Customer Experience, one of the buzzwords in SaaS, is making its place in the industry over the past few years. Customers have changed the entire ball game of how businesses operate today. With so many competitors available online, companies have to be always on their toes while serving the customer. A minor mistake in the service, and the customer is gone.
While this philosophy of giving greater service to the customer has always been prevalent in many industries over the past few decades, it has never become so prominent as it has taken shape in the last few years. Customer experience has become a separate field of study and learning for the new customer-centric businesses. Companies have realized that they can’t thrive in their business without giving a greater customer experience.
Customer Experience vs. Customer Service
Often, the term customer experience is interchangeably used with customer service. But there is a vast difference in both. Customer experience is more subtle. Customer service is defined as any service your company gives to your customers when they need assistance while using your product.
Whereas customer experience is defined by your customer’s experiences while interacting with your servicing team or during any other interaction. It includes the psychological aspects of customer experience while dealing with your company. Customer experience spans right from the first time your customer hears about your company to the stage when they become your loyal customers.
Customer Experience Management
Customer experience management is a part of customer relationship management because it only summarizes all your customer’s experiences with your company that either turns them into loyal customers or makes them leave.
Having understood customer experience, let us dive straight into the five ways you can implement to improve customer experience management.
1. Align your Organization
As I said earlier, Customer Experience is a philosophy. As a Customer Experience Leader, your primary goal is to align your entire organization around this philosophy. Every employee of your company should understand this cliché that “the customer is always right.”
It doesn’t mean to accept everything your customer throws at you. It is about learning the art of how to express your views in a way that the customer feels privileged, you appear humble, and the conversation becomes a delightful experience for both. Every employee should clearly understand that giving a wow experience to the customer is their prime objective.
This should give your customers a perception that is interacting with you is always excellent and without any glitches. This ensures that customers would never hesitate to contact you even for the minutest reason. That is good from a customer engagement point of view because an engaged customer with a greater experience is most likely to stay loyal to your brand.
2. Personify your customers
To serve your customer with expertise and empathy, you need to understand where they come from. You might be having numerous customers from multiple domains. Some might be tech-savvy, others might be analytical, while others come from a literary background.
Personifying your customers or the segments where they fit in would help you provide specialized service to them. For example, you can point them to your tech-savvy customers to follow video tutorials if they want to learn about your product. Whereas to a customer from a literary background, you can share them online blogs or help articles that would help them better understand your product.
3. Make an emotional connection with your customers
It is of vital importance in building a customer experience as to how your customers perceive your brand. If you come across to them just as a money-minded vendor, they would stay with you only as long as your product runs without a single fault. This relationship is very mechanical.
But when you connect with customers emotionally, then it creates a different impression of yours on them. Sending those gifts on their birthday or wishing them on their marriage anniversary is a few of the examples through which you can show that you care for them beyond your business.
4. Gather customer feedback
Customer feedback is the fuel for your customer experience. The better you receive the input, the more encouraged your employees would be to provide even better service. Gather feedback whenever possible from your customers.
The moment they finish a conversation with your service team, you can send them a short feedback survey to capture how they felt about the interaction and what improvement they seek. The more proactive you are in gathering real-time feedback, the more genuine feedback you will get.
5. Measure your performance
All the efforts you are putting towards customer experience will go in vain if you cannot measure your success and show it to your superiors. You need to justify your cost to the company and show the ROI they can reap by investing in customer experience.
The most widely used and accurate metric to measure customer experience is the Net Promoter Score. It is the shortest survey you can send to your customers. It includes asking your customer about how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others. On a scale from 1 to 10, getting a nine to ten response shows you are doing exceptionally well.
Wrapping up
Customer experience is a long-term investment for your customers. It takes months and years for your customers to build a positive perception of your brand. All the efforts you put in every interaction would eventually decide how they are shaping your customer relationship.
Remember that in the world of online marketing, where customer reviews travel to the mass audience faster than light, your customer experience is everything. A happy customer is not just loyal to your brand but brings more customers to your sales funnel. And once you are on the right path, your sales become a continuous circle of chain reaction.
