In today’s business world, a great customer service experience ranks foremost on the priority of every business. Without a great customer service experience, business success is next to impossible. The business world is highly competitive and so you must have customer support that greatly impacts your customers.
Any technological implementation made by the contact centre should revolve around giving customers the best experience. However, understanding what customer support experience clearly means is an essential first step every company should take. Knowing what this step is will enable you to know what to act upon.
What is Customer Support Experience?
Customer support experience is the experience a customer has with your business throughout interaction and buying. An excellent customer relationship management ensures a top-notch and credible customer experience to your customer every time. Give your customers a great experience and you will have happy and loyal advocates of your business and as we all know, it’s much cheaper to retain customers than it is to attract new ones.
Having great customer service is not enough. It must be excellent and focused solely on the intention of providing the best experience possible. The ability to offer the best to the customer during the pre-sale and post-sale process must be your high priority. A business that concentrates on the importance of its customers would look up new strategies and creative ideas that will make the customer support experience the best it can be. Your staff should be examining the purchase history of the customer to predict future needs. Or it can also be the ability to provide related products to customers that they may need – better known in the business as the ‘upsell.’
When this is done, the customer’s loyalty to your business increases. Many businesses decide on outsourcing to focus on product development and innovations, but the problem that most businesses encounter is finding the right customer service outsource provider. But before we get to that, let’s talk about why the customer experience is so important.
Why should Customer Experience Matter?
You may be wondering why a company’s priority should be focused on the customer experience. Well, this is because the centre of any business should be its customers. Quite literally, if you have no customers, you have no business. If you look at all the thriving businesses, they aren’t succeeding because of good management alone; they’re doing well because they understand the importance of retaining existing customers and attracting new ones.
“How do I retain my customers?” – Simple. You ask them what you’re doing right and, more importantly, what you’re doing wrong. Feedback is a great way of assessing a company’s performance, especially in the customer support experience. According to research conducted on customers, when customer experience is bad, most customers stop buying. That’s hardly surprising now, is it? Since customers have so much choice of vendor these days, they can easily move from one provider to another. This is why it’s so important that the experience they receive from purchasing and interacting with you should be able to convince them to stay – this is known as ‘brand loyalty.’ And why is this so important? Well, according to Loyalty Lion, “Brand loyalty increases the likelihood that an existing customer will try a new product because existing customers are much easier to sell to; in fact, you’re 60-70% more likely to sell to an existing customer, compared to the 5-20% likelihood of selling to a new prospect.”
Measuring your Customer Experience
The first step to creating a great customer support experience is to measure the existing one. Perhaps you don’t know where to start and have no idea what “great” even looks like but don’t worry, the answer is right there in front of you; all you have to do is look for it. During a customer’s short interaction with your business, they will experience various ‘touch points’ within your business and the sum of those is the customer experience. Once you have that information, you can act on it. Here are a couple of ways you can gather that information:
Analyse a customer’s satisfaction through survey results
To analyse a customer’s satisfaction, ask them to fill out a satisfaction survey. By asking your customers the questions you want answering and giving them free rein to tell you their thoughts, you’ll know exactly where your business needs to improve. And the best part is, by actually asking your customers how they feel about their experience with you, you’re actually showing them that you care. But don’t just leave it there; thank them for taking the time to fill out the survey, let them know their concerns and their congratulations have been heard and that you will make sure the relevant departments are told and things will get done. Remember, this isn’t just for bad feedback. This is to highlight what you’re doing right as well and every member of staff who created that wonderful experience for the customer should be commended for their hard work and dedication.
A recent Hubspot study found that 42% of companies don’t survey their customers or collect feedback. So whilst these companies aren’t bothering to even find out what their customers think or how they can do better, you could be in the 58% of companies that do.
Take to social media
According to Get Feedback, there are 7 Effective Ways to Get Feedback on Social Media.
1. Post a link to a survey on social sites and blogs
2. A Facebook post autoresponder
3. A direct message ask for feedback
4. Social media contests
5. Instagram stories
6. Social monitoring
7. Facebook chatbot survey template
Just remember to read our blog on the Dos and Don’ts of Social Customer Service before you do….🙈
“How Do I Create A Great Customer Support Experience?”
There are really only 3 steps and if you follow those, you could be well on your way to providing a great customer service experience for all your customers.
Have a responsive and organised website or app
If your business is online, your customers must be able to navigate through it as though they are walking around a brick-and-mortar shop. Make the experience enjoyable with fast-loading page speeds, optimised images and an easy-to-use shopping cart and if you do, not only will your customers thank you, but Google will as well.
Understand your customers
Have you ever heard the saying “Give customers what they need, not what they want”?
According to Forbes, “Every individual customer is the No. 1 expert in their own desires, and these desires can range greatly based on background, personality and perspective. But as companies, we can be experts in particular sets of needs for particular groups of customers. We can hone that expertise and delight customers by understanding and anticipating their needs better than they do.”
If you’ve ever watched QVC and bought something, you’ll know exactly what that means!
Employ effective social media strategies
With social media often being a customer’s first port of call when complaining, it would be totally remiss of any company not to make sure it’s well-manned by a team of people able to respond in a timely and effective manner.
Get it right and social customer service can reap huge benefits.
Conclusion
A company that envisions growth must understand the importance of having great customer support. Understanding that your customers have to feel special and that you should not only meet their expectations but go beyond them is a great way to outshine your competitors without even knowing it. Remember – only 48% of companies ask their customers for feedback – don’t be one of them.
