Understanding the customer’s expectations and demands, providing a solution to overcome their challenges, gathering feedback and incorporating those changes – all of these contribute to a great customer experience. 

The CX management market is expected to grow by 15.3% every year from 2022 to 2030. No wonder, businesses are heavily investing in all the modern CX technologies coming up to deliver the best customer experience possible. 

For example, to ensure a seamless product walkthrough, companies are leveraging digital adoption platforms. This allows them to guide customers through essential tasks. 

Similarly, behavioral analytics tools such as Google analytics for eCommerce are being used to better understand customer behavior and make accurate predictions about their future actions. Such insights can help businesses make informed and customer-centric decisions.

In this article, we’ll discuss how adopting a customer-centric approach allows businesses to achieve profits and high ROI.

5 Ways How Customer-Centric Approach Can Help Businesses 

Every company wishes to enhance customer experiences across all touchpoints. Whether it is increasing sales conversions or fostering loyal customer relationships, a customer-centric approach has always helped businesses connect with customers on a personal level.

Here’s how a customer-centric approach can help businesses achieve their goals. 

1. Boosts CX 

A customer-centric approach provides businesses with in-depth information about the customers, their industry, and a snapshot of their journey with your company. This information acts as a foundation for crafting a long-term strategy for attracting and retaining customers.

An intelligent CRM like HubSpot or Zoho provides the customer information in a structured format giving the teams a bird’s eye view of customer data. This information can be leveraged to design personalized experiences for the customers. 

For example, the customer’s purchase history can be used to generate personalized product recommendations. 

Here is a screenshot of the product recommendations shown by Amazon.

Source

Here are a few tips on how to improve customer experience.

• Leverage AI and machine learning to create breakthrough customer experiences. Use chatbots like botsify to resolve customers’ queries 24*7. Provide real-time order updates via these chatbots and enhance the customer experience.
• Embrace omnichannel marketing strategy to deliver consistent experiences to the customers on online and offline channels. 
• Design your website to serve dynamic content based on customers’ preferences. 
• Use geolocation to share recommendations based on the locations. 

For example, TripAdvisor, an online hotel booking and travel website uses the customer’s location and browsing history to send hotel recommendations.

Source

Improving the user experience of the website or product is another factor that contributes to improving the customer experience. The design should be such that the customers find the desired information about the company, products, and services without any hassles. 

It should be easy to use and be optimized for mobile devices to make the customer journey as seamless as possible.

2. Ensures Great Customer Engagement and Retention

Building strong relationships with customers ensures they are happy and engaged with your brand. Businesses today are focused on designing a customer engagement strategy that creates emotional relationships with customers. Remember connecting with customers on a personal level makes them feel valued and boosts their loyalty. You may always look at good examples of customer engagement to get ideas if you’re not sure how to interact with customers more. It all comes down to figuring out what works for your customers, and tried-and-true methods could be a great helping hand.

The customer-centric approach helps businesses craft an engagement strategy that focuses on improving customer satisfaction. By giving them visibility into the individual customer journey, this approach ensures the team connects with the customers at the right time with the right message. 

Communicate with the customers in every possible way. Leverage platforms, such as live chat and chatbots, emails, text messaging, phone calls, and more to provide them with the information they are looking for. Invest in mediums that provide you insights into customers’ thoughts and challenges. Additionally, you can utilize customer feedback analytics to gain valuable insights into customers’ preferences and challenges to enhance your products and services based on their needs.

Capturing customer feedback is a powerful method for gathering customer insights. Create feedback questionnaires to ask customers about the product or service performance and utilize these insights into delivering a better product or service.

Here is an example of a customer survey shared by Hotjar. This survey is sent to customers who have downgraded their subscriptions.

Source

Similarly, conduct customer sentiment surveys to capture different emotions the customers experience while exploring the products. Use ‘like or dislike’ buttons, emoticons, star ratings, or number ratings to collect feedback.

Take a look at this by email screenshot shared HubSpot to its new users. Notice how HubSpot is trying to capture customers’ feedback about their onboarding experience. 

Source

3. Boosts Revenue

The customer-centric business approach ensures increased revenue because of enhanced customer satisfaction and retention. It encourages customers to speak about your company and its products or services. 

According to ReferralCandy, 83% of satisfied customers refer products and services to their families and friends.

