Nowadays, you’re either providing stellar customer experience to your online demographic, or you’re watching as your competitors capitalize on brand loyalty and trust while you struggle to retain and acquire customers. Whether you’re running an online store or if you’re selling services or software solutions, it’s important to know that customer experience can have a significant impact on your website engagement, brand trust and awareness, and the future of your company as a whole.
This is simply because modern consumers have a deep intrinsic need to connect with their favorite brands on a personal level, and to do that, their experience in interacting with your company has to be top-notch to say the least. Assuming that you have already personalized your website, all of your content, as well as your communication strategy, let’s move on to the most effective ways you can skyrocket customer for your company, and set the stage for long-term growth.
First things first, you can’t expect to deliver superior customer experience if your overall brand experience is lacking. Nowadays, people want and need to feel like a particular brand is a part of their life, they want to feel like they belong to a brand’s family, which is why they have no problem sifting through brands until they find that company they can truly connect with on a deeper level. This means that if your brand experience is subpar compared to your competitors, no number of CX tools will be able to compensate for your lackluster brand-building.
With that in mind, let’s start by optimizing your brand experience:
Non-stop availability is quickly becoming the norm in the modern business world, simply because people want answers to their questions and solutions to their problems as quickly as possible. If they have to wait a day for you to respond to an email, they’re probably going to go to your competitors. This is why having a phone system is so important. However, traditional phone systems are costly and ineffective in the digital world, which is why VoIP (voice over internet protocol) is the way to go.
Business leaders know that phones are essential but costly, which is exactly what a popular VoIP provider Nextiva aims to fix with their tailor-made VoIP plans for SMBs and enterprises, as they allow companies to run efficient customer support centers in an affordable way on the cloud. Switching to a VoIP infrastructure is a cost-effective decision that brings many benefits to the table, and it allows you to be constantly online and available to your customers and partners. And as you know, a customer is happy when they know they can reach you on a moment’s notice.
Nowadays, brands don’t just live on their websites, they live all across the online world. So if you’re communicating with your customers via email exclusively, you can rest assured that their overall experience and satisfaction are not going to be that great. In fact, you can expect negative reviews to start popping up on Google and other review sites if you ignore your customers and followers on other important platforms around the web.
This is why it’s so important to have a strong social media strategy nowadays, so that you can engage with your customers in the comments and via chat. However, you also want to go a step further and develop an omni-channel communication strategy that will allow you to communicate with your online audience on all relevant platforms, including chat, email, SMS, and phone. Of course, this also means that you need to be available on a 24/7 basis.
Customers love free stuff, and they are more inclined to interact with brands that regularly reward them for their loyalty, or simply checking out their website. What’s more, you can achieve greater customer experience and satisfaction by developing truly valuable digital products and giving them out for free – ideally, these products should educate your audience and help build your brand’s authority and trust.
You can expect your customers to return the favor by liking you on social media, subscribing to your newsletter, sharing your posts or giving you shout-outs. If your products truly bring value to their life, you can expect them to become your loyal long-term customers as well.
Customers are becoming pickier by the day, and now that the online world is saturated with companies that are all trying to win over the hearts and minds of their audience, you have to double-down on your CX efforts. Be sure to use these tips to create a comprehensive CX strategy and ensure long-term growth and success for your business.
