StartupTalky

Tag: Happy Customers

  • How to Create a Powerful Customer Experience Strategy?

    A superior customer experience is an investment that can help you earn high customer loyalty and retention. This is why developing a powerful customer experience strategy has become the central goal for most organizations across the globe.

    As per a survey, 44.5% of professionals worldwide consider customer experience as the primary competitive differentiator while 48.5% believe it plays the role of a partial differentiator.

    Hence, customer experience strategy becomes quite a powerful tool to win a competitive advantage for your business. However, with increased digitalization and AI-powered assistants available for help 24X7, customer expectations are increasing every day.

    Keeping your customers satisfied under this scenario can be really difficult, especially for small businesses. Considering this, we decided to analyze the factors that are responsible for creating the most powerful customer experience strategies.

    After thorough research, in this blog, we have brought to you the process of creating a winning customer experience strategy. So without further ado let’s move on to know more.

    What is Customer Experience?
    Why Having a Customer Experience Strategy is Important?
    Are Your Customers Happy with Their Experience?
    Steps to Create a Powerful Customer Experience Strategy
    Tips to Create a Winning Customer Experience Strategy

    Customer Service vs Customer Experience

    What is Customer Experience?

    Share of Professionals Perceiving Customer Experience as a Competitive Differentiator for Organizations
    Share of Professionals Perceiving Customer Experience as a Competitive Differentiator for Organizations

    The customer experience is your buyer’s journey while they are shopping from your brand and the final impression they have of your services. The two primary components that are responsible for creating a customer experience are product and people.

    This means that in the end, your customer will remember your brand only if you serve them a quality product and they receive adequate attention and support from the customer care staff.

    Customers are your most valuable resource for any business. They are not just a source of money but also a medium for growing brand awareness. A loyal customer boosts your revenue in more than one way.

    But today, customers have great power in hand, the power to choose out of countless options available on the internet. Also, the customers are well-informed and educated to make the right choices.

    In this situation, it becomes extremely important to create a remarkable customer experience that lasts with them and they prefer you over other brands every single time.

    A great customer experience can be defined as one where all the needs and expectations of the customer are well taken care of. It should be seamless, memorable, and positive.

    Why Having a Customer Experience Strategy is Important?

    Outcomes for Evolving Customer Experience Strategy for Organizations Worldwide
    Outcomes for Evolving Customer Experience Strategy for Organizations Worldwide

    A customer experience strategy is basically an action plan that takes into account all the aspects of a buyer’s journey. It focuses on creating a positive customer experience right from pre-purchase research to post-purchase follow-up.

    As per a survey conducted by Forbes, around 74% of people buy products based alone on their previous experience with the brand. Moreover, 77% consider customer experience to be as important as product quality.

    This makes having a customer experience strategy very important. It is kind of a roadmap to win the hearts of your customers and also, a reflection of the company’s health.

    Having a well-crafted customer experience strategy would also help your staff, especially the customer care division to understand company expectations while dealing with a customer. This will help them bring their best foot forward while dealing with a situation.

    The success of a customer experience strategy is reflected in the customer feedback as well as your company revenue as happy customers are a great source of brand awareness. Moreover, it results in improved customer retention and reduced churn.

    Are Your Customers Happy with Their Experience?

    Forecast for Global Customer Experience Management Market Size
    Forecast for Global Customer Experience Management Market Size

    This can be a very difficult question. Even if you say yes, the next question is how do you know or can you rate their level of satisfaction? After all only a happy customer can turn into a loyal customer. Although analyzing the customer experience and enhancing customer experience is the job of the customer experience management team but even if you do not have a dedicated team for this purpose, there are simple ways to do that. Using any or all of the tips given below you will be able to understand how well your customer experience strategy is doing.

    • Customer satisfaction surveys: Conducting such surveys on regular basis can give you meaningful insight into the customer’s journey. You can include questions related to different points of their experience. How do they like the project? Or how friendly was the customer support staff? Or even questions like how likely are they to recommend your brand to a friend or some other known person?
      For this, you can use scales like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or track customer satisfaction (CSAT) and ask your customers to rate from 1 to 5. These questions will provide you with plenty of useful data and give a clear picture of how well is your customer experience strategy performing.
    • Rate of customer churn: Customer churn is unavoidable but the rate of churn can be reduced considerably. Looking at the customer churn rate you will be able to avoid reasons that may be responsible for it. Make an analysis of the churn of customers.
      If you are losing a large percentage of customers every month it can really be an issue of concern and there may be a need to look into your customer experience strategy. You can discuss the issue with your team and find out a solution to avoid similar situations in the future.
    • Customer feedback for improvement: The best way to improve is to ask your customers about their expectations. Create forums for your customers where they can place requests for an improved feature or service. Create surveys or community pages where your customers are encouraged to provide their feedback.
      This does not necessarily mean that you follow every piece of advice but, it gives you an idea about the general problems that your customers may be facing. If there are recurring trends, then resolving them is worth your time,       effort, and money.
    • Customer support trends: This is one of the most critical divisions to be taken care of. If the majority of your customers appear to be seeking support regarding similar issues you certainly need to work on them. Review the possible reasons for these issues and come out with practical solutions.
      Also, look at the number of complaints registered every month. Your customer experience strategy can only be considered successful if the number of complaints declines and most of them is marked as resolved.

