Want to provide better customer experiences? We have six tips for offering excellent experiences to your buyers this year. Keep reading below to find out what these tips are!
Want to guess what is the top priority of businesses in the next 5 years? We’ll tell you: it’s customer experience.
Wondering why businesses see CX as their top priority? Because investing in CX can bring so many benefits, from improving sales to improving customer retention and customer satisfaction. And, since no business can be successful without paying customers, it’s only natural for brands to go above and beyond to provide positive customer experiences.
No matter the business’s size or industry, good customer experiences are what make the difference between success and failure. In fact, data shows that $1.6 trillion is lost due to poor customer service annually. In contrast, customers report that they are willing to spend 17% more for a good experience.
So, with this in mind, it may be time for your business to level up its customer experience game this year to ensure customer satisfaction and, ultimately, loyalty. Here are our six tips for providing excellent customer service in 2021:
1. Have a data-driven approach
Having a data-driven approach is all about better understanding your customers’ needs, wants, and preferences. And, the better you understand what people want, the easier it’s going to be for your business to provide them with that.
A data-driven approach implies gathering as much data as possible about your customers and potential buyers, anything from what they want from your business, how they prefer to interact with your brand to very specific details about them such as hobbies, demographics, age, and more.
What’s more, you should also gather data about your customers’ or potential customers’ interactions with your competitors. This way, you can find out what your competitors do better than you so that you can improve your business.
A thing is for sure: the deeper you dig into the data and metrics you collect from your audience, the better you’ll understand your customers and how to improve the experiences you offer.
2. Provide excellent customer service
When a customer reaches out to your company for an issue or a request, this is a huge part of that customer’s overall experience with your brand.
You could have the best services or products out there. If you fail to help your customer at the exact moment when they need you and actually reach out to you, that customer is going to consider that the experience with your brand was a horrible one.
Start by hiring the best customer service agents who can connect with customers and have the skills and knowledge to solve their inquiries quickly.
Next, make sure that your business is reachable in the sense that there are several different channels where customers can reach you and that there’s always on the other line to answer. Provide customers with a phone number and email address, and even keep social media communication open.
Don’t forget about incorporating hold music as well so that customers who phone you know that they’re still connected with your customer service agents. At the same time, your employees understand and fix their problems.
3. Use conversational UX chatbots
Speaking of customer service, another great way to help your business respond to customers and provide them with solutions faster is to use conversational chatbots. Chatbots were a game-changer in the customer service field as they provide 24/7 support which is now a norm.
Not only that chatbots help your business provide 24/7 support to your customers, but they also significantly reduce response time and make the job easier for your agents.
Some of the most common issues and questions customers have, from how to change the passwords on their accounts on your website to payment information or how to cancel or upgrade subscriptions, are things that AI-powered chatbots can solve.
A Salesforce report shows that 68% of service agents at companies that use AI chatbots report reduced call and email volume.
4. Be on the channels your customers want to find you
Like it or not, customers expect your brand to be on the channels they want you to be so that they can have an effortless and hassle-free experience. Whether it’s social media platforms, websites, google, or apps, the channels your audience prefers depends on many factors, from demographics to location and obviously personal preferences of your customers.
Now, you need to find out where customers want you to be and build a strong presence there. For example, if your customers prefer social media and instant messengers instead of traditional channels such as SMS or email, your business must get on social media.
5. Ensure top cybersecurity
2020 was, unfortunately, a pretty lucrative year for hackers.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that everything has moved online. Customers, brands, workers, many aspects of our lives moved into the digital environment as the entire world was in lockdown. For this reason, hackers had a lot of activity online too.
So, now, more than ever before, it is vital to protect your customers’ data, from passwords to financial information and identities.
Good customer experiences are also about gaining your customers’ trust. And, you can do so by protecting their most sensitive data as well. Failing to protect customer information from hackers is a sure way to frustrate your audience and gain a bad reputation.
6. Ask for feedback and use it for improvement
Last but not least, your audience’s feedback is the most powerful tool you have to improve your business and attract new customers and retain existing ones.
Make sure you always keep communication open with your customers so that they feel encouraged to share their feedback about your brand, products, marketing efforts, and other things.
When you get feedback, you also empower your business to offer proactive customer service, which is about taking steps to resolve issues before they occur. Maybe one of your customers encountered one issue with one of your products. If you find out about it, you can resolve it so that your other customers don’t deal with the same issue in the future.
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