7 innovative ideas to improve customer experience
The customer experience is the sum of all the interactions that a client has with a company. It’s vital for any business to create an experience that is memorable, personalized, and welcoming.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience is the totality of the emotional and rational experiences that customers have with a company, product, or service. Customer experience management (CEM) is an organization-wide process that ensures that all customer interactions – from purchase to delivery to support – are consistent and satisfactory.
That means customer experience is more than just what happens at the point of sale. It’s about making sure every touchpoint with your business is friendly and intuitive for your customers.
Achieving a strong customer experience is key for your company’s success because it can be the differentiator between you and your competitors.
Great customer experience is one of the most important factors for success in the business.
How important is the customer experience for a business?
As customer experience becomes more and more important, companies are investing in their frontline staff to be able to deliver it. According to research, by 2020 customer experience will become the main factor that differentiates one company from another.
The consumers are the ones who will buy your product or service, and they’re the ones with whom you have to maintain a good relationship. If the customer is satisfied with what you offer them, they are more likely to come back to your company for another purchase.
Effect of bad customer experiences
When it comes to customer experience, there are many factors that can be positive or negative. These include the quality of the service or product, the ordering process, and delivery.
“A bad customer experience can be caused by many factors including a lack of training on the company’s part about how to deal with customers, fake reviews on social media due to bots, and not listening to what customers want.”
An experience is typically deemed as good when it meets expectations and exceeds them. Bad customer experiences come from a lack of understanding from the company about what their customers want and need.
Below are the 7 innovative ideas to improve customer experience
1. Have a clear customer-focused vision that you can communicate with
A clear customer-focused vision can help employees stay motivated and get more out of their work. Companies should make good use of their products and services to generate lasting value for customers, communities, and employees. All the employees should be able to express their ideas in a way that will produce clear benefits for customers.
2. Connect and empathize with the situations that your customers face
Empathy is the key to emotional customer experience. You might think that empathy is not important for sales or marketing, but it’s actually one of the most important skills you need to have in order to connect with customer’s emotions.
Empathy is about understanding others’ thoughts, feelings, and situation from their perspective. This is why empathy has been shown to improve communication with customers. It increases the number of successful transactions between company and consumers because it leads to better understanding of customer needs and what they are looking for when coming into contact with your brand.
3. Create an emotional connection with your customers
In order to create an emotional connection with your customers, you have to think about what they want to feel. An emotional connection is the key to a successful marketing campaign, so you have to ask your self “what do my customers want?”
You have two choices: create something for them or talk about it. You can create a product or service that will make them feel a certain way. This could be a new type of shampoo that smells like the holidays, an office chair that’s comfortable and looks good in any home, or even a new credit card that offers discounts for shopping at restaurants near their home.
You can also talk about the things you’re passionate about. Talk about what makes you happy and how it affects your life and other people’s lives in general.
4. Try to capture and gather customer feedback in real-time
The Benefits: Real-time customer feedback is essential in the modern world in order to meet customer needs in a timely fashion. Companies that are able to do this in real-time may be more successful in generating sales.
The Disadvantages: Real-time feedback is not always possible when there are technical limitations like bandwidth or when the customer has gone offline.
When To Use: Real-time feedback should be used when building new features or fixing bugs on live products because it will help you better understand your customers.
5. Develop every individual member of your customer support team
One of the most important aspects of developing your customer support team involves training them on skillsets so they are able to handle all types of problems. This promotes a diverse set of skillsets and knowledge bases among your team.
Additionally, research shows that having diversity in your workforce means more productivity and better morale among employees.
Lastly, it is important to give each individual member of your customer support team autonomy over their work. This allows them the freedom they need to excel in their own way and provides satisfaction for those who thrive on autonomy.
6. Ask the employee for feedback to improve the customer experience
Employee feedback is one of the most important factors in improving customer experience. When employees are asked for feedback, they are more likely to be engaged with the company and committed to their job.
The benefits of asking for employee feedback are:
- It helps the company understand how their employees feel about work, management, environment etc.
- It helps make work easier by identifying areas that need more attention.
When it comes to asking for feedback from an employee, there are two ways you can go about it – either all at once or gradually over time. If you want to gather more information on how effective your efforts towards improving customer service have been then gradually asking for feedback will help give you a better idea of where you stand.
7. Measure the ROI from delivering customer experience
A lot of organizations have been building customer experience with the sole purpose of improving their customer satisfaction. But the question is whether these investments are being worth it.
The ROI can be calculated by gathering feedback from customers, using Net Promoter Scores, and measuring the number of words they use to describe an experience. A lower score on Net Promoter Score is usually preferable as it means that customers are less likely to defect.
- Measure Customer Satisfaction
- Measure Employee Engagement
- Measure the ROI from the Investment in Customer Experience
Measurement is a vital part of business and it is important for companies to know what they are measuring, how they are measuring it, and what to do with the information that is collected from measurement.
In order to measure ROI from delivering customer experience, companies need to measure three things: customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and the investment in CX.
Measuring customer satisfaction can help a company assess how their customers feel about their product or service. Employee engagement can show how happy employees are with their job and where they have room for improvement in terms of providing a great experience for customers.
Conclusion:
Great customer experiences usually come from a balance of good service & innovation. For example, customers should not only enjoy your product or service but also feel they have their own identity. With the many new technologies we now have at our disposal, it is now easier than ever before to provide a truly memorable experience.
