Customer Experience is not just a buzz word It’s something as business owners that we need to acknowledge and quickly. Many business owners think a good experience is simply having an item in stock and saying thank you at the end of the purchase, but it goes much deeper than that. Having a good customer experience will set you apart from the rest of your competitors. Better still it can simply make you first choice for consumers - even if your product is more expensive! So how can you improve your customer experience? Do you know what your customers really think of you or are you frightened to know?
Explore
Explore, it’s worth looking into your industry to see what your competitors are doing. You may have already done elements of this but be thorough; take notes, visit their websites, stores and social media. Read their reviews see what is good, where do they have the upper hand over your business and where do you come out on top. All of these really help when shaping your own customer experience as it will initially give you some thoughts and allow you to critique your own business.
Research
Research with consumers. Would you dare to ask customers their thoughts on your product or service? Yet this information is so insightful and transformational and can really turn your business round. Do you know what to ask and how to ask them? There are a whole host of methods such as; focus groups, questionnaires and online surveys which can be put to use but planning has to go into this in order for you to get the best insights as possible. For example, you wouldn’t ask customers about your website if you know you don’t have a large amount of traffic going to it. What you would want to find out is why customers do not know about your website and what you can do to improve this.
Analyse
Analyse results. Once you have gained some insight it is worth going through this. It is always best to get as many responses as possible. You may find that customers do not want to give you responses for free so maybe incentivise them with 10% off etc. This is standard practice when trying to encourage a response. You don’t need any fancy tools to analyse these results. The verbatim comments will be very powerful and will give you great insights into what customers need or want and how you can fulfil this.
Take action
Take action. A lot of business owners become quite demotivated after seeing feedback from customers. DON’T. This type of feedback is what you need to make your business grow and for you to change your mindset. A change is as good as a rest and can really reinvigorate you and your business. Ensure however you don’t change something because one customer has a gripe. Make sure there is enough substance so if 50% of your customers is providing feedback with the same theme then it would be worthwhile taking action here on the things that would add the most value.
Make the change
Change one thing at a time. Don’t change too many things at once as you may not know what is making the most improvement. Have a pipeline of improvements unless there are things which are causing customer dissatisfaction then change at once. It might be worthwhile following-up with your customers to see how they feel since the improvements have been made.
Keep going
Don’t stop. Although you have made improvements don’t stop there. You need to be continually testing and refining. This is the key to constant innovation, staying ahead of your competition and of course keeping your customers satisfied.
If you want to know more and still don’t know where to start, then get in touch today and we can help gain some real actionable insights for your business.
