Creating a meaningful customer experience is a crucial factor in building a satisfied customer base. Customers that have a positive experience with organizations from start to finish will be more likely to remain loyal, long-term customers.
The Value of Real-Time Feedback from Customers
Knowing exactly what your customers are thinking or feeling at any given moment is important because it allows organizations to respond as quickly and efficiently as possible. To accomplish this, it’s imperative to put in place an automated system that works alongside the customer throughout their entire experience.
An automated customer service system can increase responsiveness on a level that isn’t entirely possible with human employees. Automation provides a preemptive system of support through FAQs and the ability to extensively monitor a customer’s app and website activity. Automation provides a fast, reliable and personalized service that’s always on.
Everything from behavior-based email to localization could be part of your automation system that can incorporate real-time feedback from your customers. It’s important that an automated system is invisible enough not to overwhelm a customer, but remains present throughout the process to continually guide a customer.
Encouraging One-on-One Communications
Real-time feedback begins with precise data collection. Mapping each customer’s journey from start to finish will enable you to provide the best service while keeping customers happy. The following are examples of how to use one-on-one communication systems to better understand and follow your customers.
- Emails – Automated emails should be based on a customer’s recent shopping or browsing habits. The actual email needs to have something that directly relates to that particular customer.
- Mobile Apps – Not every customer uses the same apps or uses them in the same way. To promote one-on-one communications on apps you’ll want to be able to use a customer’s previous purchases to recommend new products. You’ll also want to provide links for automatic feedback.
- Bots – Chatbots can provide a personal touch for each of your customers. Interaction with bots should be based on questions that each customer has previously asked. Chatbots can be better at crafting content if they have access to customer-centered data.
- Social Media – You should be monitoring various social media sites for a number of mentions, keywords, and branded hashtags. You should also consider expanding your social media presence with a messaging platform such as Intercom. Intercom will allow you to track and organize a variety of customer data.
Providing a Customized Experience
Each customer who visits your website is an individual with unique needs and tastes. According to Forbes, personalizing a customer’s experience leads to increased revenue, fewer returns and even increases in impulse purchasing. Before you can personalize or customize, it’s necessary to take the time to get to know your customers through data. There are two specific systems that can help you customize an individual’s shopping experience by expertly using data.
- A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a system that creates a database with information about the behavior and long-term habits of your customers.
- A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system keeps track of all your customers, their previous purchases and any customer service issues they may have had in the past.
CDPs provide a deep analysis of customer behavior while CRMs focus on the actual sales process of customers and prospective customers. You’ll want to integrate both of these systems to provide a personalized experience from start to finish for each customer.
Stages of the Customer Journey that has the Most Impact
A customer’s journey is more complex than it used to be, is far from linear. The traditional funnel approach no longer applies as there are now several “touch points” in a customer’s journey.
Customer Think points out that it costs five times as much to bring in new customers than it does to keep existing customers. Businesses often focus on the top of the funnel and put much of their effort and marketing dollars into the selling process. Considering how much the process has changed and the expense of bringing in new customers, the latter part of the customer journey is likely where most businesses should focus.
It’s necessary to follow your customers throughout the entire buying process. Knowing and understanding your customers at each step is crucial. You can achieve this through real-time feedback and one-on-one communication. The next steps are to promote engagement with the brand while creating a customized experience. You can accomplish all this with the accurate use of data-driven digital marketing. What are you waiting for?
