Customer Experience Resources: 10 Tips

Optimizing the customer experience is one of the main concerns of companies. Indeed, this is legitimate, as better customer satisfaction translates into improved customer loyalty, which significantly increases a company’s annual revenue. This is a great long-term investment to grow your organization!

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However, with the increase in online review platforms and the many services and products offered, consumers are now much more critical of the customer experience that is offered to them. In order to stand out from the crowd, you must put into practice a unique, up-to-date customer experience that will satisfy your customers’ expectations. But where to start?

What are the challenges of the customer experience? And what is a successful customer experience? Here are ten customer experience tips and resources to follow to improve your customer satisfaction and to help you better understand this topic.

How to define the customer experience?

The customer experience is defined as the set of emotions and perceptions felt by the customer during their various points of contact with a company. This includes several key factors, such as the consumer’s purchasing process, the quality of your product and service offering, and the quality of your customer relationships. When experienced online, customer experience resources also translate into virtual interactions, such as your website, social networks, online ads, mobile apps, and chat platform.

Overall, the customer experience is experienced by the consumer from the beginning of the process of purchasing a product or service and extends to its use. To this end, the quality of your product/service offer will impact customer satisfaction and determine your customer retention. It is therefore important to tailor your experience to the needs of your clientele. A customer who has a great experience with your company will feel pampered and has a much better chance to come back, recommend your services, or even leave you a positive review online. Keep this in mind if you are looking for customer experience ressources.

What is a successful customer experience?

Optimizing your customer experience resources is one of the key success factors in your business. A better customer experience leads to a higher level of customer satisfaction, resulting in increased customer loyalty. However, how do we know if your organization’s client experience is successful?

As previously explained, the customer experience is the set of feelings and perceptions your consumers feel. In this sense, a successful customer experience translates into a positive emotion that will make your customers want to return to your company. For example, offer quick and empathetic customer support when needed. Take care to adapt your products and services according to your customers’ requests. Tailor the experience to your customers so they feel pampered by your business.

To improve the online customer experience, make sure you optimize your website to provide your users with clear navigation. Also optimize your site according to local SEO best practices. This will make it easier for your potential prospects to find you while searching online!

Keep these customer experience tips and resources in mind to improve your customer satisfaction!

Customer experience resources: our key tips!

The customer experience has a direct impact on your customer retention. Indeed, no one wants to go back to a brand that has not provided the requested support, or that sells poor quality products. An unpleasant customer experience could even create a bad reputation that will hinder the acquisition of new leads, or even your employee retention. These are problems to avoid!

On the contrary, a good customer experience will make you know your area of expertise. It will greatly contribute to the satisfaction of your clients, who will then want to share your services with their entourage. This positive word-of-mouth will attract new prospects to your business and improve the loyalty of your existing customers. Many customer experience resources will agree: your current clients can impact the acquisition of future customers.

Once you realize the importance of a successful customer experience, it’s time to take action. What are the challenges of the customer experience? What are the best customer experience resources to improve it? To help you, here are ten tips to improve your customer experience.

1. Develop a customer-oriented business culture

Customer satisfaction plays a key role in the success of your business. All of your departments should be aware of the importance of client well-being. Customer service, management team, technical support and more: every role in your teams is important.

Your services exist to meet the needs of your customers. They are the ones that impact the growth and notoriety of your brand. Keep your customers in mind when making decisions about your service or product offering. For example, when you put the customer experience into practice, ask yourself:

• Is my product/service adapted to the current needs of my customers?
• What added value does my product/service offer compared to competing brands?

Remember that your customers are the ones who buy your products and services. As a result, you must ensure that your new products meet their expectations and needs. This is why it is important to optimize your customer experience resources!

Throughout your product design and marketing campaigns, keep in mind that your goal is to meet the needs of your customers. Innovate to differentiate yourself from competitors, but always focus your creative mind on the expectations of your customers.

Make your teams aware of the importance of customers to your company. Remind your employees that a good customer relationship is important to your organization’s success. Keep these valuable customer experience resources in mind when developing your business’ culture!

2. Maximize employee happiness

Your employees are at the heart of your business. They reflect your values and contribute to your goals. In addition, their interactions have a direct impact on your customers’ satisfaction. A quality service provided by a friendly staff will have a positive effect on the perception of your customers: they will feel pampered and will strongly risk returning to your company. On the contrary, a customer abandoned by a demotivated employee will feel neglected and is unlikely to do business with you again.

How can you improve the performance of your staff to optimize your customer experience? The answer is simple: ensure their well-being at work!

Indeed, Forbes has observed that over an eleven-year period, a motivated team brings 682% annual revenue growth. This statistic proves that the satisfaction of your staff is crucial for the development of your business. A team committed to its work will be much more cohesive and dynamic than a staff demotivated to the tasks to be performed. This way, you can take full advantage of their know-how, autonomy and experience to provide your customers with the service they deserve. This is a great customer experience resource to improve your employees’ and customers’ satisfaction!