Here are a few ways how customers help in advertising your offerings and boosting sales.

• Build an online forum where customers can connect and share their experiences with the products.
  
  Sephora has a forum for beauty enthusiasts named Beauty Talk that encourages them to share tips, discuss ideas, ask beauty-related queries, and a lot more. This is an excellent effort to keep customers engaged with the brand. This online community has over 5M members around the world.

Source

• Encourage the customers to leave a review or share a testimonial about the products and help you strengthen the brand image.
• Devise a referral incentive program to motivate existing customers to recommend new customers.
  
  Use referral software like Referral Factory or InviteReferrals to set up an exclusive referral program for the customers. These software solutions also help you share incentives with customers without any hassles. Further, you can also track the performance of the program via intelligent reports.
  

Source

• Offer discounts, limited-time deals, exclusive access to premium features, and other benefits to the customers to boost sales.

The customer-centric approach helps you build a strong reputation as a brand in the eyes of your customers, thereby offering you multiple avenues for growth and profits.

4. Aligns the Teams to Organization Goals

The customer-centered approach provides an end-to-end holistic understanding of the customer journey to the customer success, sales, and marketing teams. Leverage the customer data across all these customer-facing functions to create excellent experiences.

Let us understand how a customer-centered approach brings each of these teams to work together to provide meaningful experiences to the customers.

Being responsible for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones, the marketing team plays a crucial role in lead generation and customer retention. Reaching out to the desired target audience via data-driven marketing campaigns helps them serve personalized content that audiences can relate to. Hence, understanding customer behavior across the various digital channels is important for marketing teams.

Similarly, the sales team must have access to the customers’ journey and their interactions with the product. Selling the right product to the right customer at the right time is essential. The complete customer information will empower the sales team to identify the best sales opportunities that would certainly lead to conversions. 

The customer success team is responsible for helping the customers use the company’s products or services proactively. From engaging the trial users, and responding to their queries to helping them with renewals, the customer success team boosts the customer lifetime value and contributes to reducing churn. 

By giving them access to vital customers’ information, you are allowing your team to step into the customers’ shoes and help them resolve their pain points. They can cater to customer needs proactively and increase customer satisfaction.

5. Reduces Costs

The implementation of a customer-centric approach presents businesses with opportunities for increased sales, revenue, and growth. 

• The sales and customer support teams connect with customers at the right time, helping them make better decisions. 

For example, the team can connect with customers who are completing their trial and offer them the required guidance for subscribing to a premium plan.

• By putting the customers at the center, businesses can connect with customers on a personal level. It will foster customer loyalty and reduce the churn rate. 
• Satisfied customers are the best advocates for the brand. Being brand loyalists, these customers will help you with referrals, thereby reducing customer acquisition costs.
• As the entire team works toward a common goal, there will not be any friction between the team members in understanding the assigned tasks, tracking the updates, and more. 
• The customer-centric approach brings about stability in the work processes with defined workflows, thereby improving operational efficiency. 

Summing Up

Implementing a customer-centric approach is beneficial for the customers, the team, and your company. It provides businesses an edge in this competitive market in terms of providing quality customer service while delivering excellent products or services. It helps businesses achieve their goals and generate excellent revenue and profits.

We hope this article has helped you understand the benefits a customer-centric approach can offer to your business. 

The post How Customer Centric Approach Can Help You Achieve High ROI appeared first on Botsify.

This increased adoption of innovative technologies triggered an era of digital transformation that fosters a business environment that promotes growth. It also helps businesses achieve their goals. One sector that has seen this tremendous shift is the customer service industry. 

Today, customer service is about how you engage your customers with your services and your brand. It is about providing a hiccup-free experience by offering them excellent services on a regular basis. Customer service is no longer a destination, it is a journey. 

The primary aim of the customer service industry today is fostering meaningful relationships with the customers and bringing them together to form a community. 

From customer relationship training to chatbots for improved customer satisfaction, every aspect of the customer service industry is impacted by digital transformation. 

In this post, we will learn about the top five emerging trends that show how digital transformation is improving the customer service industry.

#1 – Chatbots, Automation, and AI Will Continue to Transform Customer Service

One of the best customer service techniques that will continue to gain attention in the customer service industry is 24X7 chat support. Based on this research, live chat is said to deliver higher customer satisfaction (73%) when compared with phone support (44%) and email support (61%).

