By Fernando Berrocal

Customers are the lifeblood of a successful business regardless of its type and industry where it belongs or the geographic location where it’s located. While most organizations recognize the value of great Customer Service for the overall benefit of their business, few are aware of how to create a positive Customer Experience (CX) for their clients. Firstly, it’s necessary to comprehend the distinction between "Customer Service" and "Customer Experience". The first term focuses on how a service is given before, during, and after purchase to a client. On the other hand, CX refers to the total of all encounters that a customer has with a brand throughout their relationship, and it takes more strategic preparation to pull off properly.

Aside from having your customers feel good about you and the products or services you provide, the advantages of providing a positive CX are numerous. Businesses that use CX initiatives are more likely to have more revenue, higher customer satisfaction, and fewer client complaints. Customers will come time and time again if they have a positive impression of the business you provide. Here are some actions your brand-new startup may do to enhance customer satisfaction.

Develop a "Customer-Focused" culture: You must create a business culture that values customer happiness to truly offer a meaningful CX. Furthermore, you must include the viewpoint of your consumers in your corporation's overarching goal.  To do so, you'll need to include all of your staff and not leave anyone wondering about how to carry out the organization’s objectives. Create a set of guiding principles for the business's customer engagement. These might range from the broad (“Exhibit humility”) to the more particular (“Ask whether they understand where to locate their information on their web profile while chatting on the phone with a customer”). Customers will be at the heart of every choice your employees make if they follow these rules.

Know who your clients are and how they interact with your Business: To provide a personalized experience, you must first understand who your consumers are. Knowing your customers' demographics, such as their age and where they live, isn't enough; think about how they'll use your product or service, what kind of service they expect from you, and how they like to connect with you. Encourage your team to focus less on how your product/service works and more on the problems it can address for the final client. Communicating with consumers via their preferred channels is an important part of satisfying their expectations. Gone are the days when they could only obtain help by calling the customer service phone number. Depending on who your consumers are, you can now communicate with them by phone, email, and social media. For example, people over their 40s may prefer to communicate over the phone, whereas a younger generation expects to communicate over different social media, take that into account. If you work in a more formal, professional business, you might choose to communicate by phone or email rather than social media. There is no one-size-fits-all interaction medium, so you'll have to experiment to see which works best for your consumer base.

Engage the Services of a Customer Experience Manager: Recruit a "Customer Experience Manager" to take your CX commitment to the next level (CXM). Customer experience should be a collaborative effort involving customer service, marketing, sales, and product creation. Having a single person in charge of client experience can help your workers unite behind a shared objective. The CXM is in charge of all client engagement activities and creates content that is relevant to each target market. This provides him/her access to consumer input, which may assist in guarantee that the customer's viewpoint is reflected in any product or service redesign.

Digitize the Consumer Experience:  Regardless of individual differences, today's customers demand a contemporary, digital experience from businesses. As a result, you should provide your business with the resources it needs to satisfy consumer expectations. Offering mobile help is a simple way to get started; if your business isn't expanding its customer experience to mobile touchpoints, it's missing out on a huge chance to connect customers. Even when website content is suited for mobile viewing, many mobile interfaces are poorly designed and difficult to use. Built-in connections that make support resources available for mobile viewing might help companies that utilize customized call monitoring and chat software. Another way to communicate with consumers digitally is to use live chat technology. This provides a real-time route for consumers to get answers. Some service providers allow co-browsing and also live chat may also help the business operations by gathering contextual data such as which sites a client has previously visited and which items they've looked at. This metadata may be utilized to boost a startup's sales and marketing efforts, as well as help assist your staff with technical issues.

Implement Self-Service Tools:  Some consumers prefer to do business on their terms with self-service tools, whether they've had a terrible contact center experience in the past or they want quick answers without having to wait in line to talk with someone. Self-service portals enhance a company's ability to help more customers by providing contact center workers more time to connect with consumers who prefer receiving direct support from an employee since they can handle many customer questions without extra involvement. Customers get the best of both worlds when self-service options are accessible on a website: direct help from employees and the opportunity to research answers on their own.

Adopt a Data-Driven Strategy: Exceptional service isn't something that happens by chance. Data aids in the creation of a customer experience plan. Customers should provide feedback on how you are satisfying their requirements, wants, and expectations, and you should assess outcomes regularly to see if the procedures, collaboration, and technology you've invested in are paying off. Customer feedback may be gathered in a variety of methods. Customers may help you discover where improvements need to be made by rating their experience with a simple survey. Use a 10-point scale and ask questions such as, “How likely are you to recommend this experience to a friend?” to make it easy for consumers to offer feedback.

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