Want to know more about employee satisfaction? To help you maximize your staff’s motivation, make sure you get expert advice on the subject!

3. Set up a committee that will meet on a recurring basis

Do you have trouble applying good customer experience resources? If that’s the case, having a client experience advisory committee will certainly make it easier for you.

To achieve this, bring together a group of employees with diverse areas of expertise, and let them review the feedback from your clients. Their roles, coming from different positions, will allow them to have an overview of the improvement points related to your customer experience. As a result, they will know which optimizations to prioritize to better satisfy your customers!

Set up weekly or monthly meetings to allow your committee to set clear goals for improving your customer experience. Be sure to communicate your future projects with other departments so that the entire company actively contributes to your future projects. This way, your employees will be better prepared to provide the best possible service to satisfy your customers. This will contribute to the motivation of your staff, in addition to positively impacting your customer satisfaction. This is a customer experience resource to remember!

4. Provide training to your employees

A key factor in motivating your staff is your contribution to their professional development. With that in mind, why not offer them training related to their current position? This will allow your teams to get up-to-date information that will allow them to be on the same page. In addition, they will get more knowledge to better meet the needs of your customers. This is a good customer experience resource to know to deliver an exceptional service to your clientele!

Training your employees can go a long way to helping your customers stay satisfied and loyal. A high-quality service received by a professional team is an asset for your company: customers will consider you a true reference in your area of expertise!

Similarly, this training is also an advantage for your innovations. Up-to-date training can introduce your staff to new trends, as well as different products and services to adopt within your company. It’s a great source of information to add value to your services, and ultimately set you apart from the competition.

Remember this good customer experience resource: provide regular training to your employees to keep them informed!

5. Set up a customer listening program

As mentioned earlier, your services exist to meet the expectations of your customers. Therefore, it is important to know their opinions in order to adapt your customer experience resources to their needs at the time. What could be better than a customer satisfaction survey?

A customer experience evaluation and improvement solution like InputKit can allow you to send an automated, fully customized customer satisfaction survey at the right time, one to two hours after the experience. This survey will provide you with valuable feedback to help you calculate your customer satisfaction rate. This is a must-see for your clients’ honest opinions about your services.

By showing your interest in solving certain problems, you show your clients that their well-being is a priority. Add to that empathetic listening and active resolution of customer dissatisfaction and you will certainly increase customer loyalty. This is even a golden opportunity to turn your detractors into promoters of your brand!

If your customers are satisfied, you can also take the opportunity to invite them to leave a positive online review on your customer experience platform. Remember these customer experience resources to know better the needs of your clientele!

6. Empathize with your customers

When your customers contact your company as a result of a problem or bad customer experience, they expect more than a simple solution to their problem. They want to be valued as customers, but more importantly, as human beings. In order to do this, you need to be empathetic to them while actively seeking a solution to their problem. An empathetic approach will allow them to establish an emotional connection with your brand, which will easily resolve some conflicts and improve your customer retention.

Here are our five best customer experience resources to improve your customer empathy:

• Adopt a positive attitude: A smile and a warm welcome can defuse tensions between the customer and the company. Show the customer that you are available for them and they will be more willing to provide feedback.
• Let the customer speak: Keep in mind that the customer paid for the product or service received. Therefore, avoid contradicting or confronting them. Instead, invite them to share with you the source of their dissatisfaction. This will allow you to better meet their expectations, and even to discern certain flaws in your customer journey. This is a good customer experience resource to follow!!
• Choose the right medium to communicate: When faced with customer dissatisfaction, it is important to choose the right medium to avoid attracting attention. If you are online, invite the user to continue the discussion via phone or email to find out why they are unhappy. In-store, you can offer your client a meeting with your manager to prevent your conversation from attracting prying eyes. Keep these customer experience resources in mind when dealing with customer dissatisfaction.
• Apologize: Once the customer has expressed dissatisfaction, be empathetic. Validate her emotions and apologize for the inconvenience. This will show them that you care about them, and will help build a climate of trust that is conducive to finding a solution.
• Actively seek a solution: Rephrase the customer’s needs and then propose a solution to the problem. For example, give them a guarantee on a product, a discount on your services, or even a full refund to ensure their satisfaction. It will prove to them that their well-being is a priority for you, and may convince them to give you a second chance.

7. Have a reactive team dedicated to customer support

With the proliferation of customer experience platforms (point of sale, telephone, SMS, email, website, social networks), it can be difficult to offer fast support to your customers. Yet, this is one of the key factors to watch out for when you put the customer experience into practice.

According to the HubSpot study, 79% of consumers expect a response within 24 hours. In that vein, what measures can you put in place to meet the requirements of your clientele?

