Customers now demand more from companies in terms of experience & the overgrowing competition in the market is making it even more important for businesses to give maximum focus towards customer experience management, in order to succeed.
Contrary to popular belief, customer experience management is different than customer relationship management. The latter focuses on data of individual customers, their requirements/orders, requests, billings & basically an overall view of what you know about the customer; whereas customer experience data captures how a prospect reacts in every touch point. It’s majorly based on research & surveys.
How can you create a strong relationship with your customers? The solution is very common, by improving the customer experience management program. Irrespective of how improved and great your product is or how talented your staff are, one thing that your customer undoubtedly recollect is having a direct conversation with the company.
Do you have an efficient customer experience management strategy in place? Let’s discuss how it’s key to business success.
Elements Of Customer Experience
Customer experience in simple words is the interaction a person has with your company. This includes every touch point where a person gets in touch with your company, from your sales process to billing, support or even the products you offer.
Touch points are scenarios which make a big impact in creating an impression in your customer’s mind by delivering something right. Key here is to keep the gap between customer expectation & experience as small as possible. Also, all your touch points should always be in sync with each other. For you, the departments within a company may be different. But for a customer, it’s just one single entity… your brand. You can follow the customer experience framework strategy for better customer management.
All your teams, starting from the sales team to support… should be on the same level of excitement & dedication. It just won’t work if your sales team is passionate about selling your products but the support team sounds lazy and disinterested.
Customer experience journey:
A company is accountable for delivering a better customer experience at every path. Therefore, to understand the touch-path of your customers, you need to draw a customer journey map.
A customer journey map reveals many interaction that customer have with a brand. The map focuses on four sections:
- Research: It is the point where customers will discover about your company through various platforms like social media, web, through advertisement or from a third party, such as a consultant or colleagues.
- Comparison: In this stage your customers will know about your competitors, they will research on the user’s perception, capabilities, function, cost and other attributes of all your competitors product and services.
- Buy: It is the important part of a customer journey. It is where your customers will buy. I f your customers reach out till this map then it brings a win situation in the business. But it’s a beginning to customer retention and create loyalty with the customer to hold onto them.
- Support: It is the steps where the customer service and support teams come into the play, after the sale and where a repetitive sales occur. If the teams are not conceived, it can either create a strong bond or break the customer.
Strategies For Effective Customer Experience Management
A survey last year in the US showed that nearly 80% of the companies believed they provided a superior customer experience but less than 10% of their customers agreed. You need to look through the customer’s eyes to make it work.
With the level of dissatisfaction amongst customers so high, a proper customer experience management strategy can really go a long way towards building long-term loyal customers. Let’s discuss a few basic things you should focus on:
Self-Service:
Today’s new-age generation presumes to be self-sufficient. They’d rather spend some time searching for information through your FAQs, Blog or Website rather than simply calling the customer care every single time. Make sure you provide enough information available to your customers, with maximum accuracy.
Mobile Support:
Mobiles devices have changed how the world works & almost everyone has one. Hence, it’s only wise for your company to optimize the mobile experience of your customers. Make sure all your websites are compatible with the smaller screens. In short, if you’re not on mobile… you aren’t doing it right!
Social Media:
More people are now opting for social media platforms (twitter, facebook, instagram etc.) to reach out to companies than calling the helplines. As a company, it’s also important for you to monitor what your customers are saying about you on social media. Trust me, it spreads like wildfire.
Live Chat:
This is another medium that has captured everyone’s interest, live support via chat. It’s immediate, right in the moment… which excites everybody. Try to be a master of live support; it’s totally worth it.
In today’s hyper-competitive market, you will need every possible advantage that can set you apart from the rest. With dissatisfaction amongst customers reaching all-time high, this presents a great opportunity for businesses to get their customer experience right & grow their business like never before.
Conclusion:
The company that looks forward has integrated lots of data and have enjoyed advanced analytics with machine learning that helps to improve the Customer experience.
With Customer relationship Software you can easily handle customer intervention and develop investment strategy to create larger impact in a very less time.
You can use user friendly and effective CRM tools like Wakeupsales to better handle your customers’ experience.
Struggling to manage your customers or your sales pipeline? Sign up for Wakeupsales CRM now. It’s the #1 ranked CRM of the Year by AccurateReviews.
Did I miss out on anything about Customer Experience Management? I’d love to hear your opinions below 🙂