2017 seems to be a promising year for all businesses that are hyper-adoptive to the speeding systems, technologies and processes. Although we keep seeing slight changes everywhere right from policies to technology, one activity in business that has been seeing tremendous amendment is customer service. The better you do this, the more your customers are going to come back again and again. Even a 5% growth in customer loyalty can lead to nearly 25% to 95 % profit growth, says a report. On the contrary, replacing a customer will cost six to seven times of the cost of retaining a customer.
The power lies in the hands of customers. “The easiest and most powerful way to increase customer loyalty is really very simple. Make your customers happy,” says Kevin Stirtz, strategy manager at Thomson Reuters and an exceptional marketing expert.
Customer obsessed strategy can help you sail well. The following eight steps can be an ideal check list to have a power packed agenda that can work well with you to deliver great customer experiences. Remember, this is the age of hyper-adoption. So, be flexible to the changes.
Step 1: Authentically Connect with your Customers
Mobile technology is contributing to improved connectivity with anybody today. Take complete advantage of the social media apps. Connecting with your customers live and real time brings your customers and followers closer to your brand. Be fresh and be authentic always when you try to communicate with your customers.
Step 2: Increase Customer Loyalty – Give More and Give What They Want
We are living in an era where brands are undergoing online promotion. Creating meaningful experience demands one to be ready everyday with a new regime that can contribute to great customer service and customer experience delivery. Exploring this strange world of online business needs a bit of understanding. If you make mistake, it can vanish your presence or rather cost heavily socially. Customer loyalty has to be the only big motto of your entire marketing process. Generate contents that can drag the attention of your customers and create an urge that can bring your customers back to you. Shared values can definitely build loyalty.
Step 3: Go Beyond Transactional Bond
This is the age of customers. Business can survive only if they are customer obsessed. Just connecting with them during the sales process is not going to help. Even the biggest brands today follow a strategy that takes them closer to the customers far beyond just the transactional bond. Start dealing with your customers with a view of having a strong long term deal. Bring in customers everywhere within your organization, within every system of your business.
Step 4: Get Familiarized With both Front and Back-End Technologies
To survive and thrive, businesses must evolve with the evolving technologies. Be agile failing which businesses can end up having an identity crisis. Emerging technologies are empowering customers with more knowledge and choices. Lacking the necessary structure can have adverse effect. So, get familiarized with technologies and bring in the changes. Things are pretty fast. If you fall about today, it is going to get difficult to catch up.
Step 5: More Interaction and More Action
Any stale and impersonal interaction with your customers is going to cost you badly. Millennial customers have huge demands and expectations. Your action decides your presence. So, be creative, be fresh and always keep customers as your priority. Master the art of customer interaction. If your ideas are told well, customers will stay with you, repeat business with you and influence others to come into this loop. Interaction and repetitive actions which proves your presence is crucial for business continuity.
“The future of communicating with customers rests in engaging with them through every possible channel: phone, e-mail, chat, Web, and social networks. Customers are discussing a company’s products and brand in real time. Companies need to join the conversation.”
Marc Benioff
Step 6: Identify the Factors That Drive Customer Satisfaction
Managing the whole buying cycle of your customers; providing outstanding experience and eventually following a friction free retention program that can bring back your customers into the buying cycle again is a strategic process by itself. In this entire journey with your customers, you tend to identify few factors that have helped your brand to satisfy your customers and few that have packed off few of your customers. Understanding such factors during the retention and acquisition process will help you to provide better service always.
Step 7: Measure Your Customer Service Based On Regular Customer Insight
Customer is more powerful today. They understand very well as to what they need to buy, from where and for what price. The challenge lies in understanding the speed at which they are expecting a service. This is not a science. The underlying factor is that customers can decide your presence. Measuring your level of service and the kind of service based on regular customer insight will help you to flare well in the game.
Step 8: Keep Track Of the New Challenges and Trends
Customers are armed with more technologies today. New technologies pop up every now and then. Updating yourself with such innovations and trends will help you tackle new challenges. Moving towards a multichannel approach can make you efficient and competent. Embrace and align with new developments. In this digital era, you can control your brands’ narration via social media. So, try and keep narrating your brand positively as they can get spin out of control in no time.
Final Say – Strong Players Have Upper Hand
Theoretical understanding of any best practiced methodology is one thing and the actual execution is another. Many of these tips are familiar to all of us. They are just reminders. Understand the methods; implement the ones that best suits you and your customers and above all be hyper-adoptive and be totally obsessed with your customers. Continuously engage with your customers and make customer-based business decisions. After all the latest aphorism is, “You are What You Deliver.”
