How easy is it to do business with you?

As consumers ourselves we know what frustrates us, so it is surprising how easy it is and regretfully how common it is, for companies to unintentionally put barriers in the way of potential customers.  Customer Experience is becoming one of the top differentiators for many businesses, operating in crowded and highly competitive markets. Which is why now is a good time to take that step back and review how your business is working for your customers.

Questions to ask yourself and your team

Whilst we all like to think we are running our businesses well asking the following questions can be eye opening:

• Are we convenient / reliable / available / accountable and dependable?
• Where are we complicating things for our customers?
• What opportunities are we missing to win new customers and retain existing ones?
• What are the primary reason for our failed orders or sales?
• Where and why are we slow to respond or deliver for our customers?
• Are we actively collecting and acting on feedback from our customers?
• What are the primary causes for customer complaint and what have we done about it?

Checklist for being a customer friendly business

Delivering a great customer experience is more than just having a fabulous customer service team. A few examples to consider are:

• Make it easy to find information online as a quick source of FAQ’s is great when combined with the ability to quickly talk to a human, for more complex questions.
• Walk through your online purchases journey and mark the experience at each step out of 5 for ease, simplicity and the speed in which you can complete the final purchase.
• Audit the information being collected in fields via customer sign up forms by questioning how, when, where the data is being used and the value the data is giving you relative to the time/frustration for customers to provide it.
• Empower all team members to offer quick wins to “delight” customers with instant service or simple complaint resolution.
• Being proactive in asking for feedback, listening to it and responding positively and quickly, is a sure way to retaining clients.
• Implementing a well-designed CRM platform, which is especially key to delivering a well-rounded customer experience.
• Build your relationship with loyal and repeat customers both through person to person contact and by using your CRM to build automated workflows, with well-timed contact pre-empting their needs.

Final thoughts

Investing in you customer experience, if done well will grow your loyal and happy customer base all of whom have the potential to also become advocates for your products and services. By reducing the churn of lost clients and increasing retention rates, any investment required to do so will be rewarded with increased revenues and the delivery of greater profits – a win: win in our book!  Read more..

If we can be of help to you or your business, in enhancing your Customer Experience, please do let us know [email protected]