    All these steps will help you analyze the present rate of satisfaction amongst your customers and bring forward the issues resolving which can help you grow the number of happy customers. Once we know the problems, we can move on to creating a perfect customer experience strategy that understands all the customer needs and ensures generating more happy and loyal customers.

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    Steps to Create a Powerful Customer Experience Strategy

    Spending on Customer Experience Technologies Worldwide
    Spending on Customer Experience Technologies Worldwide

    A great customer experience strategy covers all the touch points across all the channels that your customers move through during their journey of buying a product. It helps you shape the emotions and perceptions of a buyer towards your brand. Below we have listed 5 simple steps that can help you devise a customer experience strategy perfectly suitable and practically applicable for your company.

    1. Clear brand mission: This should be very clear while devising the customer experience strategy. As a brand what do you want to achieve or how do you plan to serve your customers or how do you want your customers to see you in the future?

    All these questions are very important and capable of creating an impression about a certain brand. Therefore, the brand mission should be action-oriented and capable of delivering the impact that you wish to create through your brand.

    A clear brand mission would help you devise a customer experience strategy that supports it to the core. It will decide the way you want to treat your customers as it will decide how they will treat you in return.

    2. Positive employee experience: As per Gallup, a 17% improvement in productivity and a 21% enhancement in profitability were noticed in the companies that gave priority to employee engagement. A happy employee is no doubt a key to a profitable business. Just like the customers, you can use surveys to gauge employee satisfaction levels.

    Take feedback and work towards creating a better work environment and positive employee experience. Prepare your team for future challenges and support them wherever they need it.

    3. Identifying and locating customers: Not everyone in the world can be your customer. You have to identify the target audience for your business and find where they are so you can approach them. Knowing your target audience will further let you shape your customer experience strategy as per their expectations and requirements.

    You can use an omnichannel approach to create brand awareness amongst these customers but make sure not to spam them. Then check their response and decide your future strategy accordingly.

    4. Features to support your promise: When you offer a product to your customers you are actually making a promise to them. This promise can be as simple as this attire would make you look stylish or as tough as a five-year guaranty card.

    Irrespective of what you offer as a brand, you have the promise to fulfil. Make sure you find ways to do that. If the idea is comfort, add features that make your product more comfortable. No matter how small or big changes you make but while doing so, you are actually establishing yourself as a trustworthy brand in the eyes of your customers.

    5. Build your tech support: With the advent of technology nothing can be a better idea. You can use AI support or various other tools available to help you generate a better customer experience. Also, whether or not you are running an online business today, sooner or later you will have to go online with your products and you will need a tech support team for that.

    So it is better to stay future-ready. Moreover, these tools help you create a more personalized experience for your customers. They respond even when your employees don’t and also, do not forget any of their responsibilities.

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    Tips to Create a Winning Customer Experience Strategy

    When your customer experience strategy is ready here are a few bonus tips to keep it updated and create a winning experience with every customer.

    • Understand your customer: You can only provide valuable services to your customer when you understand their needs. You can create buyer personas for this purpose that will help you meet their expectations. This way you can develop a strategy that keeps your customer engaged.
    • Real-time assistance: The world is moving fast and you cannot make your customers wait for your response. Use tools or chatbots to ensure that your customers receive real-time assistance. Also, do not forget to ask for feedback on assistance.
    • Customer loyalty program: Offer special rewards to your regular customers, and make them feel special. This will help you create a personal bond with them and create a superior customer experience.
    • Train your customer service team: This is not a once-after joining but a regular process. Help them work on their communication skills while dealing with customers. This will also help you know about the problems faced by your employees while dealing with the customers and you can work together to find a solution.
    • Track the reviews: This is an extremely important tip. In this world of social media, words spread faster than they are said. Keep track of the reviews provided for your brand on any social media or review site. Respond to them quickly and resolve their issues as soon as possible. Remember even one review can make or break your image and it might take you years to get rid of it.

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    Conclusion

    A strong customer experience strategy can influence how customers view your company. You can increase both your company’s revenue and retention with its assistance. In light of this, developing a strong customer experience plan aids in improving high customer loyalty and reach.

    FAQs

    What is customer experience?

