CEOs know that how their company delivers a product is just as important as the product itself. The customer experience—that journey a customer has at all touchpoints from start to finish, is one of the most significant determiners of loyalty. It takes every advantage to thrive in today’s competitive market. Savvy CEOs know that means prioritizing customer experience research and strategy. Promote long-lasting relationships with your clients by cultivating a customer experience that helps you stand out and rise above in your industry. This checklist explores the 3 key tips to help you along the way.
Understand Your Customers—Knowing your customers’ behaviors is a critical piece of the customer experience strategy. You can’t create a product or a service unless you’ve paid attention to the demographics, interests, and motivations of your clients. Work with your teams to create a buyer persona, a semi-fictional portrayal of your perfect client that will help you understand and empathize with your customer base. Use this buyer persona to get in the mindset of your target audience when you assess your customer journey during each step of the strategy, development and implementation of your customer experience process.
The following tools can help you gather information to improve your strategy.
Survey Software: Surveys are a great way to get into your customer’s mindset but be wary of survey fatigue. You will get more responses if you select surveys that are fast and easy for your clients to take. Bonus points for on-premises surveys, since completion rates drop significantly once the client walks away and changes focus. Analytical software can shed light on online and in-store customer behaviors through comprehensive reports and response analysis.
Customer Retention Support: Some software can improve customer recovery in real time by alerting your manager to negative survey responses before the client has left the premises.
Online Reviews: These are an effective way to assess trends or address acute or systemic problems related to the customer experience. Be sure to address any negative reviews quickly and compassionately.
Social Media: Managers should carefully monitor social media because customers provide nearly instantaneous feedback on these platforms. This forces companies to react with speed to correct potential issues during and after business transactions.
Evaluate Employee Insight—Employees are fundamental for the success of your business and their engagement is critical for innovation, growth, and creativity. They offer essential feedback regarding the customer journey. Employees often hear tips, compliments, or complaints from customers. Cumulatively, these small pieces of information can be collected and analyzed to radically improve the overall customer experience. Unfortunately, this resource is not always utilized because of communication barriers within the organization. It is critical that your employees have the means to close the information feedback loop so that decision makers in your organization have a comprehensive picture of the experience. This feedback can increase the efficiency and profitability of any business.
Check your Loyalty Metrics— Establishing metrics to accurately measure customer loyalty is the first step in improving that loyalty. Visibility is essential in promoting change. Create a Loyalty Index that collects customer opinions on specific people, products, and places using your survey and analytic software. Think about questions that will directly pertain to your needs’ assessment. These might include how likely a customer is to recommend the company to friends, to buy from the business again in the future, and/or to try other products or services. These questions help uncover what is working or what needs improvement.
No experience will ever be perfect. Customer loyalty is developed through a pattern of consistently good service, communication, and meaningful issue resolution. In many respects, it is these intangible elements which create a solid business. The quality of your company’s personal relationships, trust, and commitment is reflected in the loyalty metrics.
CEOs understand that the motivations of their customers and employees are the hallmark of a successful operation. Using a combination of strategic tools, customer evaluations, and employee feedback can help your organization build a successful customer experience profile and strategy to promote loyalty and growth. A successful customer experience journey doesn’t happen by accident. Start evaluating your customer journey today to take your company to the next level of customer service.
About AfterWords:
AfterWords is an intelligent customer satisfaction software that delivers the most relevant questions for the most relevant responses. We provide actionable data where you need it the most. To find out more, please contact us.