Acquiring and holding onto customers is a tough task in an age where competition in all industries has accelerated. If you have a bad customer experience you will be googling somebody else in no time. From careful UX planning to clear website paths to purchase to letting your personality shine, there are many ways that we can improve our experience for our customers. Here are 5 tips to get started:
Pay Attention
There is nothing worse than a shop assistant who doesn’t listen or care for your needs. You ask for one thing, they try to sell you another thing and you end up going around in circles or even worse you can’t find what you are looking for because they haven’t taken the time to understand what you want. The same goes for online product shopping. Do you ever get bombarded with irrelevant ads after you have visited a website? This means the site is re-targeting you with the wrong products and messages. Personalisation when building out your marketing campaigns is more important than ever.
Paying attention to customer needs is one of the most important activities an online marketer can do today. Follow the customer as they navigate their way through the buying journey. What issues do they face along the way? Are they finding it easy to see your products and services? Once you know the answers to these questions you can start to present them with the most beneficial products and services.
Use a friendly Tone of Voice
From the companies that we have met and continue to work with today there is one key attribute that stands out and that is kindness. Kindness attracts loyalty and wins business. Using a friendly but informative tone of voice in your communications can make you stand out from the crowd. Many companies still adopt formal approaches when writing their emails, web pages and branded materials. Depending on who you are addressing this may not be the optimal way to encourage loyalty to your products and services. Adding some personalisation to your core communication platforms can make a big difference here.
Be responsive
Losing customers due to lack of response or being complacent with your customer communications is quite common. When it comes to online client notifications ensure that you have all of your follow up in place. If a customer submits an enquiry to your website how quick are you to respond? Automation can be your friend here. Use automated emails as your first level of response to let the customer know you have received their mail and you will be in touch. This will buy you some time to think about the content of your response and what the customer actually wants.
Be efficient when dealing with concerns
Complaints and concerns are common features of every industry. We deal with a lot of travel companies who need to carefully manage consumer concerns. As travel is often considered a bigger purchase and investment, the list of concerns can be longer.
DON’T WORK IN ISOLATION
Sometimes we find that the people who are writing and designing the customer communications have never spoken to the customers or dealt with a client issue. If you are part of a marketing team that never liaises with the sales and customer service team then you are bound to trip up when it comes to communicating with the end user. Schedule time to brainstorm ideas with your colleagues from different departments. Ask the technical team what issues they experience, ask the customer care team what questions keep coming up from customers, ask the sales team why some products or services are selling better than others? The bigger the picture you have, the better customer experience you can create.
Try to think of a time when you received outstanding customer service, now think about the four points above. I bet that all of them had some of these elements. To tailor your customer experience and design effective communications reach out to us.
