The Secret of Successfully Improving the Customer Experience

 

What is the secret to improving the customer experience?  This is a loaded question, obviously. Many a sleepless night has been spent by business experts, marketing professionals and any other given professional individual in business pondering this issue. This is understandable, as the human animal is a little bit of a complicated thing, as well as an unpredictable thing.

From an outside view, the success or failure of many a company seems mystifying and often chalked up to pure luck. There have been so many companies that have succeeded with simple, uninspired ideas, and companies with amazing, pioneering ideas that have been cast of the wayside with very little to any reason for either. That is, it would seem this way, that there must be some sort of unifying theory behind why some work and some don’t.

Let us stop for a moment, and consider what this seemingly legendary a secret to improving the customer experience might be. Why have some companies with rather mundane services or products excelled while others with brilliant new ideas have failed so miserably? Bitch probably an obvious reason.

First, let us think about how customers, that being users or consumers, think. A new product or service, or an existing one, is first experience by a user are customer through advertising and marketing. So whatever marketing or advertising tactic is used is forever part of how like customer or user may identify a product, Service &Company providing them. Therefore, if the marketing is obnoxious or poorly represents the product, this is the first and foremost potential area in which a company may fail. Watch carefully how marketing and advertising work, as they can work greatly to your advantage or to your utter failure.

Second, what separates a product or service from its competition? Unless it is a truly novel in new thing meeting a new demand, there is bound to be at least one other company offering the same product or service at more less the same price. What is separating your product or service from that of your competition? Even if your product is superior, it may be difficult for a customer to differentiate the two if nothing truly identifies one above the other. Identity in this case may be determined by a number of things, such as price point, branding or added to, depending on the product or service in question, as well as the field or niche it fills.

Third, no matter how great a product or services, someone is going to have a problem with it. When this happens, they will be contacting your company to address this problem, or to ask questions. We’re going to want this to be resolved quickly, and if your customer service is not affect if, as well as quick, then the customer experience is going to be four. Many companies fail over this particular point, so it’s actually the most important despite it being the last one listed in this discussion. It’s being mentioned last because this one needs a moment to be discussed, while the other two are fairly straightforward.

How is your customer service being handled? Are you using a phone system? If so, be sure that your phone menus are easy to navigate, and if you’re using voice recognition, they sure that it works properly. Make sure that hold times are fast, that you have a fluently English speaking staff manning the phone lines at all times. Do not have living music or intermittent advertisements during call times, as asshole positively enrage customers that are already having a bad as it is.

Are using a helpdesk or similar system? Make sure you have technicians the response of these quickly, and clearly. Slow or pour customer service will be the downfall of the most amazing companies.

So, the ultimate secrets to improving the customer experience are all about identity, the late ability and efficient customer service. If any of these three things fail, the whole system will come crashing down. If you’re having customer experience problems, take a long look at these three factors, as chances are one of them is going to be the issue if not all.

is Specialist in Customer Success and chief writer and editor of I Want It Now, a blog for Customer Service Experts. Follow her @StefWalkMe