Strategies to improve customer experience in the new normal

Strategies to improve customer experience in the new normal

It’s certainly not a stretch to imagine that before the world was thrown into disarray by the Covid-19 pandemic, most businesses probably had established strategies when dealing with customer experiences. Now, in light of the entire world’s current circumstances, how will businesses evolve to facilitate continued satisfaction when it comes to customer experience? A report by Forrester found that 72% of businesses have now shifted their focus to customer experience as their top most priority. Thus, it’s widely accepted that the relationship between businesses and consumers is about to undergo a transformation.

Customer experience refers to the interactions of a customer with a particular company’s services and products. For anyone that owns a business, customer experience is a vital component, as it is to customers that a business will sell its products to, and make profits from.

Some areas that businesses can focus their efforts on include:

Customer-centric approach: In a time as uncertain as the one we’re currently facing, it is important that customers remain at the heart of whatever decisions or strategies businesses decide on. A business can only be sustained via its customers, so understanding and appropriately responding to customer needs is key to long term prosperity. Perhaps the best route to understanding customer needs is through customer opinions and feedback. Customer feedback quickly highlights shared frustrations among customers, and being able to quickly respond to these frustrations can reflect positively on your company. Gauging customer satisfaction can help a company find out whether their product or service is fulfilling customer needs and expectations. It is tangible data that inevitably leads to better business decisions, and serves as a guiding light to improving customer experience.

Digital Self-service: With the unprecedented impact of the virus, various businesses have been swamped with customer questions, concerns, and requests. Now, having already touched on the importance of responding to customer feedback, how then are businesses meant to deal with an onslaught of inquiries? The answer lies in the fact that customers are perfectly capable of finding the way themselves, if the required information is provided by a business or company. Customer experience can simply be enhanced by providing digital self-service options to customers, for example FAQ’s on company websites. The goal of providing self-service options is to get rid of the long hold times customers may experience through call or email; as well as allowing human agents to dedicate more time to high priority requests.

Using Social Media: Social media is perhaps one of the most prominent feats of technology that defines this generation. Social media provides a platform for people to share their experiences, and as such remains an invaluable resource for businesses. With the right tools businesses can observe the organic conversations their customers and potential customers are having, which is data that can subsequently lead to enhancing customer experiences. Businesses can also keep an eye out for trends, and possible business opportunities. Social media is also an advantage for improving customer experience as businesses can use it to post content devoted to customer experience, rapidly solve customer issues, and personalize marketing by ensuring relevant messages.

Optimize workforce: To make sure customers have a consistent experience throughout their interactions with a particular business, it is imperative that the workforce be in sync with whatever the customer experience strategy is. For any business, this can be achieved by consistently assessing and training their employees. There should be employees with defined positions, capable of handling any customer centric tasks assigned to them.

It is glaringly obvious in these times that customer needs, and customer experience are of the utmost importance. With the help of the points already highlighted above, businesses should find it simpler to deal with customer experience in the new normal.