They are perhaps the most important key to optimizing the customer experience. First of all, organizations need to make ensure that they have hired loyal employees who are committed to the company and fully understand the company’s mission and vision. In this way the company can be certain that the employees are aware of their role in achieving the total customer experience. An unhappy employee usually won’t provide the type of customer experience the company is after. It is therefore essential for the company to keep this In mind when carrying out all HER functions like recruitment and retention.
Customer training programs and Initiatives can help you enhance your employees’ skills and educate them about your company’s products, services and target market. Training Improves how well they Interact with customers. Incentives such as bonuses can motivate employees to provide top-notch customer service Clarify Roles and Responsibilities: Clarifying roles and responsibilities of staff members is another important step towards achieving total customer experience. Clarification not only ensures that customers know who to contact, but also keeps staff clear on who is responsible for what task.
As part of this effort, it is particularly important to ensure customer-facing staff focus on customers rather than administrative activities. For example, one bank was able to more than double the customer-facing time of branch staff by both transferring simple administrative process responsibilities to a cheaper, centralized role and Introducing a new, specialized sales role to handle more complex product sales Personalize the customer experience: Customers like to feel Like the companies they work with understand their needs, so It Is Important to customize customers’ experiences, where applicable.
For example, you can send email marketing campaigns to customers based on the items they purchase from your company, send birthday and anniversary greetings and promotions, and remember their preferences, so you can make purchase suggestions when they visit your website or store. Experts agree that personalization is the key to any good customer experience. The customer database is the backbone of a businesses’ relationship with the customer, and the information stored inside should be shared with every member of the organization, that way regardless of who the customer calls, they receive a consistent, personalized customer experience.
Keep up to date with technological advances: With constant technological advances, businesses have a variety of ways to Instantly transform the way their customers Interact with their businesses. For example, you can use social media for real-time communication with your customers or adopt a customer- relationship management system to manage customer preferences Be innovative: your customer’s experience by constantly coming up with ways to improve your existing products and services, find new uses for them, and even develop new ones.
Use customer feedback to come up with ideas. Identify your customers: Before you can improve your customers’ experiences, you have to examine who your core customers are. Consider characteristics such as age, geographical location, income, marital status and hobbies, and interests. These details will help you pinpoint ways to improve how you interact with your customers. You can survey your customers through email, direct mail or on your website.
Ask customers how they found out about your product or service, how often they buy it, and where they purchase it. Ask customers to rate your customer service, store layout or website design, pricing, and product offerings Act on customer feedback: knows the importance of customer feedback, but not all companies actually act on the feedback and make the changes customers are looking for.
Gardner feels this is something all organizations should be doing to increase their number of satisfied, loyal customers, and recommends communicating changes clearly and openly to all members of the organization. Technologies like speech and text analytics, as well as customer surveys, are often seed for gathering customer opinions Take the customer’s point of view: its important to keep in mind that its not how you view the customer that’s important, but how the customer views your company.
Thus its important to design business plan with the customer’s point of view in mind. By taking the customer’s point of view, companies stop focusing on the way the customer looks at them, and begin focusing on the way they look to the customer. This can lead to more relevant, trustworthy and worthwhile business practices, which in turn while improve the total customer experience.
