As a small business owner, you should always work to provide your customers with a great experience. As part of this incredible experience, you must include excellent customer service.
Purchasing decisions are no longer based on traditional factors like price and quality. According to Salesforce, 80% of customers now point to customer experience as a critical differentiator when choosing one brand over another. 67% said their standard for a positive experience is higher than ever before.
Remember that most people are far more likely to recommend your business if they have a great experience.
Customer experience
Consumers interact with a business, from what they find online to doing business and the perception of that experience.
Customer experience is an ongoing relationship at every level and every touch point. A fantastic customer experience leads to the individuality of your business and customer loyalty.
Customer service
This can be best explained as providing assistance and advocacy for your services and products, from timely responses to positive and helpful interactions.
So customer experience is not customer service, nor is customer service customer experience. Customer service remains a component of the overall customer experience.
Why is customer experience necessary?
Good and bad customer experience impacts the most critical areas of your business: new sales, customer retention, lifetime value, brand loyalty and more.
95% of consumers will share a negative experience with a business. They may share it verbally with friends and family or take it to social media or review websites.
In a competitive market, customer experience allows you to create a clear differentiator. When the product or service is similar, the user experience and reputation can be the deciding factor for a purchase decision.
A bad customer experience
As mentioned, 95% of people will share a negative experience they have had.
Think about where along the buyer journey could, your potential customers have a bad experience. This can be as simple as not offering free delivery. Or it may be that your website does not work great on a mobile device.
A bad customer experience includes:
- Inaccurate or misleading marketing
- Difficulty when purchasing – too many steps or too much information needed.
- A dissatisfying product or service – it doesn’t do or work as expected.
- Zero or poor customer support – impossible to get in touch with the business.
- Inability to provide feedback – no way to message or call directly
How easy is it to buy from your business?
You can measure customer experience.
Income growth – Is your revenue headed in a positive direction?
Customer burn – Are you losing customers?
Ask for feedback – This is simple, how was your experience?
AI can help
Many websites have a chatbot providing artificially intelligent responses, but this mustn’t replace human interaction.
Most people are still looking for a live human being to chat with via a call or a chat service.
Will you be improving your customer experiences in the future
You must do what makes sense for your business and your customers. Will customer experience help you to stand out from the completion and create raving fans for your business?
At My Sassy Business, we can help to ensure that your business is marketed in a way that drives people to your business and your customer experience.
Contact Kelly @ My Sassy Business.
