With technology improving every day 97% of consumers’ journey begins online. Once they start their quest looking at different services or products, they start with online reviews, YELP, or Reddit. These reviews are going to either drive up your sales and increase traffic to your website or, chase potential clients away. That’s why it’s more important than ever for your business to improve its customer service. Here are the three best ways to instantly maximize your sales through customer experience.
1. Check Analytics for Customer Experience Insights
Before you can improve your customer’s experience and address immediate issues you need to know what your current customer experience is. Luckily for you, multiple platforms help you track this data.
One of the most popular platforms to track user data is Google Analytics. They have several metrics and customization options that allow you to track customers’ movement on your website. Look at metrics like customer lifetime value, bounce rate, number of sessions, search performance, and app downloads to understand your business performance.
By collecting data on special offers you can determine how successful product launch will be and what languages and locations drive the most actions. Additionally, you need to optimize your website’s loading speed for mobile and PC browsing.
If you don’t have a program to track your customer’s data yet here are a few things you should avoid:
- customers don’t want to land on irrelevant pages,
- be bombarded by annoying ads,
- or get engaged in a complicated checkout process.
Remember to keep your consumer’s journey clean and easy to maximize sales.
Mike Maddock, in an article for Forbes, explained why collecting data on customer experience is important:
“Too many companies rely only on their sales staff—or worse, completely on channel partners—to tell them what their customers’ experiences are like. This is like asking a pilot how a flight went. From his perspective, the plane landed safely, so things went great.”
He goes on to explain that:
“He has no idea that the flight attendants ran out of drinks or that the guy in front of you rammed his chair back, spilling coffee on your lap and laptop.”
To put it simply, empathy is crucial when looking at your customer’s experience when visiting your site. This will ensure your customers have a higher level of trust and loyalty towards your products and services over competitors who are lacking customer experience. Customers fall in love with your business and your brand once you can satisfy their needs. This love can shield you from disruptive technologies and rapid changes in the market.
2. Improve Your Email and Over the Phone Customer Experience
With the majority of people transitioning to working from home in 2020, your company should have a way for potential and current customers to contact you.
Staying in contact with your customers drastically improves your emotional connection with them, and can help you outperform competitors by 85% in sales growth.
When it comes to phone calls you can easily make use of auto attendants to send callers to the correct departments. Although this makes your employee’s life easier, it can potentially damage your customer experience. Be sure you optimize the program to reduce the wait time for callers. Additionally, consider recording both inbound and outbound calls.
By listening to these calls you can get a better idea of how to improve what your reps say and the answers to commonly asked questions. This is also a great tool to use during training.
To improve your customer experience even more you can outsource your support to an outsourcing company.
By using a qualified outsourcing company you can increase your customer experience with results in $823 million of revenue growth for $1 million-dollar-revenue companies within three years.
When it comes to products and services, remember to say thank you every time a purchase is made. Sending personalized thank you emails can improve your customer’s experience and make them feel valued.
3. Encourage Users to Leave Reviews
These days reviews are one of the most important things when it comes to a business. Not only will you be able to measure progress, or concerns people have with your products or services, but it also establishes a sense of credibility. People are more likely to take action when a company is honest and open with their reviews. Never try to buy reviews or game the system. This way they get a sense of the companies products and services through other consumers.
It’s important to remember that your customer experience can only improve once you start listening to your customers. By collecting reviews you will be able to find the trends and the main concerns your customers have. By addressing these concerns you gain your customer’s support and loyalty, thereby maximizing your sales. Ask for feedback once someone buys a product from you. Use both positive and negative feedback to optimize the customer experience.
Summary
Today, customers have the ability to communicate with brands across various platforms. Social media has become a big part of the way we market and communicate with potential clients. Because of this, brands have the opportunity to create stronger bonds and brand identities with their customers. Needless to say, customers are reacting positively to this change in communication.
Over 80% of Instagram users expressing they follow at least 1 business on the app.
Glossier, Warby Parker, and Away are just a few of the retail brands modernizing their customer experience.
Regardless of your business niche, customer experience is an area that needs constant nurturing and care. It’s crucial when it comes to distinguishing your brand from competitors.
No matter how good your products or services are, if your customer experience is bad, your customers won’t return. Expectations are getting higher every day, and word of mouth has become a powerful marketing tool. You need to take every step possible to improve your customer experience to bring them back and maximize your sales.
By applying these simple three steps to your own brand and modernizing your approach to customer service you can establish a stronger connection to your customer. This will provide your business with long-term growth and a boost in sales.
