We all know that a positive customer experience is crucial to business success. However, too often, the emphasis is put on giving a great experience when they finally become a customer – and less attention is paid to the experience that our customers get on their journey to choosing us.
As marketers and business owners, we need to get better at this. Because a great customer experience starts from the minute they first become AWARE that our organisation exists, all the way through to beyond the time of being a customer and into LOYALTY.
Here are 7 practical tips with ideas on how to start improving customer experience, which you can use in your business immediately.
Let’s start with their very first contact with you…
Speak to them; swap, ‘we’ and ‘us’ for ‘you’
It’s simple yet hard to do this one – remove ‘I’ and ‘We’ from your marketing. (I know this is hard because I struggle with it too!) It’s hard because it requires us really understanding what we are offering people and why they should be paying attention to us. It’s effective though as it shows you understand them and are offering what they want; it really can improve the customer experience of your brand.
“We offer great service” becomes, “You’ll enjoy personalised customer service”.
“We have 20 years’ experience” changes to, “You’ll benefit from 20 years’ experience”.
My top tip to get started on this, is introduce it into your social posts right now. These are easier to experiment with while you practise getting it right.
Listen to them
Ideally, set up meetings, coffees, face to faces with your customers’ then ask them about their problems and challenges, sit back and listen. Listen to the words they use. Listen to the words they don’t use. Then, armed with their words and phrases, use those in your marketing. We all feel a deeper connection with people who ‘speak our language’ as we feel they ‘get’ us.
If meeting your customers is tricky, then go and hang out where they are e.g. online webinars, events, and do the same thing: listen to them, their words and then use those.
Look at your data
Whatever size and the set up of your business, you have customer data which can be used to improve your customers’ experience. Key data to look at is:
- What they spend time on
- What they rapidly left / ignored.
Online, this could be website dwell times, bounce rates, posts engaged with. Offline, it could be the talk you gave that got more sign ups, the ‘About us pitch’ you used at networking that got people interested in what you had to say – or the one you gave where everyone’s eyes glazed over.
To get going, focus on one bit of data and see what it tells you about what they are enjoying – then deliver more of that to them.
Tread the journey in their steps
Sit down and walk through the journey they take through your pipeline, as if you are them. Go into an incognito window on your browser and start at Aware. Look at your Ads, your socials from their perspective. Sign up for your newsletter with an email address unrelated to your work. See what you get sent, how good it looks, where the glitches are. And, if you can, ask a completely independent person to do the same (my parents are great for this for The Marketing Spaces!).
We launched in October 2021 and are still treading the journey in our customers’ steps to see where it is clunky, see how it looks from their point of view, and figure out where to make improvements to the customer experience.
Champion your customers
Proud of something they’ve achieved? Working with a great client who could do with a boost? Champion them and tell their stories.
Too often we go to our customers to ask for testimonials, case studies, referrals, recommendations – stuff that benefits us and our business.
But what about championing them to your network, which often gives them something back? This can really enhance their customer experience with you.
Constantly work to engage them
What’s your customers’ engagement rate? Once they choose your service, are they using it? If not, why not? What are the barriers in place for them to use it and engage more? Can you remove those barriers?
The great news is that when you constantly work hard to engage your customers, at every step of the Buyers’ Journey, you automatically increase how much they give to you – often known as their ‘Lifetime Value’. It really is a win-win situation.
Automate the small tasks
Any relationship involves small tasks – with a customer, these might be the tasks of giving them more interesting content to read (‘You liked this so this might be relevant to you’); making the purchase process easy (‘click here for a receipt’); giving them the info they need when they need it to save them hunting for it (‘here’s the link for the webinar that starts soon’).
The more you can automate these ‘small’ tasks, the more time you’ll have to figure out how to improve your customer experience and the more time you’ll have to make this happen.
If this seems overwhelming, then pick one small task you can automate. It could be as easy as setting up a free Calendar tool for people to be able to book appointments or setting up paying for your Events via EventBrite. Choose one small task, work on that, then choose the next. The time savings all add up.
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You can improve your customers’ experience by understanding who they are and devising your marketing to reach them. Our Online Course, ‘How to write your Strategic Marketing Plan’ systematically takes you through creating a Strategic Marketing Plan so you know what marketing to do, when and why – which automatically improves your customers’ experience.
