How to Improve Customer Experience of Your Brand – How CX Can Make or Break Your Business
I recently joined a company where my colleagues used to go to a specific coffee shop after work. In a while of being a regular visitor, I got used to the coffee shop. The service they provided was quite alluring, and the manner in which they knew my preferences and choices, always used to make me feel like having a coffee at home. Moreover, the flavor of the coffee is deep and consistent with my taste buds. Looking back at the scenario, I can recollect an experience that is still fresh, like the coffee that I deeply enjoy every day. This is what I feel is a great customer experience. If, for a petite coffee shop, the experience a customer associates with, really matters, and they win a straight 10 point on this, then imagine how much can it do for your businesses. Customer experience or CX is a major share of the business, which most brands keep failing to take care of.
A recent survey by Adobe and E-consultancy revealed that customer experience (CX) is the most exciting opportunity for a business to grow with.
Customer experience is a never-ending process, making it a challenging segment to cater to. Good customer experience can cover up for bad marketing. With technology getting sophisticated and brands increasing every day, customer experience management has become a bigger battleground with better automation tools and CRM’s.
Exceptional customer experience can bring your brand repeated and loyal customers who speak for your brand, increasing your traffic, driving your sales, and reducing your marketing spend. Unlike marketing, customer experience is a longer game needing continuous effort.
What Exactly Does Customer Experience (CX) Mean?
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. – Jeff Bezos
Customer experience (CX) is the perception of your business from the customer’s point of view. A lot of factors determine your customer’s experience right from the navigation of your website to the after support you provide to your customer. A great customer experience hugely impacts how the customer views your brand or business, thereby generating more sales and improving the trust in your brand.
But to provide a good customer experience, all that you need to know is, what your customer expects when they buy your product or service. Understanding what each customer wants can be daunting but will be profitable in the long run.
Customer Experience vs. Customer Service
Customer service is a small part of the customer experience. It is the service and support provided to a customer, whereas customer experience is an emotion which they experience while using your product or service. It is a wholesome user’s experience with your brand, right from your marketing campaign to your customer service, and after support.
To explain to you better, take a better look at this scenario.
When a customer finds it tough ordering something on your e-commerce store and calls the customer support, if they respond to his queries with patience and in a friendly manner, that’s good customer service. And if he gets the product on time as explained by the support team, then it makes up for good customer experience. This experience differs from person to person, and to provide great customer experience, one should understand what every customer wants.
Elements of Better Customer Experience
Hassle-Free Checkouts
The purchasing mind-set of a customer seems to be varying with every purchase. They expect a hassle-free method throughout the entire purchase process. For example, a simpler process like a guest login can save a lot of abandoned carts. According to a survey by optinmonter, 34 percent of abandoned carts are due to a lack of guest logins. As consumers are increasingly exposed to a lot of e-commerce brands and benchmark against leading e-commerce giants like amazon’s, it’s necessary to improvise smaller details on your online store even if it looks like a needle in a haystack.
Abandoned carts add greater risks to e-commerce brands, complicated checkouts, and hidden costs can cost your brand a fortune.
Enough Shipping and Payment Options
Providing enough payment options gets you a better chance of not losing any of your customers. With increasing people getting comfortable with online shopping, we still expect a COD (cash on delivery). But for a new e-commerce platform, it is difficult to provide a COD or free delivery option. Also, better logistics support can be a good investment for your e-commerce brand. Faster delivery processes, like 24-hours delivery, have made consumers expect sooner shipment than before.
Unexpected shipping and delivery charges are brand disasters. A lot of consumers get irritated when they are asked to pay a sudden fee; thereby, customers can feel demotivated to buy. Approximately 55 percent of cart abandons, happens due to unexpected charges.
Touchpoints
A calculative and better touchpoint can increase your sales and boost your brand. Touchpoints are points where your customers come in contact with your brand through ads, reviews, product displays, etc. These touchpoints describe more about your product and services.
It starts right from the initial contact of the customer with your brand until the after-sales-support for your products. A customer’s journey mapping begins with figuring out the touchpoints of your brand. Each touchpoint can attract an audience to your brand when the customer feels that your brand provides a better deal.