    The customer experience is your buyer’s journey while they are shopping from your brand and the final impression they have of your services.

    How can I analyze the success of the customer experience strategy?

    One can analyze the success of customer experience strategy in the following ways:

    • Customer satisfaction surveys
    • Rate of customer churn
    • Customer feedback
    • Customer support trends

    How to create a powerful customer experience strategy?

    The steps to create a powerful customer experience strategy are:

    • Clear brand mission
    • Positive employee experience
    • Identifying and locating customers
    • Features to support your promise
    • Build your tech support

  • Brand Rehab: 7 Powerful Moves to Restore your Brands Tarnished Image

    When you are starting a business, one of the most important things to do is to build up the brand of that business. Your brand is your identity, through this, your customer distinguishes you from other similar businesses out there.

    Now building up the brand name is much more than just giving a cool name or a logo, it is all about building your business reputation and for that, you need to give 110%, maybe much more than that.

    Reputation can be built through different ways, by providing great service, great products and attending the customer’s needs are some of the main ones and it takes a lot of time and hard work.

    Now sometimes there can be some problems, which can arise at any time and tarnish the image of your brand that you have taken so much time to build. It can be a bad product, an action of your business that doesn’t seem right or anything. Nonetheless, we can’t just sit around and ponder about it; we need to do the deed to get our business back on its feet.

    The most important thing while building a brand name is that you need to be preparing for any worst-case scenario and at any time. The brand name can come spiralling down because of a simple mistake and with social media on its top form; it won’t take even a minute to become breaking news, thus spreading like a wildfire.

    In this article, we will give you an insight into powerful marketing moves that can fix your tarnished brand name. Some of the techniques that can fix your brand names are,

    A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well. -Jeff Bezos

    Be Active with Your Values
    Share the Outcome of CSR
    Create a Campaign for Honest Feedback
    Be Responsive to the Problem
    Be Active on Social Media
    Communicate Carefully
    Connect with the People
    FAQ

    Be Active with Your Values

    This is a prime time to collaborate with different charities and follow the particular set of values that your company stands for. Start Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) if you haven’t already because the actions speak louder than voice.

    So, if by any chance a crisis arises and bad word of mouth goes out, if you stick to your values, your customers will understand that it’s just a wrong way of presenting a situation as your reputation is already a hit with the help of your marketing.

    Share the Outcome of CSR

    When your business is partaking in CSR, it is important to share it with your customers; this will show them that you and your business are responsible to society and its surroundings.

    Sharing does not mean bragging, sharing the results through social media, and letting people know about the achievements of CSR in a humble way.

    Create a Campaign for Honest Feedback

    Your customers are your biggest asset, if they are not happy with your services; your business is bound to get doomed. After the crisis, start creating a campaign that will ask for honest feedback from your customers. This will make them realize that your business is trying its level best to build trust again. The campaign can be held digitally or physically as well. Although digitally, you’ll be able to interact with more people.

    Be Responsive to the Problem

    Don’t try to be defensive and hide the problem, it will only fuel the fire, once it gets revealed because it will. When the problem arises, acknowledge it, be transparent to your customers, and clearly state your response to the world. If you’re wrong, don’t shy away from apologizing.

    Be Active on Social Media

    We are living in a time, where everything is transparent thanks to social media. Be it your products or customer services, if people don’t find it good, they often convey their concerns on social media and present their dissatisfaction.

    Keep an eye on the hashtag of your brand and use social listening tools to understand what truly is cooking. If there is a negative comment, you can easily handle it by responding to it and solving the problem, before it gets out into the front for everyone to judge. Try to control all the conversation that is about your brand.

    Communicate Carefully

    Remember that communication is the key. Social media helps you in engaging your customers with your brand, so when a crisis arises, be careful while responding. The way you convey the message talks a lot about your brand.

    Take your time, if you think there is a need, and then respond but not too much. Your brand name depends on it, one single response can eventually make or break your business.

    Connect with the People

    One thing about humans is that we are bound to make mistakes, what sets us apart is our way to acknowledge it and own up to it. When a mistake took place, apologies properly, and get ready to solve it, instead of being arrogant.

    Express yourself and try to connect with people and understand what they are feeling, communicate with empathy and show your customers that the brand cares about them and not just focusing on making money.

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    Conclusion

    It takes years to build a brand but it takes only minutes to have it crumble down. A business will somehow face a crisis at any point of its lifetime. One needs to be prepared for that and to bring it back to its feet, they need to use the above techniques properly so that the brand can get back its glory once again.

    FAQ

    How do you fix a tarnished brand?

    Communicate carefully, Be active on social media, Acknowledge the problem, and try to connect with the people.

    How do you strengthen a brand name?

