Customers are the core of every business. Whether your company works business to business or business to consumer, your target audience is made up of customers who need to purchase your products or services in order to be successful. By offering those customers exceptional experiences, you increase the chances that they will work with you, again and again.
Rapid Response on Social Media
More and more customers spend a significant amount of time on social media. Companies that want to be successful are finding that they need to offer a fantastic customer service experience there. In fact, having a responsive social media team can be more important for some niche companies than having a dedicated customer service team on phones.
Two great examples of stellar social media presence are the fountain pen company, Goulet Pens, and the body jewelry company, Body Candy. Goulet Pens has spent years creating a community with their exceptional content marketing. They use blogs, newsletters, videos, and forum posts to show their expertise to fountain pen, paper, and ink enthusiasts. They respond quickly to Tweets and Instagram posts, answering questions and directing customers towards products.
Body Candy, meanwhile, allows customers to log in to the website with their Facebook account, making it easy to show off their incoming purchases. They also send an immediate direct message that includes the order number and items, advising the customer to contact them with any questions. This can make it much easier for customers to deal with a delayed or problematic order.
Using social media in innovative ways can help customers engage more deeply with your product or service.
Great Online Platforms
More and more consumer transactions are happening online. Customers do a great deal of research before they make their final purchase, and often before they even contact a sales or customer service team. By offering the ability to research information online, companies can make sure that customers know as much as possible before they reach out. This helps customers sell themselves, and helps make the sales team’s job easier.
But online platforms aren’t just about information. The best online platforms offer a fantastic experience for the user, whether you’re a cheerleading platform or a major retailer. By making sure your website is easy to use and offers a stellar user experience, you’re making sure that your customers will return.
Excellent Email Newsletters
There are many interesting conversations about what needs to be in an email newsletter for it to successfully convert customers. From using just the right number of images to making sure that you have a prominent call to action, email newsletters are still a big part of courting your customer base, especially in B2B communities, and companies with older target audiences.
And while creating email newsletters isn’t incredibly complicated, it’s also still something that takes some effort and attention. To really build an excellent customer experience, you need to offer more than just sales and coupons. You can (and should!) also send out:
• Informational content
• Reminders of blog and website updates
• Invitations to new information platforms
• Notices about incomplete information – unpurchased items in carts, and so forth
• Welcome campaigns and more
Every email should have a call to action, but not ever call to action should be a sale or coupon. The sales funnel is longer than that, and customers are grateful when companies remember that.
Prioritizing Customer Service
In general, the most important thing companies can do to create an amazing customer service experience is simply this: prioritize the customer experience. Too often, customers are treated almost as an afterthought, while the other divisions of a company become fixated on how to improve internal processes. While these are, of course, very important, if the customer is being served, the business will eventually cease to function.
Whenever anything within the company begins to change, all decision makers should pause and consider: how will this affect the customer? Will this improve the customer experience, or harm it? Will it make it easier for conversions to happen, for leads to be followed up on? If the answer to these questions are no, then it is crucial that the company find a different way to move forward.
When businesses start by focusing on their customers, they are building their company from the ground up and in a way that will support their endeavor at the long term. After all, what a company ultimately does is fix a problem for their clients. By knowing what the client experience is going to be ahead of time, they help to protect this relationship.
What does your business do to protect the customer experience?
