How To Set Up A Successful Business

To succeed in the marketplace, your company cannot be content with doing business the usual way. With more businesses than ever competing for customers, it has become essential to invest in an outstanding customer experience. Below, we show you how you can apply insights in customer experience to improve your customers' happiness.

Customer experience refers to the totality of the customer's interactions with your brand. This starts from the moment they see your marketing information, to their purchase of a product or service, all the way to them contacting your support line.

Brands that craft the best customer experience strategies have happier customers. The stronger your customer relationships are, the stronger your brand will be.

How to Conduct Customer Experience Surveys

A great first step to improving your customer experience is to begin with a survey. Your impressions about what's going great or not will often be off the mark. Customers know best what they value, and what your company is getting right. A customer survey helps your team pinpoint where your brand is weak, and how you can improve your customers' lives.

With modern tech tools such as survey websites and online forms, it is quite easy to collect data from customers. However, you need to get clear on what things to measure. Some suggestions that will be of importance to the typical business include:

How happy are your customers with the quality of your products?
How likely are your customers to purchase from you again?
How do your customers rank you against your competition?

A survey needs to include questions that let you extract information about the effectiveness of your business in meeting the needs of your customers. In addition, the survey needs to make available information about how your customers view the support programs you have in place.

With automated answering machines, many customers feel cheated when they cannot get through to a real support person. Unless your support needs are elementary, this is one area to watch carefully. Putting out a survey will let you know how customers view your current choices.

After conducting a customer satisfaction survey, it's time to get together with your team and analyze the results. You will want to look at the responses both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Ask yourself the following questions with your team, and answer them as objectively as possible based on the data:

What is working?
What is not working?
What do customers want that you are not providing?
What are the most important fixes that could drastically improve customer happiness?

Being as objective as possible helps you craft winning fixes that will result in a better customer experience. Often, improving the customer experience comes about by paying attention to customer feedback that lets you invest in areas you had never considered. For example, you might have to assign high-value clients with a personal customer success specialist. Customers' comments help guide you to what's most necessary.

Examples of Companies With Exceptional Customer Experience

In industries ranging from food and beverage to clothing, some companies have become noted for a great customer experience. These are some of the brands whose strategies you will want your business to copy.

Starbucks, the coffee and beverage company, is noted for its friendly baristas. The atmosphere at a Starbucks is laid back and relaxing, with mellow music on the playlist. To a customer, it feels like they are home.

LL Bean, the shoe and clothing company, has a remarkable reputation with customers. LL Bean has a lifetime guarantee on most items. If a customer is not happy with an item at any time, they can return it to LL Bean, no questions asked. Needless to say, customers find such a brand a pleasure to shop at.

The ROI of Successful Customer Experience

Higher customer satisfaction brings back real benefits to your business. Customers who are happy with your products and services are more likely to shop with you again. In addition, they become brand ambassadors who promote you to their families and friends. Many new customers have started buying from a company after hearing positive customer experience quotes.

Your business should therefore be making substantial efforts to improve customer experience across the board. The investments you make in this area today will help build your brand for years to come.