The phrase “customer service” is one that is commonly heard in business, usually when emphasizing how very important it is to the success of a company. However, the phrase is undoubtedly rather vague, which can lead to many entrepreneurs wondering if they are focusing on the right area when seeking to improve it.
Below, we have put together the most common questions that tend to be asked by entrepreneurs when considering customer experience – and we’ve provided the answers you need to ensure you can include this important element in your overall business strategy.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience is essentially everything that a customer encounters when interacting with your business. This includes:
- Your website, its design, and how easy it is to use
- Your social media presence
- Your customer service and, particularly, how you resolve complaints
- The process of buying from your business
- The atmosphere and ambiance a customer experiences when they visit your business premises (if relevant)
- The methods you use to communicate with customers
It is important to note that customer service is just an element of customer experience; many people believe these two things to be interchangeable, but they’re not – they’re related, and they do influence one another, but they are distinct entities that require separate ideas and strategies.
Why is customer experience so important?
Customer experience has risen to prominence due to its influence on your business’ ability to generate sales.
- If a customer has a positive experience with your company, then they are far more likely to complete their first sale and return to your company in future. They are also more likely to spread the word of your company to friends and family, which could lead to more sales in future from these individuals. This is known as word-of-mouth marketing, and it’s incredibly valuable for businesses.
- If a customer has a negative experience with your company, then they will usually abandon the first sale and won’t return in future. They are also likely to tell friends and family about their negative experience, which could harm your business’ reputation and discourage people from purchasing from your business in future.
While it is it technically possible for a company to survive without focusing on improving customer experience, this is highly unlikely and tends to rely on other factors – such as the company enjoying a relative monopoly for their product or service – to even stand a chance of being successful. For small businesses, and particularly for new small businesses, customer experience is absolutely vital. As a small business, every customer counts, which makes customer experience incredibly important to your success.
How can you know what your customer experience is like?
As the business owner, you have almost certainly never experienced your company from the customer’s point of view. Thankfully, there are two ways you can obtain the feedback that is required to evaluate the customer experience:
- Asking customers to fill in surveys, usually via email, and usually in exchange for either a gift certificate or a discount on their next purchase. Very few customers will fill out these surveys for the sake of it, so incentivizing is usually the best way to get the highest number of responses. You can then use the responses from these surveys to help improve customer experience in future; for example, if multiple people comment on slow responses in live chat, you’ll be able to focus on improving this in future.
- Mystery shoppers are a great choice if you want to get a customer’s-eye-view of your business; the likes of www.lanla.com can provide experienced mystery shoppers to evaluate the entire experience of using your business from start to finish, which allows you to identify strengths and – arguably more importantly – any weaknesses. When you know what your business is good at, you can continue the process safe in the knowledge it’s working; for any weaknesses, you can seek to make improvements.
The above options are the best ways of gathering data regarding your customers’ experience, as they rely on the feedback of actual customers, and feedback of experienced people who know what to look for when evaluating a business. These strategies are far preferable to tactics such as focus groups or general public surveys, as these focus more on the theory of how your company operates, which is all well and good, but the theory and what happens in practice tend to be very different things. Customer surveys and mystery shoppers allow an insight into the practical reality of your business, which is far more helpful.
How can customer experience be improved?
There are a variety of ways of improving customer experience, which you can read more about in detail on www.ameyo.com if you are looking for direct tips. However, in many ways, improving customer service is actually incredibly simple: you need to think about you.
- Imagine that you are going to approach a business. If you run a store, then imagine you’re going to a store; if you’re a service provider, imagine you’re going to hire a service.
- Ask yourself what you would expect from that business as you went through the ordering or purchasing process. This could be things like good customer service, a fast website, or quick responses to queries.
- Then think about the red lines; things that could happen that would make you want to turn away and go to another company or store. This could be things like a messy store, rude staff, or slow processing times.
- Write down a list of five things that you think would encourage you to buy or hire the business.
- Write down five negatives that would discourage you from buying from that business.
You now have a blueprint for improving your customer experience; essentially, you should look to make changes that allow your business to achieve the items on the “good” list, as well as changes that allow you to avoid committing the faux pas on the “bad” list. This, combined with what you have learned from your existing customers via evaluation methods, is the best guide for improving your business’ customer experience.
In conclusion
Hopefully, the answers above will help to clarify the customer experience question, and allow you to integrate the related techniques into your overall business endeavors. Good luck!