Engaging with your customers and ensuring their satisfaction.
As a business leader, the success of your company depends heavily on customer satisfaction. Whether you are dealing with existing customers or are trying to attract new customers, it is vital that they feel valued and appreciated by your business. To make sure their experience is positive and that they stay loyal to your brand, there needs to be ongoing engagement between your team and every customer at every touch point, from initial contact through to post-purchase interactions. In this article we will discuss what can be done to effectively engage with customers to ensure their long-term loyalty and support for your company.
Why is it so important?
If it’s not obvious why, remember that loyal customers create value in the form of re-occurring revenue, which improves the profits you make, profits that you can take out and spend or can re-invest in your business, as well as the value of your business should you ever decide to sell.
Purpose
Make at least one change in your business that enhances your customer experience.
10 ways you can take to enhance your customer experience.
With example actions. Pick those that resonate with you and take action to enhance your business performance.
1. Customer Journey Mapping
To effectively engage with your customers, it’s important to understand their journey and the touch points that are most important to them. By mapping out the customer journey and identifying the key touch points, you can ensure that you are providing a seamless and positive experience for your customers at every stage.
Action idea:
Conduct a customer journey mapping exercise to identify the key touch points in your customers’ interactions with your business. This might include the initial contact, sales process, post-purchase support, and ongoing engagement. For each touch point, consider the customer’s needs, expectations, and pain points, and identify opportunities to improve the customer experience.
Once you have mapped out the customer journey and identified areas for improvement, develop a plan to address any issues and enhance the customer experience. In my experience business’ find obvious things they used to do that for some reason they have stopped for no reason!
An example of a company that has successfully mapped out the customer journey is Airbnb. By understanding the key touch points in the customer journey, Airbnb was able to identify opportunities to improve the user experience and make it easier for customers to find and book accommodation. For example, the company introduced a messaging system that allows hosts and guests to communicate directly with each other, improving the booking process and reducing the risk of misunderstandings.
2. Active Listening
Engaging with your customers means actively listening to their needs and feedback. This means paying attention to their comments and suggestions and responding in a timely and appropriate manner. It also means proactively seeking out feedback through surveys, social media, or other channels. By listening to your customers, you can identify areas for improvement and make changes to better meet their needs.
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Action idea:
Set up a system for collecting and analysing customer feedback, such as regular surveys or social media monitoring. Use this feedback to make improvements to your products, services, or customer experience.
N.B. Listening can be both in person and via the web – we all know how a certain kind of individual likes to name and shame on social media. Staying on top of this to protect your brand reputation is key.
3. Clear Communication
Clear communication is essential for building trust and credibility with your customers. This means being transparent about your products, services, pricing, and policies. It also means providing clear instructions and support for any issues or questions your customers may have. By communicating clearly and honestly, you can build a strong foundation of trust and loyalty with your customers.
Action idea:
Review your website, marketing materials, and customer support processes to ensure that they are clear and easy to understand.
Consider providing FAQs or other resources to help answer common customer questions.
N.B. Remember Customer service is everyone responsibility, not just the Customer service department, who are answering the phones to address issues already caused by others!
4. Consistency
Consistency is key when it comes to customer engagement. Your customers should have a consistent experience with your business, no matter where or how they interact with you. This means consistent branding, messaging, and customer support across all channels and touch points. By providing a consistent experience, you can build trust and familiarity with your customers.
Action idea:
Review your branding and messaging across all channels, including your website, social media, and customer support. Ensure that they are consistent and aligned with your overall brand identity.
Set up systems and checklists for team members to ensure the customer always get the great experience you’ve designed time after time.
5. Team Training and Empowerment
Effective customer engagement requires a team effort, and it’s important to ensure that your team members are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to deliver a positive customer experience. This means investing in team training and development. Key I believe is empowering your team members to take ownership of customer interactions and find creative solutions to customer challenges.
Action idea:
Provide regular training and development opportunities for your team members, including workshops, seminars, and on-the-job coaching.
Encourage your team members to take ownership and empower them to make decisions and take action to resolve customer issues (You’ll need to give them the parameters to work within). This will not only improve customer satisfaction, but also boost employee morale and engagement.
