Landing your ideal client by creating the perfect customer experience! | Part One
If you’re planning on launching your business or wanting to rethink your business strategy, you’re at the right place. We’ve put together a blog series that helps companies of all sizes scale and create meaningful content through strategic and customer-forward storytelling to their ideal target audience! Our branding series is complete with free templates and resources for you to use, with a complimentary discovery session that teaches you the basics you need to know about digital marketing.
Now you have the basics about creating the perfect brand strategy, how can you take your customers through a fantastic customer experience? You’d want your end goal to be clear and concise. Having returning loyal customers who can’t stop raving about your products and services is the ideal vision for your brand!
What is a customer experience?
Delivering a great customer experience is essential for any business. The better experience your customers have, the chances for you to scale to wider audiences is greater. Customer experience is your customer’s perception of their experience with your business or your brand.
A customer experience is the result of every interaction that a customer has had with your business. Yes, this also means the little details too! From navigating your website to the searches that appear when they type in your business name on Google, to the content, you post on social media, and lastly, direct interaction with you or the people who are behind your business. Everything you do impacts your customer experience.
Why is it essential for your brand to grow?
A common misconception when business owners think of customer experience, they mistake it for customer service and support. Customer experience doesn’t necessarily mean that your customer support team shoulders the responsibility for customer interaction.
As mentioned previously, a customer interacts with your company well before they contact the customer service team. A few moments that matter in your business strategy are:
How a customer navigates your website.
How easy they can locate your business’s information on the web: (Location, contact number, email)
How your audience engages and views your social media content
Reading marketing emails or stumbling upon your advertisements
Navigating your products and services on the web
Placing an order or purchasing (Buying decision)
The better experience these customers have during these moments sets the stage for your business strategy success. Positive experiences lead to more positive reviews, retention, and reducing customer complaints and returns. The benefits include:
Customer loyalty
Increased customer satisfaction
Better word-of-mouth marketing, positive reviews, recommendations.
What’s a good customer experience?
There is no universal checklist for giving outstanding customer experiences. They differ with each brand, but we’ve included some key takeaways we’ve discovered from working with different brands. Good customer experience can be achieved by:
Making listening is a top priority in your business. Whether it’s social listening by observing the engagement on your social platforms or listening to direct feedback.
Using customer feedback through personalized messaging, surveys, and comments to develop an in-depth understanding of your audience, who they are, and their interests.
Breaks down barriers between your brand and your potential customer. Creates an easy way to solve your customers’ specific problems and unique challenges.
Remarkable customer service experiences help sustain growth within your brand’s community and for your business. It promotes loyalty and, most importantly, brand advocacy.
How can I create an excellent customer experience?
Let’s take a look at the boxes you must tick off to create a perfect strategy for an excellent customer experience.
Understand who your customers are
The only way you can create experiences with your customers is to know and understand your customers. If your business understands who your customers are, they will need to connect and empathize. What exactly are the situations your customers are facing? Why is your business their choice when it comes to their buying decisions?
One way to do this is to segment your ideal client and your existing buyers. Create buyer personas or customer profiles. This is also super beneficial when planning to boost your content on social media platforms.
An example of a buyers persona would be:
Claudia is 29 years old; she’s interested in online shopping and is tech-savvy enough to send referral codes to her friends and family. In comparison, Bill needs to watch clear step-by-step tutorials to utilize mobile applications.
By creating a buyers persona chart, you’re able to include this in your brand strategy. This will be your guide for your communication objectives, the content you post, and how you market your products and services—this an essential step to becoming customer-centric.
Create an emotional connection with your customers
Now that businesses and customers are pivoting to digital, creating emotional connections can be challenging if you don’t have the proper messaging. However, it can be effortless if you understand who your customers are. Have you heard the phrase, “ It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it?” Research by the Journal of Consumer Research has found that more than 50% of an experience is based on an emotion as emotions shape the attitudes that drive decisions.
When you deliver quality products or services that seem personalized to the customers in your buyer’s persona, it creates an emotional attachment to your brand and your products or services. To sum it up, customer loyalty. Your customers are less likely to shop anywhere else for the same products and services, and they are most likely to rave about your products to their social circle and are most likely to repurchase.
Capture customer experiences in real-time!
Although customer experiences and customer service might be completely different, they go hand in hand. How can you tell if you are delivering a fantastic customer service experience?
You capture customer experiences in real-time!
How do I do this?
Optimize your live chat tools and create audits on day-to-day conversations. Keep open lines of communication with your chat support team if present.
Include follow-up email’s in your email marketing strategy to capture feedback from loyal customers who subscribed to your mailing list or customers who have sent inquiries. Show them you’re listening, and you’re always there to support any of the requests they have.
Even if you’re not a social media manager, as a business owner, it’s essential to take time out of your day to practice social listening on all your social platforms and, yes, your competitor’s platforms. This practice is to gain insight into what time your audience is the most active, where they are, and explore options (competitors!)
Last but not least, a traditional marketing method. Utilize outbound calls and a few cold calls to gain more insightful feedback and reviews.
Conclusion
In times of uncertainty, brands are rethinking ways to interact with their customers and figuring out ways to increase customer loyalty. Now more than ever, creating personalized experiences and focusing on solving their challenges and needs are vital for empowering your customers and audience. Now that you have a better understanding of the importance of a customer experience, our guide doesn’t stop there! We’ve created a customer experience roadmap package for you to use on your brand-building journey.
Oh, but it doesn’t stop there! If you’re reading this it’s your opportunity to book a complimentary discovery session with our digital experts to help guide you through a profitable customer experience strategy that helps you scale and takes your brand further in the digital space.
We want to hear about your business, let’s talk! www.ravenandcompany.com/consultancy
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Enjoy our free customer experience strategy template here!