As a business owner, you must ponder the secret to your customer satisfaction- in case you don’t have it, try making it a priority. Why? Because customers are the lifeline of every organization. Over the past years, customer service trends have been dramatically evolved. Hence, different companies are using varying strategies to satisfy their increasingly demanding consumers. If you are already not improving your customer service strategies to rise above the competition, then it’s high time you start focusing on making your customer experience better.
While customer acquisition is one effective way to form a business’ foundation, customer retention still remain another important factor in determining the growth of business in the competitive market. Customer satisfaction, therefore, plays a vital role in achieving your ultimate business goal and consequently generates revenue like never before.
As your customers are the biggest assets of your business, make sure you invest time in devising the most effective strategies that will ensure customer satisfaction, leading to their retention. Although there is no definite formula to increase customer satisfaction, here are some tactics that can work for every business.
1. Have a clear understanding of your customers
The simplest and most effective strategy to improve your customer satisfaction is to know who your customers are. Well, that goes beyond knowing their names, locations, and ages. When you move the mountains to find out their interests and tastes, it paves the way for your business to provide them with the right services. Once you are well aware of your customers’ needs and wants, plenty of opportunities will eventually open up. For instance, if you are using an outdated or wrong strategy, you can revise your business strategy according to their needs. In turn, your customers will have a positive buying experience.
An insight into the right information from the customers is a surefire way to exceed their expectations. In order to get their data, make sure you are looking at the right places- customer profiles, web analytics and behavioral data can help obtain the right information.
2. Treat the customers right
As a business owner, you must ensure your customer service representative is conveying the right information to the customers. Let your representatives know they are responsible for satisfying the queries of every customer. Additionally, they have to stay cheerful, use positive language, and handle varying situations with patience no matter what happens. Lastly, they have to confirm if a customer is satisfied or not before ending a conversation.
3. Focus on creating an emotional connection with the customers
There is a good chance you have heard the phrase “It’s not what you say; It’s how you say it”? Well, creating an emotional connection with your customers is arguably the major contributor to customer retention. Here we are using Zappos (an online clothing and shoe retailer) example on creating an emotional connection to help you see how it’s done. Their customer couldn’t manage to return a pair of shoes on time as her mother passed away. As it came to Zappos’ knowledge, they took charge of managing the return shipping by sending their courier to pick up the item, that too without charging the customer a dime. But, it didn’t end there. The customer was sent a bouquet of flowers along with a note containing a condolence message. That is undoubtedly a great strategy to show your consumers you really care about them.
The primary reason we mentioned this example is to make you focus on the need for creating emotions. Since they play a vital role in driving the customers’ decisions.
4. Watch what customer say about your brand on social media
With the increase in the use of social media, people prefer to turn to social media to leave a complaint regarding your products/services. So, it is crucial to take the opportunity to improve customer satisfaction. Now you may be wondering how? When you take some time to track and monitor your customer feedback on social media, you can find the positive and negative feedback of customers. You can use their negative feedback to take appropriate measures to resolve the addressed issues.
Here are some effective ways to use social media in order to improve customer satisfaction:
- Focus on staying active on social media and respond to customers’ queries within 24 hours.
- Holding live chats and Q&A sessions are a great way to satisfy the queries of customers
- Try monitoring your brand mentions.
5. Provide appropriate knowledge and advice to customers
In this competitive world, customer service is no longer just about being responsive. You have to offer customers appropriate knowledge related to your brand. Sharing beneficial knowledge and advice on social media channels is a great way to help your customers. Moreover, you should consider posting educational posts and tips on your website to improve your customer satisfaction and increase sales performance.
