How To Improve Customer Experience
Delivering a positive customer experience will bring a number of benefits to your business. Customer experience not only increases customer loyalty, but can also produce life-long customers, generate referrals, increase word-of-mouth marketing, gather positive reviews, and decrease complaints, cancellations, and returns. Making a few adjustments that focus on how to improve customer experience will lead to more satisfied customers and more sustainable business.
In this article, we’re going to review some actionable strategies you can use to learn how to improve customer experience and increase customer satisfaction. We’ll also cover some actions to avoid that contribute to poor customer experience.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience is an individual’s evaluation or perception of their overall experience with your company. The customer experience is a result of any and all interactions the prospect or customer has with your people and brand throughout their buying journey. Traditionally, this journey begins with the first interaction a customer has with your business and continues until the individual is no longer a paying customer, or no longer owns your product. The customer experience is composed of many interactions – including sales conversations, navigating your website, marketing outreach, advertisements, and contacting your customer service team.
What is customer service vs customer experience?
Customer service is just one component of the overall customer experience, however, it usually is a major contributor to the customer’s perception of your brand. Customer service is when a dedicated team provides support to current or prospective customers. In most cases, a customer will reach out when they have questions, issues, or need some additional help. The customer service experience can take many different forms – answering questions, walk-through training, troubleshooting, etc. How your team handles these interactions is critical. Customers typically have the ability to rate their experience, which is why it is so important to provide the best customer experience possible at all times. A few stats to keep in mind:
- 68% of customers are willing to pay more for products / services at companies that are known to provide positive customer service experience
- Great customer experience turns 93% of customers into repeat buyers
- 58% will turn to another company or your competitor due to a poor experience
- A negative customer service experience has made 78% back out of a purchase
5 Ideas on How to Improve Customer Experience
Your current or prospective customers feeling supported and heard in a timely manner is what makes a great customer experience. That is why having a customer experience strategy is uber important. Here are some effective ideas on how to improve customer experience ratings:
1. Use a CRM and add a chatbox
Using a CRM makes it easy for your support team to manage open tickets. Adding a chatbox makes it even more convenient for customers to get a hold of your team.
2. Prioritize personalization
Everyone’s situation is different and should be handled as such. Build and maintain deeper relationships to make your customers feel supported.
3. Incorporate video
Most help and support can’t be done in person and is often done over the phone, through chat, or video conference. Use video to help with training, platform/company walkthroughs, or to connect if immediate action needs to be done. Watch the video below to see why video is an efficient and effective solution to use when managing customer service requests, or check out 5 customer service videos you should be making.
4. Maintain engagement with current customers
Use social media frequently, check-in via email at times, send promotional items, and offer webinars and training opportunities on new features that roll out. This keeps customers engaged with your product or service, and keeps your brand top of mind.
5. Offer self-service options
When an issue comes up or a question arises, most customers want an immediate answer. Create common how-to videos, support articles that are easily accessible through a help desk page, FAQs page, and more. This gives customers the power, and autonomy to find the information instantly and answer their questions without having to reach out.
Customer Service Strategy Tips to Improve Customer Experience
The customer service team is one of, if not, the most important team in the company. Its efforts are widely felt, more than what many think. Your support team should be top-notch so they can provide the best customer service experience. Find a team that embodies these characteristics:
1. Building trust
Build trust by actively listening and understanding who their customers are. The customers should always be able to expect acceptable, consistent, and accurate service.
2. Providing superior support and assistance
Provide superior support by being consistent and equal with the quality of service offered. Customer service teams and reps should stay patient and have a good attitude no matter how difficult the situation becomes. Projects should be done in a timely manner while trying to prevent any further problems that could arise.
3. Caring about customer satisfaction
Increase customer loyalty and satisfaction by prioritizing your customers. Be responsive and continue building that relationship by meeting their expectations.
The Cost and Loss of Bad Customer Service
Bad customer service is when a business fails to meet the expectations and needs of its customers whether that be through responsiveness, helpfulness, efficiency, or clarity. Just as a positive customer experience has the ability to benefit the business, a negative customer experience can do the opposite. Consider a few of these stats to see the impact poor customer service has on your business:
- The average customer with a poor customer service experience tells 15 people about it. (Nextiva)
- 91% of customers who are unhappy with a brand will leave without warning. (Huffington Post)
- 65% of customers said they have switched brands because of a poor experience. (Khoros)
- 78% of customers have backed out of a purchase due to a poor customer experience. (Glance)
These statistics show that every interaction with a customer matters, and one poor interaction can be costly for your business. Here are some of the biggest contributing factors that lead to a poor customer experience:
- Long wait times
- Can’t get in touch with live support
- Transferring too many times
- Having to repeat yourself or provide information over again
- Unresolved issues/questions
- Too much automation, and lack of human touch and personalization
- Rude and unfriendly attitude
The Importance of Customer Experience
It is safe to say that a customer’s experience is important. As more than half say they will turn to a different company, even your competitor, due to a bad experience, it’s uber important to provide the best customer service experience. One of your main company-wide goals should be to enhance customer experience, always! Here are a couple of key takeaways from this article on how to improve customer experience:
- Have an innovative customer service approach – add video, personalize the experience, and give your customer multiple channels of communication with your support team
- Have an effective customer service strategy – be consistent with the quality of your support, have a good attitude even when it gets tough, be trustworthy, and prioritize your current or prospective customers
Start adding personalized video into your customer service strategy today to delight your customers and increase customer satisfaction. Get Covideo free – and offer personalized support in minutes! Or, see how other customer service teams are using video.
