It should come as no surprise that businesses of all sizes are looking to improve how satisfied their customers are. In fact, it has been found that nearly 90% of customers are happy to pay more if they know that they will be getting a positive customer service experience. Customers don’t want to have long lead times on orders or have to deal with customer services that aren’t helpful if something goes wrong or they need to return an item. That is why all businesses, especially smaller businesses who need to build up a positive reputation of their business, need to take positive steps to improve the customer journey. 

Any business that can successfully implement and improve a strategy for their customer’s experience will be able to achieve a much higher satisfaction rate with their customers, which will in turn, lead to increased revenue. If you do things well, people will come back and let others. Likewise, if you don’t, they won’t come back, but they will still tell others of the terrible service that they received. So having something in place really does make a difference.

For example, have you heard of the Takt Time formula? It is taken from a German word around time and productivity, and it is all about how long something takes to produce the product or service that will be satisfactory to the customer. When you have a high takt time, then it can mean long periods of production, long wait times, and then long delivery times. If you want to do more for your customers, then looking for ways to shorten that time will make a difference as you’ll be able to meet the demands of your customers more quickly, but still not lose out on quality production. 

What is the customer experience?

The customer experience is all about the experiences and interactions that a customer has with your business, right from the start until the end of their interactions with you. If they go onto your website and it doesn’t load well, so they click away and don’t come back, then that is their customer journey experience which isn’t positive for you or them. If they have a positive experience, such as clicking on your website, finding what they want easily, ordering it seamlessly and it arriving quickly, then that is a positive customer experience that can lead to a happy customer and potentially, a new loyal customer. 

The customer experience is vital for your business, because ultimately, it does impact how well the business does and how much money the business is able to make. A positive customer experience can lead to customers being loyal to the business, and if you want them to do this, then you need to really think about the journey and experience that they have with you. So with that in mind, here are some of the things that you can do to improve the customer experience of your customers so that you can help your business.

Understand who your customers are

Knowing who your customers are is vital when it comes to the customer experience and it brings to life the kinds of customers that you will encounter as a business. If you want to improve their experience, then you need to know what they are looking for, who they are, and what their wants and needs are. One of the things that you can do for this is to think about customer profiles for your customers. Think about the gender of the customers, their ages, and how experienced they are with technology. If your business is aimed at the older generation, then having a complex website with a lot of pop-ups will just put them off if all they want to do is find something to click on and buy. Think about who your customers are and then your team as a whole can take steps to make sure that they better understand who the business is aimed at so they can become much more customer centric. 

Capture customer feedback

One of the ways that you will be able to tell if you are delivering a customer service experience that is the best for your customers is by asking them. You can do this in real time too, with a variety of methods. You could use a live chat tool to help, which means that you can have a conversation in real time about what they need help with, which allows them to rate the help or conversation at the end of the chat. You can also follow up with emails when orders have been placed and received, as well as other customer experience tools. You could call customers or text them to complete a survey, but just be careful to not bombard them with messages to do so, otherwise it can definitely put them off. 

Use a framework in order to development your team

By being able to ask for feedback, you will be able to see what customers think about what you are able to offer, compared to any principles around customer service that you have defined. This means that the next thing you should look to do is to train each member of your team so that you know that their training needs are met. A lot of organizations will be able to assess the quality of any phone and email communication, but with a quality framework, it will take the assessment a step further by being able to track and schedule the development of your team through coaching, group training, and other forms of training and online training. 

The customer experience can impact the expectations of customers, and no more than ever with social media, words can travel fast. This just shows how important the customer experience is and making sure that it is something that is positive. With an improved customer experience strategy, you will be able to see the positive impact on your business, including an increase in loyal customers and in revenue.