    Build a loyal customer base, Build a brand that stands out from the competition, Keep your brand name simple and easy to remember, and monitor your competitors.

    How do you maintain a brand reputation?

    Improve customer satisfaction, Reply positively to negative comments, Focus on providing excellent customer support, and increase employee satisfaction.

  • How To Reduce Customer Friction in Your Startup?

    Customer friction is caused when the customers feel hesitant to buy goods or services or are unhappy with your company. Friction is something that slows down the customers or they lose interest in your products and services. Friction arises because of numerous flaws in the product or design or delivery. This will lead to poor customer service. ‌‌

    An example of customer friction is that when you are a software company and the app developed by you is in trouble. The company’s website has chat-bots which instantly gives solution for the problems faced by the customers. A chatbot is a solution for customer friction which otherwise need the customers to make a call to the customer care who does not respond quickly. ‌‌

    According to the survey, 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. ‌‌

    Friction can be reduced when you make the business as easy as possible for the customers. This is when you will increase the customers and retain the existing customers.‌‌‌‌

    How to reduce customer friction?
    Conclusion
    FAQs

    How to Make Customers Loyal?

    How to reduce customer friction?

    Understand the customers’ need

    In the business, As a first step, understanding customer’s problem is important. Know who your buyer is and what they are looking for. When you identify the customer’s needs and understand what they are expecting from you, then you will reduce the customer friction and make their experiences will be more pleasing.

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    Happy employees create happy customers

    A business is successful when they have happy employees. It is the responsibility of a business to prepare their employees well so that they can clearly explain and brief it to the customers. This type of clear human interaction will reduce frictions. The employees will also know the skill to satisfy the customers with theirs needs. When the employees are made comfortable they in turn help in increase the business by understanding the customer’s needs. When the employees are happy, the customers are also happy. ‌‌

    Improve customer Interaction

    Improving Customer Interaction
    Improving Customer Interaction

    Lack of customer interaction is the major cause of customer friction. If you want your customers to invest more in your company or brand, then it is important to improve your company’s website, train your employees well as they represent your company’s pride and create informative posters. Whether it is online or offline, provide a helpful platform for your customers to directly interact with your products or services.‌‌

    Maintain quality design

    It is important to have a well-oriented and clutter-free website or an interface that will allow customers to show more interest in your company or brand. When you have a clear web design that equalizes the market standards, half of the friction is reduced. When a company provides many useful ways to stay connected with your product like pamphlets well-informed websites, et cetera this will ease the customer friction and increase your business. ‌‌

    Use persuasive content

    The content must be clear and to the point, where it is a website or social media or blog. Proper content will answer many of the questions of customers and they show more interest in your brand or product. There must be a clear call to action that will lead the customers to additional information or the opportunity to buy your products. ‌‌

    Answer the questions before they ask

    Having good communication with the customers is the best way to serve your customers well. Communication means having real-time notifications about the purchases, shipping and follow-ups to make sure that your customers are satisfied with your products or services. Also, place a FAQ section on your website which will help the customers to know more about your company and its products. ‌‌

    Taking the feedback

    When people buy your products, ask them for their valuable feedback. Feedback also give insights into the customer’s satisfaction. You can improve your weak points and serve your customers with the best quality of products. You can also make customers interview to understand their pain points and try to fill those gaps. In this way, you can remove the customer friction completely and focus on building your brand/company.

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    Follow-up with the regular customers

    Regular customers are the best source to know about the hindrances created by any of your products/services. On this basis, you can improve the defective areas and reduce customer friction. If you follow up with these customers they will identify the changes exactly and also help to boost the word of mouth marketing.

    Conclusion

    Customer friction lowers your brand and also affects your business. Following the above strategies will help your company to have happier and loyal customers. When a company or business reduces the frictions, it will decrease your unnecessary investments in other things, increase the purchasing base for your customers.

    The digital world has eliminated the global barrier, thus it is important to make your process and information as simple as possible to reach out to a more customer base. Simplifying the content and website is very important as research says that- “78% of customers cancelled their orders/purchases because they were not happy with the company’s services”. So invest in good website design, train your employees well, attract more customers by reducing customer friction as ‘word of mouth marketing is still a KING’.

    FAQs

    What are the other frictions that reduce your customer base?

    The friction varies from business to business. Some of the common customer frictions are poor website quality, poor customer service, limited business hours, negative reviews, improper content and many more.

    What is the difference between customer friction and poor customer service?

    Customer friction is caused by flaws in the product or its process. This will reduce the customer base. Whereas poor customer service is a service that does not meet the customer’s needs. An increase in customer friction leads to poor customer service.

    How to improve customer satisfaction?

    There is a number of ways to track your customer needs and serve better. Few are taking feedback, conducting customer interviews, create customer journey maps etc.

    ‌‌