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As businesses adjust to new goals and efforts to scale, it is important to keep the proper focus on one of the main things that keeps a business running–customers. Ensuring that your customer experience is satisfying and efficient and keeps customers coming back is essential to scale and maintaining your business year after year.
1. Gather Data
From customer experience polls to employee surveys and everything in between, understanding your data is one of the first steps to creating a sustainable customer experience. Data is invaluable and should be something you look at often, and you should look at it with a trusted but unbiased secondary person. What you see in data versus what someone else sees can help identify gaps you may have missed.
Some examples of what you might see from our call log data:
- Equipment issues – you can look at the call log and see
- What lane / device are the calls coming from? Is it one lane?
- What type of calls are we getting? Is there an issue with a ticket spitter, credit card reader, etc.?
- Process issues – are you getting consistent issues with validations from a particular business?
- Do you need to reach out to them and make sure they are aware of the issues and verify they follow the correct steps?
- Along with charging them back for all of the tickets that were reported for their location.
2. Expand Offerings When It Makes Sense
Whether you are repeatedly hearing from customers about things they want to see or looking ahead at what might be needed in the future, knowing when to offer additional services or when to expand your product line is crucial. Does the expansion come at a cost of your service delivery or quality? Is there more than a single application for the new line? Reaching out to a sample set of your customers and talking to employees are great ways of gathering data to substantiate decisions on these types of moves.
3. Think Outside the Box
Remember that most businesses don’t have only one use or angle in which they should be marketed. Engage with your customers about unique ways they’ve implemented your products, for example. Also, think through ways you can see your business filling a unique need for others. By showing customers opportunities they didn’t know existed, you can make them feel like their needs are accounted for without changing your business, and adding another layer of value to the relationship.
4. Show That You Care
Listening to customers is the first big step, but it’s important to show what you hear from customers is also being acted upon. Keep your customers in the loop about upcoming changes or new additions, especially when the change fills a need they have been asking about. Ensure that they feel valued and respected when having one-on-one interactions with them, and don’t be afraid to direct them to other businesses you trust when they have a need that you can’t fill. Building in this honest lead generation for other businesses means that your customers know they can trust you.
5. Educate
Remember that customers and employees need to stay informed and engaged with your business. So constantly incorporate presentations, training, and other informative materials. It is crucial that your employees fully understand your offerings, in order for them to explain those offerings clearly and concisely to customers. Likewise, when you launch a new product, ensure your customers know about it. When a customer feels informed, they also feel empowered.
6. If You Stumble, Keep Going
If a customer points out something negative, approach it as an opportunity. Your first reaction might be to feel bad or defensive; instead thank them for the feedback and use it to make positive adjustments. This interaction means that you have created an environment where they feel comfortable bringing information to you.
Ultimately, creating sustainable customer experiences involves doing the homework and making sure that you are always listening. When you make positive changes, don’t shy away from shouting it from the rooftops. And when something negative happens, don’t be afraid of making the changes that matter and telling the people impacted about the issue and what you have done to resolve it. Transparency will build trust and appreciation in your client base.
To learn more about our approach to ensuring a consistent customer experience, contact us or visit our solution page.
Tammy Baker
COO
Tammy Baker has 25 years of experience in process improvement, team management, systems, change management, training and inventory control. She holds a B.A. in Organizational leadership and Supervision from IUPUI.