Chats enable you to engage with your customers in real time more seamlessly and conveniently. Besides, it also helps you personalize the experience for your customers. 

Chat support is no longer restricted to a person sitting behind a computer screen to answer customer’s queries. This happened with the spread of chatbot and WhatsApp chatbot popularity spreading. By employing artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing, chatbots can carry out certain support-related activities without any manual intervention. 

According to the survey conducted by HubSpot, 90% of customers expect an immediate response (10 minutes or less) with their customer service questions.

Indeed, chatbots are the future of the customer service industry. Chatbots act as human agents to aid the customers with their queries and ensure a smooth experience with your system. Thus, helping you engage with your customers proactively and scaling your support efforts seamlessly.  

You can configure your chatbots for 

• Scheduling appointments
• Tracking orders, shipments, and deliveries
• Tracking returns and refunds
• Managing subscriptions and renewals
• Handling complaints and queries

We all are aware of the famous Marriott International. Their chatbot named ChatBotlr is designed to help Marriott Rewards members with researching and booking hotels. 

It is also programmed to suggest members with trip ideas from their magazine, Marriott Traveler. This chatbot is available through Facebook Messenger and Slack messaging platforms.

Let us not forget that automation speeds up your processes to make them more efficient. For example, instead of assigning support tickets to your team manually, you can quicken the process by configuring automated ticket prioritization and assignment. 

Similarly, you can utilize email marketing automation to nurture your customers by providing them tailored guidance on using your system.

#2 – The Demand for Consistent Messaging across Multiple Channels Is Growing

Customers expect excellent experiences from businesses in terms of quality of service, pricing structure, and interactions with the customer service team. They expect consistent messaging across all departments. According to Salesforce, 74% of customers interact with a brand using multiple channels throughout their entire journey. 

Whether it is email, business phone, chat, or social media, your messaging should be optimized across all platforms. It should provide a seamless experience to your customers. Failing to do so will show that there is poor collaboration between your sales, support, and marketing teams. 

Although messaging is the preferred mode of communication today, aiming towards having an omnichannel customer engagement strategy will help you gain a competitive edge. It is one of the best ways to show your customers that you are available for them. It will help you understand your customers more closely and cater to their needs exceptionally well.

Sephora has nailed their marketing strategy by offering seamless online and in-store shopping experiences. 

Source – Moengage Blog

They provide free makeovers, an educated sales team, realistic beauty tips and products to try at their offline stores. While their online store is equipped with extraordinary features such as virtual try-on, makeup tutorials, items wishlists, reward points, and much more. Sephora was one among the few retailers to adopt this strategy in their early days of marketing.

#3 – The Need for Having a Cohesive Customer Service Team Will Grow

The success of your customer service efforts depends largely on your team performance. According to the studies conducted at Goremotely, connected teams have shown a profitability increase of 21%.The more your employees feel connected and engaged, the better they work towards achieving the goals i.e. delivering extraordinary customer service. 

Your customer service team should be able to communicate with one another as well as other departments effectively. You should provide them with the necessary tools to collaborate and share information. 

To get started, you can sign up for tools like – 

• HelpScout for knowledge base 
• Zoom for video conferencing 
• Calendly for scheduling demos and meetings
• HubSpot CRM for managing your customers 

Building a successful and cohesive team is easy. Here are some of the best practices you can implement right away.

• Define your goals for the team
• Provide required training, tools, and other assets for team development
• Plan team-building activities to promote enhanced team chemistry and communication
• Celebrate their achievements with tangible rewards
• Motivate your team to give their best to their designated roles

#4 – Resourceful and Valued Service Will Be the Key to Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Customer experience is not just about being available for your customers and answering their queries. One of the core ideologies of the customer service industry is to provide them value and resources to make their lives simpler.

A B2B sales study by Gartner revealed around 57% of customers choose to look for other purchase options if they do not receive quality and immediate responses to their queries.

You should ensure that you are offering solutions to the issues your customers are facing. Meeting their needs and expectations with your system and other additional resources will add more value and a personal touch to your brand. You can ask your customers for detailed feedback and try incorporating those changes in your processes if possible. 

A popular beauty brand from India, MyGlamm conducts a survey to understand their customers’ needs before launching new products in the market. 

