that customers receive articles that interest them.

Automation enables personalization, not only in emails or product recommendations, but also in other forms of advertising.

Retargeting allows you to reach users that already interacted with a brand. With RocketLink, you can add pixels to links you share so that later on, you can create a custom audience based on people who have clicked a given link. For example, if someone reads an article about summer trends in fashion, you can display a Facebook ad with products from the summer collection.

 

6. Get feedback ASAP

Customers’ opinions should be very important for you. It is a good idea to ask kindly for feedback just after delivering a product or performing a service. Customers can be more willing to share insights while they are still engaged in the buying process. For example, a customer amazed by your personal thank-you note might be more generous with their review while emotions are still strong.

Moreover, get feedback from your team. Enable sharing opinions about the process and tools that are implemented in your company. You can find out what works best and what the main issues are that slow down your employees.

 

Conclusion

There is no perfect recipe when it comes to creating an excellent customer experience. No wonder, every business is different and has its own specific challenges. Customer experience should be tailored uniquely for a given brand’s features.

Since emotions are also involved in the process, you can affect the overall opinion by making gestures that do not cost a lot but are game-changing. Use smart tools to automate processes but still try to add a human touch to your communication with customers.