What Makes a Great Customer Experience?
Wondering what makes a great customer experience? Are you a business owner trying to develop a strategy that will boost customer satisfaction and encourage people to shop at your store? Keep reading our entry to help your company enter a new level.
What is customer experience?
Although many people think that “customer experience” is a synonym for “customer service”, it’s far from the truth and these terms shouldn’t be used interchangeably.
Customer experience refers to all aspects and elements that affect the overall level of satisfaction with your product or service. It includes scents, music played in the store, customer service, quality of purchased goods, available payment or delivery methods. Although some mentioned things may seem irrelevant, they all have an impact on the decision-making process of potential buyers.
Why is customer experience so important?
A positive customer experience is key to the success of your business. Satisfied buyers are willing to stay with your brand for longer and recommend your products or services to friends and family – word of mouth marketing is incredibly effective because of the so-called banner blindness that makes us automatically ignore all elements that look like ads. On the other hand, recommendations from friends and family members always inspire great trust.
For this reason, it’s important to ensure that buyers are happy with the offered customer service and product range. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Is the quality of your product range so impeccable that you would buy the items yourself, even if they were twice as expensive?
- As a buyer, would you be satisfied with the support provided by your customer service team members?
- Would you recommend offered goods to your friends and family?
- Do you think that any of your products could serve as a business card representing your brand?
If you said “no” to any of these questions, it means that your customer experience strategy needs thorough improvements.
Why do you need to work on customer experience?
As a business owner, you should realize that we live in times when customers are in control. This is particularly relevant in the era of the ongoing pandemic.
Why?
Regardless of the item you need, it’s enough to type in a relevant query into Google, and you’ll see hundreds or even thousands of options to choose from.
Most buyers do initial research and reject some companies if products are too expensive or too cheap, if available variants don’t meet their expectations, or if offered shipping and payment methods aren’t satisfactory.
All these elements (and more) shape customer experiences. Therefore, providing remarkable customer service and refining your product range so that it corresponds to the needs of buyers, is crucial to encourage people to shop at your store, stay with you for longer, recommend your brand to others, and, consequently, increase your profits.
How to improve customer experience?
In order to boost your customer experience and improve brand loyalty, it’s crucial to focus on four main aspects:
- Feedback
It’s natural that you can’t read in people’s minds (at least most of us can’t do it). That’s why you should ask buyers for feedback. Thanks to it, you’ll easily determine which elements of your customer experience need improvement. - Understanding
Remember that happy customers are loyal customers who will probably return to your store in the future. Try to understand your buyers. Define user personas (meaning typical members of your target group) and do your best to tailor the offered range to their expectations and needs. - Emotions
Have you ever watched Friends and laughed when Joey told Chandler, “it’s not what you said; it’s how you said it”? Well, a truly positive customer experience requires some emotional connection between your company members and users. Try to bond with your recipients. - Brand message
If you want to ensure that buyers don’t misunderstand you, communicate transparently and openly. All elements that may affect customer experiences, such as prices, shipping methods, terms, and conditions or product descriptions, should be explained clearly. - The takeaway
A great customer experience means focusing on all aspects that affect the decision-making process of potential buyers and their satisfaction with your products or services. Define your target group to discover which aspects are crucial in your case, and refine your business strategy.
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