Improving the customer experience is something that all companies and services must perpetually attempt to do. Even if customers seem satisfied with the product or service, there is always room for improvement, so it’s never a good idea to fool oneself into believing that status quo is acceptable when it comes to CRM and user experience.
However, there can be telltale signs as to why your customer experience may stand for improvement, symptoms of a deceptive ailment if you will. Learning these symptoms and their treatments is invaluable for healthy growth and reputability in your business, no matter what business or industry that may be. Let’s take a look at five reasons you may need to be especially concerned about such improvements, and maybe some potential general solutions to go along with them.
1 – Decreased Growth
Decreased growth of customer base is a prime indicator that customer experience may not be what it once was, or may need to change with the times. While retaining long term customers is fantastic, and something even enterprise businesses can’t always achieve, there is some concern if customer growth plateaus.
This means that long term customers are accustomed to your user experience, but that new customers aren’t appealed to by it for one reason or another. This could be a result of the product or service not having a continually growing demographic, or as a result of potential new customers being more hooked by a competing service or product.
When this happens, take a look at your competition, and see if their base is growing where yours is not. If so, it means some revision or identity or something similar may be called for. It’s nothing to panic over, but also far from something that calls for complacency.
2 – Decreased Customer Base
This one is obvious, compared to the previous. If over the years, you are seeing a decreasing customer base, rather than just a lack of growth, this means something is catastrophically wrong somewhere. Customers aren’t staying with your brand, and new customers aren’t coming on board either.
This could be a combination of problems, such as revisions like above, but also possibly something is wrong with the product, or it just doesn’t mesh with the times anymore.
Again, look at your competition. If they are growing and prospering, compare your services or products, and see where yours is going wrong. If they are experiencing the same problems, then perhaps the model as a whole needs revision.
3 – Customer Hostility
Be sure that the recorded customer calls or logs from CRM services on your site are being reviewed by someone with expertise in UX and CRM itself. If customers are becoming increasingly agitated in their communications, there is a chance that something in your CRM process is frustrating them greatly. This is a surefire sign you need to attempt improving the customer experience in how you handle support.
Some obvious ways to fix this are to be rid of phone trees, long hold times and refraining from outsourcing calls where possible. Customers really hate these things, but most companies haven’t figured that out, it seems.
4 – Lack of Customer Feedback
If customer feedback is encouraged, but little feedback, be it positive or negative, is being received, something may be wrong with the customer experience. It depends on a few factors.
It could be a result of the above mentioned frustrating nature of your CRM platform, which discourages customers from communicating with you unless it is an emergency. This is the most likely cause of this symptom in fact, but not the only potential problem.
The product or service may be good enough to not warrant negative feedback, but not superb enough to warrant the effort to praise it either. Offer incentives for giving feedback, and possibly customers will indicate where the service or product is lacking.
5 – Bad Reviews
This one is obvious, which is why it’s at number 5. Bad reviews on reputable review outlets are a sign that something is terribly wrong with your customer experience. The problem here is, especially online, a lot of reviewers make their living by being hostile in their presentation, which can make for some bad metrics. So, when bad reviews from on-biased outlets are discovered, take an extra step.
Look at Google Plus and other user-powered review platforms at this point, and hear what they have to say. You may be surprised at how intuitively and eloquently customers can indicate problems and offer solutions.
These are just a few symptoms and solutions for improving the customer experience , but they’re probably the most notorious and easy to solve.
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