One example of a company that prioritises team training and empowerment is Virgin. Branson is known for his emphasis on customer service and his belief that happy employees lead to happy customers. To empower his team members to deliver exceptional customer service, Branson encourages them to take ownership of customer interactions and empowers them to make decisions on the spot. For example, Virgin Atlantic flight attendants are trained to handle customer complaints and make decisions to improve the customer experience, such as offering passengers a free drink or meal if their flight is delayed. By empowering his team members in this way, Branson has created a culture of exceptional customer service that has helped to differentiate Virgin from its competitors. Interesting I believe I’m right saying Branson is famous for saying the customer is not always right and backs his team on this! (Correct me if I’m wrong, that’s not a direct quote)
6. Personalisation
Customers want to feel valued and appreciated, and one of the best ways to do this is through personalisation. This means tailoring your interactions and communications to each individual customer. For example, addressing them by name in emails or on the phone, offering personalised product recommendations based on their purchase history, or sending personalised birthday or anniversary greetings. By showing that you care about their individual needs, you can build a strong emotional connection with your customers. This is a very cost-effective thing to make part of your service culture.
Action idea:
Start collecting data on your customers, such as their purchase history, preferences, and demographic information.
Use this data to create targeted marketing campaigns and personalised communications.
7. Personal Touch
In addition to personalisation, customers also appreciate a personal touch. This means going above and beyond to make them feel special and appreciated. For example, sending handwritten thank you notes, offering exclusives, or providing surprise gifts or rewards. By providing a personal touch, you can create a memorable and positive experience for your customers. In our business we refer to these as critical non-essentials.
Action idea:
Consider ways you can add a personal touch to your customer interactions. Think about how you go beyond the service they expected by asking yourself what will surprise and delight them.
8. Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand and relate to your customers’ feelings and experiences. This means putting yourself in their shoes and considering their perspective. By showing empathy, you can build strong emotional connections with your customers and create a sense of mutual understanding and trust.
Action idea:
Train your team members to show empathy in their customer interactions.
Consider soft skills training especially how to communicate to different type of people in a way that gets the best out of them. DISC behavioural assessments are great to enhance teams communications (Get in touch if this is one of your actions and you’d like to discover more)
9. Measure Customer Loyalty with Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used metric for measuring customer loyalty. It measures the likelihood of a customer to recommend your product or service to others on a scale of 0 to 10.
Measuring NPS is important because it provides a clear indicator of how satisfied your customers are with your product or service, as well as their likelihood to recommend your business to others. A high NPS score indicates that your customers are highly satisfied and are more likely to be loyal and repeat customers, while a low score indicates that there may be issues with your product, service, or customer experience that need to be addressed.
The key question in the NPS survey is “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?”
Action idea:
If you are not already start measuring your NPS – you can start, simply by asking all your customers the key question above.
Once you’ve the score you can then ask further questions to understand why they have scored you in this way
Then address any challenges and celebrate great feedback by asking those who have scored you well to write you a testimonial or give you a 5 star google review.
10. Continuous Improvement
Finally, it’s important to remember that customer engagement is an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement. This means regularly reviewing and refining your processes to ensure that they are meeting your customers’ needs and expectations / EXCEEDING THEM – if you really want to STAND OUT from your competition!
Action idea:
Set up regular reviews of your customer engagement strategies, such as quarterly or bi-annual check-ins. Use this time to assess your progress, identify areas for improvement, and make adjustments as needed.
N.B. You are only as good as your last performance!
Bonus!
If you want your customer experience to really stand out as part of your unique value proposition – make it truly remarkable.
Give your customers and clients something to positively talk about and share!
Conclusion
If you are reading this and trying to guess what your customers think of your product or service, then your first action is to address them and go and ask!
For those consistently delivering great customer service, firstly well done you are in a minority, secondly, ask yourself where you can improve and what will surprise and delight your customers.
Action
What action are you going to take now to enhance your business?
If you’ve any comments, questions, or feedback – please do reach out to the Author of this article James Gentle
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