Ways to Improve Your Customer Experience Strategy
- Think from the shoes of your customers
- Understand who your customers are
- Lend an ear to your customer
- Create a compelling design
- Invest in your employee
Think from the Shoes of Your Customers
Customers are not the numbers; instead, they are the game-changers. To provide something you think might be useful to your customers is a foolish play. Instead, become a customer of your own product or service you offer and ask yourself, “is this really what I am looking for”. This is such a no brainer to talk about, but implementing this, is almost impossible, or is it?
There is a famous story about Apple. The Mac team was once asked to build a DVD burning software exclusively for Apple’s high range macs. On the day of the meeting, all the developers in the team came up with paperwork, researches, prototypes, and designs on how it will look like at the end.
But when Steve Jobs came, he took up a marker, went to the board, drew a rectangle, and told them that he wanted the users to drag something on the window, and a burn button should appear. “That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make”, and he left.
Isn’t he a genius?
If you look at it, that’s what all your customers want. They don’t expect your prototypes, research works, or your designs.
Understand Who Your Customers Are
Is anything more heartbreaking than losing your loved ones? How about a business failing to understand its customers?
Ouch, it hurts!
Let me break a myth for you; you can’t sell everything to everyone. You would only be able to sell things to those who want it the most. To provide a better service, you need to understand your customers as no one else does.
Create a persona for your customers on their behavior, their likes, dislikes, and interests.
For example,
Anish, a 28-year-old doctor, is not so good with tech. He needs very descriptive information against Aneesha 24, who is a techie working in the IT industry when it comes to providing technical support for an online tool.
This lets your team recognize with whom they are associated with, and make them understand better.
Create a Compelling Design
Who likes a crappy website with a bunch of words put together? When it comes to customer experience, your website creates the first emotional contact with your customer. Let’s assume you are looking for a restaurant, and you realize there is one nearby but has poor maintenance, run-down ceiling, and floors. Would you still be likely to go there?
The same goes for your website if your website looks crappy. You are losing traffic, and even worse, people might leave you for your competitor. A well-optimized e-commerce site is said to boost its sales by 70 percent. Your website’s UX contributes a major part to your site’s SEO.
Many startups and small companies forget to focus on their web design, which is more than just a place where your customer lands on. Your website should set the tone for your brand and your company’s culture.
Lend An Ear to Your Customer’s Voice
A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all. – Micheal Lebeouf
After all, your product or service is to make your customers feel good and satisfied. Being available to a customer when they have some trouble creates a positive experience. Engage with your customers on social media because you might not know what you’d be missing.
Take a look at this,
See the power of social media engagement. Overwhelmingly right?
Use follow-up emails and messenger bots to collect feedback from your customers, and outbound calls for better insightful responses.
Let’s take a test case scenario.
A customer bought a shoe from your e-commerce store and forgot to leave a feedback. He then sees an email to review the experience, but he still ignores it. After a while, he gets a Facebook ad to review the shoe, but again he leaves it undone. After a few days, he is looking for another product to buy, a pop up flashes asking for the feedback of his previous purchase, and he fills it up.
When it comes to approaching a customer for feedback or marketing campaigns, don’t be irritating. Remember that you are trying to provide a better experience every time.
Invest in Your Employee
Your customer support team is the first and final step to boost your customer experience to the next level. Train your team on how to respond better to each and every customer. If you are a startup, instead of hiring an experienced professional, hire freshers, and invest in their learning. This way, both the company and the individual get benefited.
Customer support is the core aspect when it comes to creating a great customer experience strategy. Consider your employee, not able to provide a customer with the assistance he requires, chances of him shifting to your competitors are really high. Furthermore, he might even speak to his friends and guess what! You’re losing more money.
Conclusion
Customer experience is of critical importance to the sustained growth of a business. It’s important to ensure a positive customer experience so customers build brand loyalty and affinity, evangelize your product or service and refer their friends, and leave you positive customer reviews that will help your business retain revenue and earn new customers. – HubSpot
The customer experience (CX) is an ever-growing platform to build your brand on. All you need is to focus on creating a positive impression on your customers. Remember, word of mouth travels faster than anything else. Always be flexible in approaching new strategies when it comes to providing a better customer experience.
About the Author
B.Ajay is the Business Development Associate at Contique Global.
An advanced All-in-One Digital Marketing Course.
Mentored by Mr. Soumya Roy, the Founder, CEO of PromozSEO Web Marketing Academy.
Being an entrepreneur and digital marketer, he loves to share his knowledge and experience in topics related to internet marketing, SEO, SEM, social media, content marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, and many more.
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