How To Create Better Customer Experience Through Technology

Featured article by Ethel Graves 

Customer experience plays a pivotal role in the success of your business and brand. The more customers positively relate with you, the more sales you may enjoy because they continue to repeatedly engage and avail of your products and services. On the other hand, if clients regularly have bad experiences with your brand, you risk losing them to your competitors and enduring a tainted public reputation.

Whether you find that your patrons enjoy your business or not, there’s always room in improving the customer experience you deliver. The following indicates the steps you need to take to create better client experiences. Continue reading to learn more.

Research About Your Customers

To create a better customer experience, researching your customers is important so that you get to know them beyond their buying power. You can only provide experiences they enjoy after you know what they enjoy.

For example, if your business caters to events, you’ll have different customers interested in your various products. You have those interested in the children’s party package, while others require wedding anniversary packages. 

Conduct online research to figure out the different customers’ motivations behind their events, the keywords you can use when discussing with them which will encourage them to engage your products, and the specific types of products that most of the customers in the market prefer. You’re then in a position to tailor-make your products according to customer preference, thereby creating a better client experience with the help of technology.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is essential to create a better customer experience. Without knowing the feedback your target market has regarding their experience, you can’t improve based on what you may perceive as the service provider. Depending on your line of business, the different methods you can use to get quality feedback include;

Data analytics

Numbers are one way of analyzing customer feedback. Data analytics show you what customers are experiencing from a quantitative point of view. Low sales may be a pointer to how customers aren’t experiencing the best products or services, although other factors have to be considered. Once you have some quantitative feedback, you can look into the qualitative aspect for a holistic point of view.  

Feedback Sheets

You can place feedback sheets in different corners of your physical store if your business is set up. Marking these corners as feedback booths may encourage the shop’s customers to outline their experiences, having asked them to express their experiences with your services and products.

Online Questionnaires

In most cases, customers might not have the time required to fill in feedback sheets while in your shop. You can consider digitalizing the sheets by sending online questionnaires to your customers. This means you need to create a database with your customers’ emails, wherein, in their spare time, they can provide feedback for you to improve the customer experience.

One-One-One Conversations

You can train your staff to hold natural conversations with customers as they engage your products or services. 

For instance, suppose your business is a restaurant. In that case, your waiters can approach the guests and authentically ask about their dining experience, rather than asking in a way that gets an expected nod of satisfaction. 

You can train your staff about the specific products on the menu, and for example, when they engage guests, they ask questions aligned specifically to the food they will be eating. That’s the only way to effectively improve customer experience if you have quality information from the customers.

Competitor Analysis

Operating in a vacuum risks complacency or an inability to objectively analyze how your customers’ experiences need to be improved. You may think that you’re providing the best services and products if you don’t have any other type of product or service to measure it against.

Competitor analysis means physically experiencing your competitors’ products and services as a customer. The experience you have with your competitors’ businesses may give insight into how you can improve your own customers’ experience.

Going back to the example of the restaurant, consider dining at your competitor’s restaurant. Mindfully experience the productivity dynamics of food, the service, the ambiance, and general guest service. On another day, objectively experience your restaurant as a customer and compare the two. You may be able to see how you can improve your customers’ experience by having gathered data objectively.

Staff Observation

If your business runs on an on-the-ground staff, they can observe and hear the interactions among customers as they engage your business. The team might not be able to implement any immediate change at the specific moment that they may have overheard, for example, if the customer complains about product packaging. Rather than keeping quiet about it, they can approach management and discuss recurring customer conversations.

Conclusion

Improving customer experience should be an ongoing process in your business. You have to research your customers to tailor-make your products and services for the best possible experience. Customer feedback is pivotal as they give you pointers on how you can create a better customer experience. Competitor analysis helps you have a first-hand comparison of how your customers experience your business compared to others. Staff observations regarding customers help you to become aware of the on-the-ground conversations you might not be knowledgeable of.

Author Bio

Ethel Graves is a customer service manager. She conducts seminars and writes blogs on how to provide outstanding customer service for companies striving to improve client relationships. Ethel also enjoys doing yoga and hiking in her free time.