When you're planning your wedding, it's all about the details. The same can be said of your customer experience strategy. Too often, businesses focus on acquiring new customers and forget about the importance of keeping their existing ones happy.
Due to this shift in focus, customer service teams are out of sync with their customers. If you do not know the exact needs and pain points of your customers you will not be able to provide good customer service.
Having a relationship means you know details about their interests and concerns. Knowing general personal information does not mean you have a relationship with your customers. You need to understand the customer journey and continue to adapt to the changing needs of your customers as they evolve. Years ago, a one-off interaction with customers would have counted as having excellent customer service. Not today!
Loyal customers are difficult to keep. They require constant attention from your customer support team otherwise they will move on to the next business that can offer great customer service. Before we unpack this, let's briefly go through what customer experience is.
What Is Customer Experience?
The customer experience is the sum of all interactions a customer has with your company, from the first time they learn about your brand to post-purchase follow-up. A positive customer experience leads to loyalty and advocacy, while a negative one can quickly turn customers away.
That's why it's so important to focus on creating a positive customer experience at every touchpoint, from your website to your social media channels to in-person interactions. By paying attention to the details and making sure every customer has a great experience, you can turn one-time buyers into lifelong fans of your brand.
Why is customer service important?
Customer service is important because it can have a direct impact on customer satisfaction. Good customer service leads to happy customers who are more likely to continue doing business with a company. bad customer service can lead to customers taking their business elsewhere.
It's also important to remember that customer service is more than just handling customer complaints. It's about creating a positive customer experience at every touchpoint, from the initial sale to post-purchase follow-up. By making sure every customer has a great experience, you can turn one-time buyers into loyal customers.
Where to direct focus to improve customer service
You know what they say; happy customer, happy life. Acquiring new customers is important, but it's not enough to sustain a business. In fact, it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.
That's why it's so important to focus on providing an exceptional customer experience at every touchpoint. This can be done by analysing your current customer relationship management using qualitative research methods. This qualitative data can then be plotted on a customer journey map.
Often the amount of customer data is overwhelming. There are some things to keep in mind when unpacking your existing customer experience management.
How to analyse current customer satisfaction
Here are a few ways to make sure your customer experience strategy is up to par:
- Define your customer experience goals. What do you want your customers to feel after interacting with your brand?
- Evaluate your customer touchpoints. Where are customers most likely to have positive or negative experiences with your company?
- Analyse customer feedback. What are customers saying about their experiences with your brand?
- Implement changes based on your findings. How can you improve the customer experience at each touchpoint?
- Monitor and adjust as needed. The customer experience is always evolving, so be sure to keep an eye on it and make changes as necessary.
By taking the time to evaluate and improve your customer experience, you'll be able to keep your existing customers happy and turn them into lifelong advocates for your business.
How much do customers expect from your customer service team?
In today's world, customer expectations of service are higher than ever before. They want fast responses, convenient interactions, and personalized service.
To meet these expectations, you'll need to provide customer service through a variety of channels, including phone, email, social media, and live chat. You'll also need to make sure your customer service team is properly trained and has the knowledge and tools they need to resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently.
Additionally, your business needs to have a clear understanding of the key points in the sales journey. Finding a key point in the sales journey is when you can incorporate a series of cost-effective actions that deliver a foundation for many happy years together. By providing great customer service, you'll be able to create a positive customer experience that leads to loyalty and advocacy.
Customers are getting to know you and your team. They’re being introduced to your product or service. You can set the tone for a long and happy relationship by ensuring the customer experience is personal, efficient and helpful.
How to improve your customer satisfaction score
Proto’s worked with several clients whose salespeople are highly skilled at driving a prospect around objections, over queries and straight to the dotted line. However, post-signed cancellations are high.
The challenge is to clearly understand how your customers define the specific stages of their journey, and to pinpoint when in time their stages start to differ from your definitions of each stage.
One of our clients experienced a 50% increase in retained customers once they were able to identify the unsync in their process. Specifically:
- their “customers” saw the true start of their purchasing journey as occurring after they’d signed up to our client’s contract
- they saw the client’s sales journey as an information gathering exercise, with a contract they could get out of when they found the right competitor deal
- they signed up to our client to trial the full experience, but had no emotional investment in their choice; by contrast, the company they eventually chose was one they felt ‘fitted them’ better and ‘made them happier with their decision’
How to increase your customer lifetime value
We found the cooling-off period was interpreted by the customer as a Hall Pass, a time when they were permitted to use their freedom from our client’s attention to look for a partner that might suit them better.
With some adjustments to the sales journey, we were able to re-sync the customer and business perceptions and encourage mutual commitment. Specifically:
- Understanding this, our client’s goal shifted to increasing commitment before the mandated cooling-off period.
- With some adjustments to the sales journey, we were able to re-sync the customer and business perceptions and encourage mutual commitment.
Specifically: - customers were asked more questions to surface objections early
- a simplified picture of the sales stages was shared early so that customers could ‘share the purchase intent’ with their salesperson
- customers were qualified out earlier if they were genuinely not a good fit
- the formal start of the relationship was moved, before the sign-up point, to include an emotional-embedding stage
- to aid emotional embedding, honeymoon initiatives were introduced, to give a pre-taste of how good wedded bliss would be
It all seems obvious: if you want a successful relationship, you need wooing before the wedding.
And whilst a purchase journey requires a stage for contractual obligations, misunderstanding the ‘human-centric’ is costly.
For more Proto romance, get in touch. We’d love to give you more customer service tips to improve your relationship success metrics.