They also give away a free lipstick to all the participants of the survey as a reward for their time and efforts. Their gesture of placing the customers first and understanding their requirements is something that every brand should learn from.

Source – MyGlamm Survey

Here are some easy tips that you can use to create value for your customers.

• Identify your strengths i.e. your offerings that sets you apart from your competitors
• Build your content and marketing assets around those strengths
• Streamline your marketing efforts to deliver quality over quantity
• Educate your customers with valuable content about your system via demos, tutorials, webinars, knowledge base, etc.
• Be available for your customers and build lasting relationships with them
• Reward your customers with special discounts and offers to thank them for choosing you

You should aim at building a sense of trust and dependability with your customers. 

#5 – Agile Business Culture Will Boost Customer Service Operations

The customer service industry is rapidly evolving. In order to stay at par with these changing industry trends, you need to follow processes that can easily adapt and accommodate these changes. 

Having an agile approach to your business will help you identify and invest in the right technologies at the right time. It will also provide a boost to your customer service strategies. Agile methodologies are no longer just a part of the software development industry!

The customer experience management market is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 17.7% between 2020 to 2027 as per Grand View Research survey.

You can leverage cloud-based SaaS applications such as support helpdesks, chatbots, email marketing software, CRM, digital signature software, and analytics tools to have a complete omnichannel customer service strategy. 

For instance, CRM helps businesses manage their customer interactions in a single place. It also helps customer service teams to organize contact data and plan out outreach strategies based on their location, industry, and team size.

Similarly, digital signature tools can take away the hassles of signing and maintaining paper documents. The signing of all your important documents can be done at a click of a button.

According to the FinancesOnline report, 80% of businesses today are already using at least one SaaS software for their business operations. The insights you gain from these SaaS tools will provide you a better idea about your customers and their behavior. Thus, helping you improve your customer experience and deliver the best. In addition, when it comes to customer onboarding processes, you can also use an in app guidance for a more pleasant experience.

Furthermore, you can motivate your teams to perform better by conducting team stand-up meetings to understand their work status and challenges, if any. They can discuss their work, share productivity tips, and stay abreast with the latest customer service trends. 

This will bring the entire team together and encourage everyone to communicate and collaborate. It will also build a sense of accountability among the team members.  

Wrapping Up

In today’s digitally-empowered, fast-moving customer service industry, digital transformation is no longer a choice. It is mandatory for growth and success. It provides you with an opportunity to attract, engage and retain your customers. 

However, it is true that digitally transforming your business can be a tedious and overwhelming task.

Here are a few easy steps that you can follow. 

1. Identify the features and your offerings that sets you apart from your competitors.
2. Establish your presence on various channels – support helpdesk and social media. Design a chatbot with Botsify to guide your customers with their journey.
3. Delight your customers with a personalized experience based on their preferences and order history.

Follow these three steps and you will be ready to start your digital transformation journey.

The post Top 5 Customer Service Trends Driven By Digital Transformation appeared first on Botsify.

And as per a study, 33% of businesses invest in customer experience to improve customer retention. 

Source

Customer experience is your customers’ perception of how your business treats them. The perception that they have of your company can affect their behaviors and build feelings and memories that will make them loyal customers.

If they like how you treat them, they will do business with you for a long time and may even endorse you. There are many things that you can do to make your customers like you.

Here are some effective ways to make your customers like you and your brand:

• Getting to know your customers and determining their preferences
• Exceeding your customers’ expectations
• Communicating regularly with your customers
• Implementing feedback systems
• Rewarding your VIP customers
• Offering fast delivery and easy returns
• Adopting digital transformation
• Rewarding your loyal advocates 

Let’s dig into the strategies in detail so that you can implement them to boost customer experience and retain your customers:

Know your customers and determine your preferences

In what can be considered a shocking revelation, a study found a huge gap between companies that think they are offering stellar customer experience (80%) instead of customers who say they received stellar customer service (8%).

Source 

Humans have a strong, natural desire to be understood. If your customers sense that their need is being met, they will opt for your business over other businesses that treat them as merely another customer. 

It is thus crucial to invest time in getting to know your customers and their preferences and build real relationships with them.

Applying intelligent customer engagement is a great way to do that. Tools like Messenger can be used for offering customer service. There are also tools like Drift that will let you talk with your clients while they browse your site.

