Six Main Elements of Great Customer Experience
What is Great Customer Experience?
Providing great customer experiences is an essential component to business success. Great customer service that that meets a customers needs is important to customer retention. When loyal customers return to the same brand or business for their purchases, it boosts revenue in a myriad of ways.
Best practices for content marketing is having a happy customer who provides word-of-mouth marketing and draws in additional customers. When a customers needs are met, the loyal customers become brand advocates by promoting their experience or the products and services over social media.
Importance of Customer Experience
To make sure the customer journey is a positive experience from start to finish is integral to business success. All customer experiences should provide best practices for customer service.
Think about developing a great customer experience as lifetime value for the whole of the company. The experience matters for sales revenue and brand image. A positive customer experience encourages customer loyalty. As such, the customer retention helps to promote brand advocacy and helps a brand grow in the face of the public. This is important to understand for both established and new companies.
Today, a customers needs can be met from a variety of sources. Because the customer has many choices, it's up to the brand to shine a spotlight on their products or services. This can be done by developing an experience strategy that sets the brand apart from competition.
It's important to provide a great customer experience to keep customers returning with their business.
6 Elements of a Great Customer Experience
Listening to customers and understanding their needs helps strengthen a brand. Customers expect a certain level of service when they purchase a product or service. The six areas where customer expectations need to be met are as follows-
1. Speed
Timely service makes a tremendous impact on the customer experience. Waiting for service in any manner can create a negative experience in the consumers mind, and the longer they wait, the more bad customer complaints will come in.
Technology has cut-down on the wait factors, however it has also cut everyone's patience in half. For example, when a customer has a question through a live chat box on the brand website they expect it to be answered in a timely manner.
Automated customer queue lines can help with this matter as they walk a customer through FAQ until their issue is resolved or it is forwarded to a live operator for additional assistance.
2. Quality
The quality of the goods or services in which the customer is shelling out their hard earned money for has a high customer expectation level. They expect good quality in return for their business.
Rushing the build of a product can cause recall issues down the road due to poor quality. In a restaurant, if the quality of the food is poor it will be sent back costing time and money. Adequate training can help curb theses issues. Frequent check-ins with suppliers and distributors can stave off any unforeseen issues down the road.
3. Comprehension
Making things clear and concise can go a long way in maintaining customer loyalty. Technical jargon or unclear instructions will only serve to alienate customers.
Remembering that each customer has their own backgrounds and understandings, its important to keep things simplified in terms that everyone can understand.
4. Accessibility
Reducing customer effort when they are trying to communicate with the business is important in trying to deliver great experiences. Communication is key and at the hub of this issue is having a user-friendly website. No customer wants to navigate through links on a convoluted website just to find the answers they seek. In fact, if it takes too long to find what they're looking for they often seek it elsewhere.
First impressions count, so speed and efficiency for a website and other platforms where the brand does business must not lag. This is especially important for e-commerce businesses which provide options to purchase directly from the website. It's also a good idea to offer many popular payment options at check-out.
5. Empowerment
Customers like to have a sense of control rather than getting the run-around. Nothing deters a customer faster than feeling like something shady is occurring. Flexible options give customers a sense of freedom and it takes very little for a business to implement.
For example, self-service is what alot of customer want these days. Whether self checkout lines or seeking the answer through a knowledge base on the brand website, the customer is getting things done on their own time without waiting for service.
Customer feedback also gives them a sense of empowerment. When a customer satisfaction form is sent out, 9 times out of 10 the customer will fill it out because they seek that sense of being heard. They want their opinion to matter.
6. Friendliness
Being friendly and approachable is the cornerstone to any successful business. It is common sense to provide a welcoming environment to the customers who are spending money on the brand.
If a customer service rep has a poor attitude it can disrupt the customer experience. The negative energy can translate right over to the customer and now they are in a bad mood as well.
Personal problems should be left at the door when employees and staff clock on for work. Even if a customer is being difficult, the majority of time they just want someone to acknowledge their problem and be compassionate with a response to fix the situation.
Recognition and appreciation for loyal customers goes a long way. Having a loyalty program in place will continue to incentivize customers to stay loyal to a brand and directly contributes to the success of the business.
6 Service Levels: An outstanding customer experience can be attributed to these 6 areas-
Conclusion to Great Customer Experience
- Customer experience is the impression of a brand that the customer generates as they move through the customer journey.
- The result of the customer experience can impact the bottom line of any business.
- Providing a great customer experience will create loyal customers who want to continue doing business for the long term.