To help you, here are five customer experience resources to follow in order to optimize your customer support:

• Automate your processes: Automating your processes can save you valuable business hours. Implement artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots to quickly answer your customers’ questions. However, don’t forget to program them to redirect them to an expert if needed!
• Have a team of experts reactive: Customer service is now a full-time position. In this sense, create a team of experts entirely dedicated to answering your customers’ messages and calls on your various communication channels. This is an important customer experience resource to remember!
• Set up an internal chat: No customer likes to wait for internal transfers. To minimize delays, make sure you have an internal chat so that your employees notify their colleagues when a transfer or when they take over the situation.
• Be active on social networks: Of course, your social networks are an important aspect of your customer support. Respond to positive and negative reviews on your social platforms, and show your dissatisfied customers that you are taking charge.
• Make your phone number visible: Make sure your phone number is prominently displayed on your website. For example, create an approved call-to-action with a bright color button to attract the customer’s eye. This customer experience resource will allow them to easily access your phone number and get support quickly!

8. Determine a budget for customer dissatisfaction

While you may have strategies in place to meet the needs of your clientele, sometimes a human or technical error may occur. A poor quality service, an unexpected delay, a product that does not correspond to the expected expectations: there are many factors that can negatively impact the satisfaction of your customers. These errors negatively impact your customer experience, creating customer dissatisfaction among your customers. In that sense, how can you recover a client who is dissatisfied with the services provided to them?

A good customer experience resource to follow is to plan an annual budget dedicated to customer dissatisfaction. This way, when a customer is unhappy, you can offer compensation to show them that their well-being is at the center of your priorities.

For example, if a customer has a bad experience in a restaurant, give them a free meal. If they buy a poor quality product, give them a free replacement. You could even refund the shipping costs of a package after an additional delivery time. These are good customer experience resources to remember to optimize your customer satisfaction.

While it’s hard to avoid some customer dissatisfaction, setting up an annual budget can help you set things right. By offering gifts to your unhappy customers, they will find that you have their satisfaction at heart. This will establish a bond of trust that will allow you to win back some of your detractors, and even turn them into promoters of your brand. This will help to enhance the customer experience!

9. Constantly monitor your performance indicators

In order to optimize the customer experience of your company, it is important to know the impact of your services on customer satisfaction. To measure your customer experience metrics, track your performance metrics consistently.

There are many metrics to measure customer experience, but here are three key and relevant metrics to measure customer experience in your business:

• The Customer Effort Score (CES): Determines the level of effort provided by the customer to obtain a service.
• The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Measures the customer’s overall level of satisfaction with the service obtained.
• The Net Promoter Score (NPS): Estimates the percentage of chance a customer recommends to their loved ones.

To measure the quality of the customer experience, send satisfaction surveys to your customers on a regular basis. Be sure to include questions directly related to your metrics. For example:

• A question for the CES: On a scale of 1 to 10, how hard do you think it is to make your purchase on our website?
• A question for the CSAT: How satisfied are you with our services?
• A question for NPS: On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you recommend our services to a colleague or family member.

A regular check of your customer satisfaction will allow you to gather valuable information about the quality of your customer experience. With these metrics, you will be able to correct some of the flaws in your processes, while adapting to the current needs of your consumers. Keep this customer experience resource in mind while creating your customer satisfaction survey!

10. Optimize your products and services based on customer feedback

Once your committee is set up and your customer satisfaction surveys are sent out, now is the time to follow our customer experience resources. In this sense, study your metrics to optimize your customer experience.

Invite your committee to review feedback from your clientele, and then write down their suggestions for different optimizations. Whether it’s a product or a service, it’s important to improve your offers to better satisfy your customers. Be innovative: follow new trends to stand out from your competitors!

InputKit, the customer experience platform you need!

Having trouble applying our customer experience resources and best practices? Not sure how to improve your processes? If so, InputKit is the solution for you!

With our Customer Experience Assessment and Improvement Solution, you will be able to send fully customized and automated satisfaction surveys to your customers at the right time, one to two hours after a service is rendered. With a response rate of 45% by email and 57% by SMS, our surveys will give you the best information on your customers’ satisfaction, in addition to saving you valuable management hours. This will allow you to tailor your services to your clients’ needs and, in some cases, as one of our clients observed, get ten times your return on your investment!

In addition, our solution also allows you to share customer feedback with your staff. This is a great way to empower them, but also to show them the direct impact their services have on the lives of your customers. By sharing positive feedback and relevant proposals, your employees will be more motivated to give their best to provide your customers with the experience they deserve. There are many reasons to use InputKit to optimize your customer experience!

Improving the customer experience can be complex if you are unfamiliar with the many factors that impact customer satisfaction. We invite you to follow our customer experience resources to offer your customers the best possible experience.

Build a culture of customer satisfaction, ensure the well-being of your employees by offering them up-to-date training and regularly send out surveys to your customers to better understand their expectations of your company. Build responsive customer support, and be empathetic when interacting with your customers. Finally, take care to establish an annual budget dedicated to customer dissatisfaction, carefully monitor your performance metrics and optimize your service offer based on feedback from your customers.

Do you need help to apply our customer experience resources? If so, we invite you to plan a  free demo of our solution with our team of customer experience experts!