Think about the last time you placed an order online. Do you remember how you felt through each step of your customer journey? Was it a good experience? When you own a business online, looking at those experiences with an attentive eye is indispensable. After all, it allows you to gain valuable insights into improving the customer experience for your own business.
It is not about copying what seems to work for competitors but building critical thinking. Therefore, by establishing a better approach, chances are higher that customers will leave your webshop more satisfied than ever. Happy customers are more likely to turn into loyal customers.
And a business can only grow and boost revenue with an army of loyal customers who had their expectations topped during their purchase journey, right? So we will discuss four strategies to help you improve customer experience in this article.
What is Customer Experience?
The statistics don’t lie. For instance, Oracle’s global Customer Experience report pointed out that 74% of senior executives believe that customer experience impacts the eagerness of a customer to be a loyal advocate.
We can use the term customer experience (or CX) to define the perceptions customer have of a brand as a whole throughout every step of the buyer’s journey. And why is it so important? Because a practical and tailored customer experience encourages loyalty and helps with retaining customers, thus encouraging brand advocacy.
4 Strategies to Improve Customer Experience
Come What May, Make Sure Your Agents Are Ready!
It might seem obvious to say that, but you have to be sure that your customer service team has the power in their hands to deliver the best customer experience. They are, in a certain way, the speakers of your brand.
Besides having a solid knowledge base, keep an internal manual’s guide explaining the company’s processes and how to use the software. More than knowing how to reply to customer’s questions, agents should be on the same page regarding the company’s culture. Moreover, certify that the agents can easily access this guide.
Consider organizing trainings to reinforce certain aspects and introduce new features or pieces of information from time to time.
In this way, you help your agents build self-confidence to handle all types of customers. Don’t forget to check on them to verify if they found any hurdles during their workday.
Be Where Your Customers Are
When your customer wants to place an order, do they go straight to the website? Or do they browse the brand’s social media first? Then, when it comes to an issue, do they consider calling or sending an email?
Take a moment to explore metrics and discover where customers spend most of their time. Is your company available on most channels, or did customers recently complained because your brand is not using Facebook Messenger yet?
Then consider the options given by these channels. For example, depending on what you sell, it may be interesting to have an option to pay within the chat or share your screen during assistance.
We advise you to combine an automated service, like a chatbot, with a live chat service. Customers can thereby count on having support 24/7. Independently from the channel you pick, keep in mind that we can help you with them!
Take a Walk On the Omnichannel Communication Side
Why pick a single channel when you can have two… or three? People spend more time online than ever before, particularly after the pandemic outbreak. Hence they do not restrict their purchase journey to a webshop. According to a report by Harvard Business Review, 73% of the customers interviewed use multiple channels through their shopping journey.
On the other hand, your business should guarantee that customers will have the same excellence in services over every channel. When you adopt an omnichannel strategy, everything revolves around the customer, ensuring that the same approach is taken independently from the channel they pick.
Learn more about omnichannel communication here.
Give a Personalized Experience – Be Empathetic to Improve Customer Experience
Customers want to feel like you care about them. They are aware that it is impossible to keep every piece of information about their lives, but they expect you to know a minimum. Furthermore, sometimes customers complain about chatbots. Or they consider the tone on live chat a bit romantic.
The good news is it does not always have to be that way. There are many ways to bring a personalized experience to customers. Here are some actions that can help:
- Did the customer mention their name during the chat? Use their name for answering. For example, let’s say the customer begins the message saying, “Hi, I am Caroline, and I would like to confirm the status of my order.” You can answer with “May I take your order number, Caroline?”.
- There is a feature that allows agents to see which pages the consumer is browsing, allowing you to suggest something base on these results. For instance, if you can see they are in the raincoats section, you can ask if they need help picking the best model or needing help with the size guide.
- You can also offer suggestions based on what you discussed with the customer in the chat. Did they ask about a light jacket for jogging? Then you can propose a legging to pair with it.
- If a customer reaches you to speak about an issue, stick to positive language when answering them! Begin by saying that you understand how frustrating it must be. Then you can apologize for the inconvenience and offer a solution.
Now that you know about the importance of ensuring your customer satisfaction through a fantastic experience with your brand, you might feel ready to make the necessary adjustments to make your customer service better.
Count on us to go through these changes!
