You often hear talk of the customer experience. It’s more than just the face-to-face interaction you have at a register. It also goes beyond traditional customer service. CX encompasses all interactions you have with customers from start to finish.
For your business, this might begin with the greeting customers receive when they enter the store. Do you have a catchphrase that employees say? Perhaps employees are expected to greet customers within the first five minutes they are in the store. The length of the customer’s visit could be long or short. They may end up purchasing something or they might leave without buying anything.
Regardless, these interactions can massively impact how consumers perceive your business. Customers remember both positive and negative experiences. Building loyalty starts with focusing on customer satisfaction. Are you looking to up your game this year? Check out these five ways to boost your customer experience in 2022.
1. Make Customer Satisfaction an Organizational Goal
Good customer service starts from the ground up. It isn’t just left to one department. To truly improve the experience of your consumers, you need the whole team on board. Talking to your team about why their work matters helps with this. Every employee, no matter their role, impacts the customer.
Therefore, boosting your team’s confidence will begin to change your company culture in a positive way. Doing so creates ownership and optimizes employee performance. Workforce optimization helps your team create better satisfaction while, at the same time, lowering costs.
Great customer service means more than just how the client is treated in the store. It’s about doing your job to minimize effort between departments while maximizing customer satisfaction. When employees strive to not create extra work for other departments it, in turn, makes things better for your clients.
2. Seek Feedback
Who knows more about the customer experience than your customers? If you want to improve, you must first know where you stand. Seek feedback from them. You can do this through online surveys that are generated after customers make an online purchase. Another option is to include a survey link at the bottom of receipts.
Paper surveys at the register are also a way to get feedback from your customers. Add an incentive for submitting a survey and enter them in a drawing for store gift cards.
Once you have collected feedback, be sure to address it. Some comments might have suggestions to make your business run smoother. A few small tweaks can go a long way in gaining repeat customers.
3. Create an Individualized Experience
Loyal customers come back. Creating an individualized experience can help with that. It makes the consumer feel special and also increases your sales. Creating a customer loyalty program is one way to do this.
Your program can function in a number of ways. It could be for every dollar they spend, they get points that accumulate to earn them discounts. For online shopping, have consumers create an account and tie it to their loyalty points.
Having a “because you bought” section can tailor the website to the customer and enable cross-sells. This not only makes shopping easier for the customer, but it will boost your sales revenue, too.
4. Brand Consistently
How you brand and market yourself is all part of the customer experience. For example, say you own a day spa with more than one location. To brand your venture effectively, you should provide the same satisfying CX at every facility.
Consider every element, down to the scent clients smell when they open the door. Lighting can even play a part in this. Think about how you want the customer to feel and try to embody this feeling in your overall brand.
This then extends to your messaging online and on social media. Colors, images, your language — it all goes into creating the experience. Branding consistently helps you gain and retain clients. Whenever they interact with your company, they know what to expect and the quality they will receive.
5. Automate When Applicable
It’s no secret that running a business entails myriad responsibilities. Automating certain tasks allows you to put your time into more client-facing work. Depending on your business, this might put you on the sales floor. If you own a boutique, for example, you can even pop behind the register.
Automation could mean using a project management platform to track tasks instead of sending tons of emails. Speaking of emails, use an email marketing platform to build distribution lists, create marketing templates, and track open rates. Implementing software to track payroll and time off is yet another way to save you time.
To truly improve your customers’ experiences, you must go beyond customer service. Customers hold on to their positive and negative experiences, so you must be intentional. Focus on customer satisfaction and seek feedback. Personalize the experience and brand consistently. These things all work together to shape a better experience for your consumers.
Further, automating when possible will free you up to focus on the customer-facing aspects of your business. Devoting time to CX-building activities and making them a priority can go a long way in helping your business succeed. This will build customer loyalty and create a superior experience your customers will come to expect. Embrace these tips and watch your customer experience improve in 2022.