If you’ve ever worked in customer service, there’s a good chance you’ve had a negative interaction with a customer before. Some people, no matter how patient and kind you try to be, seem hostile and frustrated from the start.
So where do those negative feelings come from?
For many people, they come from a poor digital customer experience. This refers to the experience someone has throughout the entire buying process—from the moment they first visit your site to when your product arrives at their door.
Today we’re going to look at how to craft a great customer experience in the digital sphere. By the time you finish reading, you’ll know exactly what it takes to ensure that the people who visit your site leave it satisfied and happy.
Read on to learn about seven steps you can take to improve the customer experience.
1. Know What the Customer Journey Looks Like
Before trying to identify customer experience problems to resolve and fix, it’s worth creating a plan. Spend some time outlining what your current customer journey looks like.
Think about all of the experiences and interactions that someone has with your company. This can include everything from what they see on your social media pages to what the buying process for your products or services is like.
By taking the time to create a customer journey map, you can ensure that you don’t miss any steps in the process.
2. Prepare Your Employees
The unfortunate truth about business is that a single, negative interaction can be all it takes for someone to form a negative opinion about a brand. Make sure your employees are always operating at their best.
Ensure that they have the tools and resources they need to do their jobs as they should. Make sure that they’re happy and content, as those positive feelings rub off on people you do business with—even in a digital environment.
If your employees ever have any issues or complaints, make sure they know that they can share them with you.
3. Get Insight From Everyone on Your Team
Whether you operate a huge business or a tiny startup, it’s easy to miss certain parts of the customer experience journey. Make sure to get insight from everyone on your team to prevent that from happening.
From marketing and sales to customer service, all of your employees can provide you with valuable insight into the customer journey. Most people interact with more than one department when making a purchase.
Speaking to all of your different departments is, therefore, a must.
4. Maintain Your Focus
Remember that CX refers to the entire customer process. Because it’s so all-encompassing, it’s something that isn’t going to change overnight, no matter how much effort you pour into it.
Revitalizing your customer experience can be a draining process, especially if you need to revamp certain areas of your business. Try your best to stay focused and keep at it.
If you need some help pushing progress forward, you can always look into different types of customer experience software. Products like Decibel can provide you with the knowledge you need to make substantive changes to your company.
5. Personalize Everything
It might sound cheesy, but people don’t want to feel like customers. They want to feel like they have a personal connection with the person they’re buying from. Try your best to fulfill that need, regardless of whether you operate online or in person.
From writing thank you letters to customers after they shop with you to maintaining a dynamic website that adjusts to customer needs, personalizing your business isn’t hard to do.
Ensure that your customers feel good about their purchases—even after the sale is over. If they have an especially good CX, they may return at a later point or recommend your business to someone they know.
6. Share Your Findings With Your Entire Team
As you further hash out your customer experience plan, you want to make sure that everyone working for you is in on it. Those who aren’t can throw off the progress that your business would otherwise be making.
Keep everyone in the loop with findings relating to areas like workflow automation and customer routing. Share any data that you feel is important with everyone who can benefit from having it.
Being transparent about the information you unearth can help your business improve cohesively as a single unit instead of in separate leaps and bounds.
7. Learn From Your Mistakes
Even with the best customer experience, mistakes are still going to happen. Don’t get upset when they do—instead, learn from them and look for areas to improve.
Research shows that improving customer retention by as little as 5% can have a massive impact on your revenue stream, to the tune of a 25-95% increase. If a customer doesn’t decide to return and do business with you again, figure out why.
There’s a good chance that it’s an easy fix. Resolving that issue and other similar ones will keep your customers happy and eager to come back for more.
A Great Digital Customer Experience Made Easy
Crafting a fantastic digital customer experience might seem like an impossible task, but the truth is it’s not as hard as you might think.
To help you out, use this guide and the tips mentioned. In doing so, you’ll have no problem developing a customer experience that customers everywhere recognize and appreciate.
