Today’s business world is cut-throat. Despite your best efforts, one-third of your customers will leave for another business if they experience one bad experience. Meanwhile, half of your customers will give you a couple more chances before they decide to switch.
In their defense, you’d do the same if you were in their shoes.
That’s why businesses keep investing in tools, technologies, and features that ultimately create a seamless, enjoyable, and efficient customer experience. If you’ve hit a wall and are unsure of what to do to retain loyal customers, here are some innovative ideas to enhance your customers’ experience.
1. Create An Online Existence
Let’s start with the basic step. If you’re solely relying on your brick-and-mortar store, you’re missing out on possibly thousands of opportunities. The biggest and most rewarding upgrade you can make is to create an online existence in addition to your offline store.
Although it’s best to mirror your offline store in an online store, you don’t have to start an eCommerce business right away. You can take it gradually and establish an online presence by creating a website and maintaining a social media presence. These channels will expose you to a greater audience which you can then refer to your offline business.
2. Provide Valuable Content
There’s nothing to bore the customers more than a business promoting its products non-stop. We all want to sell out products and services, but the way we go about it can make a world of difference.
Customers no longer trust companies that are focused on selling their products. They want brands to understand them and provide them with value. To establish trust, you’ll need to provide authentic, informative, and valuable content that your audience can truly benefit from.
This content can be in the form of blogs, tutorials, videos, podcasts, or any other form. It can be related to proper product usage, the advantages of hiring your business, or any related topics that’ll pique the audience’s curiosity. Most of all, make sure your content is engaging, relative, and easy to digest.
3. Provide Multiple Contact Channels
Providing a single channel for contact is not enough anymore, especially if you operate multiple social media channels. If you want to expand your customer base, you’ll need to provide multiple channels for contact.
You’ll need a dedicated team for every social media channel you have. You’ll also need dedicated teams for calls, texts, emails, and any other contact channels you may provide. By making your support team available across various channels, you’ll definitely improve your customers’ experience.
4. Switch To An Omnichannel Customer Contact Center
Nowadays, customers would rather text than call businesses.
This trend is noticeable on a global level, but it’s becoming especially prevalent in countries like Australia where the cost of calling has never been more expensive. The CEO at tsagroup.com.au points out that opening multiple contact channels is no longer enough to ensure customer satisfaction. If you want to provide a wholesome customer experience, you’ll need to switch to an omnichannel customer experience.
While a multichannel contact center provides support across multiple platforms, an omnichannel approach ensures you maintain the customer’s profile – even if they use different channels to contact you. With an omnichannel contact center, you can keep track of your interactions with every customer across all your channels to maintain a seamless line of ongoing communication.
5. Welcome Your Visitors With A Chatbot
AI chatbots have been trending for a while, and for good reason. Chatbots are there to welcome customers and provide them with instant assistance as soon as they land on the website. By suggesting the most frequently asked questions, customers need only press a button to get their answers.
Chatbots are becoming increasingly sophisticated with each passing day. Before long, they’ll be able to hold highly personalized chats with customers and fully satisfy their needs. This will reduce costs and save precious hours for both you and your customers.
6. Offer Customer Loyalty Programs
If you want to retain loyal customers, you should make it clear what’s in it for them. There’s nothing better than loyalty programs in that aspect.
Loyalty programs keep stacking points for every purchase or transaction made. Once the customer stacks up a certain number of points, they can exchange it for rewards or more purchases.
7. Gamify The Customer’s Experience
If there’s one thing you can do to transform the customer experience, it’s gamifying their journey. Gamification transforms regular and dull activities into interactive and exciting experiences. It introduces game-like elements to regular activities, which triggers the customers’ competitive spirit.
For instance, you can send them on a quest to collect stars for every drink they purchase – just like Starbucks does. Meanwhile, the US army allows users to play military games to stack up experience, which, in turn, encourages them to join the army.
8. Use Customer Journey Mapping
You can only provide the ultimate customer experience if you know how they act at every step of their journey throughout your website or during their interaction with your business. This is where customer journey mapping comes in handy.
Customer journey mapping provides you with a holistic view of your customers’ journey. This will give you the insight you need to connect with them and improve their experience. Best of all, it’ll give you the opportunity to ask for feedback at specific stages, thereby enabling you to improve the experience or fix issues.
9. Personalize Customer Experience
Customers love feeling appreciated, and that will never happen if you address them in a generic manner. Personalizing customer experience can be achieved through various methods. You can use their names in the emails and texts you send, tailor suggested content based on their history, or follow up with surveys to gauge their experience.
Customers love using websites and online services that are tailored to their needs and wants. If there’s something they love even more, it’s being heard and appreciated. Now that you know what to do to enhance your customers’ journey, you can take their experience a step further and surprise them with your innovative approach. You don’t have to lose any current customers anymore, you only need to keep growing your customer base!