These engagement channels can help you to gather customer insight and understand them better. You can then work with your customer service teams to discover patterns and react to the insight you create.

Further, you can find out how customers interact with your site using a user behavior tracking tool like Google Analytics. Tools as such can offer you insights, including time on page and bounce rate. 

Once you collect the behavioral data, you will come to know what your audience finds it difficult to understand, what they dislike, and how you can build a more enhanced website experience.

Also read; Digital Transformation: Your Guide to the Industry

Exceed your customers’ expectations

Exceeding your customers’ expectations is one of the surest ways to retain them. But you should be consistent here. If you can’t meet your customers’ expectations, you may end up losing them. Statistics suggest that after one negative experience, 51% of clients will stop doing business with that company.

Moreover, studies have found out that customers in America tell an average of 15 people about a bad customer service experience, and they tell 11 people about a good experience. 

One way to exceed your customers’ expectations is by personalizing the experience, as in the end, customers make that one purchase as they can relate to some aspects of your brand.

Since no customer is the same, you need to personalize the customer experience by studying their needs and goals. When you build an emotional connection with your customer by communicating with them, you will be able to exceed their expectations consistently.

Another great strategy is to follow up with your customers post-sale. Stay in touch with your customer persistently even after he/she had completed a purchase.

For instance, you can add info on upcoming promotions or offers and send weekly or bi-weekly newsletters. You can also surprise them on their birthday or anniversary with a personalized greeting, perhaps, along with a cake. It will turn a satisfied customer into a happy one. And happy customers are more likely to remain loyal to your brand.

Communicate on a regular basis with your customers

By communicating regularly with your customers, you are showing that you value them. One way to communicate is to provide well-timed updates and progress reports. 

You can also ask for performance feedback through surveys or phone calls. Your customer will feel valued when you ask for their opinion. Don’t forget to implement their suggestions and revise them as required. 

Furthermore, you can recommend new offerings, upgrades, and product or service improvements that will create a better customer experience. Plus, make it a note to say “Thank You” regularly.

Reward your VIP customers

If you are using CRM software, the data collected there can let you know which of your accounts are making you the most profit. These are your VIP customers which you want to retain.

When you know who brings you the most revenue, you will be able to allocate your time and resources more efficiently and increase your cross-selling or upselling odds.

If you have some incentives to give away, utilize them to reward your VIPs. It will increase their loyalty. Also remember that customized thank you cards are a thoughtful and inexpensive way to show your customers that you appreciate their business.

Offer fast delivery and easy returns

If you are an e-commerce business, delivery and returns are two of the main consumer concerns. The way you manage the last leg of the delivery process will give you a competitive edge and help you to retain customers.

There will be cases when consumers want to return and replace the product. If you can simplify that process, it will ease your customers’ worries and also encourage them to return to your online store.

Adopting digital transformation

Why digital transformation? One of the main benefits of digital transformation is that it enhances the customer experience. As people become more and more tech-savvy, customers’ demand for multiple touchpoints is growing. Mobile apps, live chat, social media, you name it, and customers want them all as they can improve customer experiences.

Digital transformation also offers the customers manifold options and choices for the products or services they desire to buy. 

And in order for a business to sustain and grow, it needs to identify different groups of buyers and their journeys, educate the customers, get back to them, and follow up. This process allows the businesses to discover the right value to offer the buyers. 

Also, when businesses use tools such as CRM software, CMS, automation, and analytics tools, they are able to deliver a better experience.

Reward your loyal advocates

Customers often take the extra step to recommend your product or service to people in their circle. If your customer is doing that, let them know that you notice and appreciate it.

At the least, say thanks. It reveals that you’re paying attention, and you value their free endorsement.

You can also reward your brand advocates with a referral program. For instance, you can offer your customers a $200 Amazon gift card when they refer a person who turns into a customer.

Also check: StuDocu

Wrapping Up

Retaining customers is not easy with the cutthroat competition out there in every industry. However, by following the strategies mentioned in this article, you will be able to form a long-lasting, emotional bond with your customers and retain them.  

Start by understanding your customers, communicate with them regularly, reward your VIP customers, offer fast delivery and easy returns, adopt digital transformation and reward your loyal advocates.

The post Customer Experience: The Key To Customer Retention appeared first on Botsify.