Customer Zen: The Ultimate Customer Service Experience

Is improving customer service part of your company’s 2021 goals?

It should be, and for good reason! Good customer service is proven to increase revenue. In fact, 84% of organizations working to improve customer service report an increase in revenue. But how does your company plan on improving customer service? Is it enough to have great customer service representatives?

"Having solid customer service talent on staff is vital to a good business, there is no doubt about that. However important, they are just a small part of the customer journey that impacts overall satisfaction." -Eleni Achrazoglou, Project Manager, Global Reach Internet Productions

The Nature of Customer Service

By its nature, customer service is reactive. That is, it is initiated by the customer when a problem occurs; it is an event-based interaction meant to get a client back on track. If you sit down and talk with a customer service agent, you’ll quickly learn that happy customers don’t often reach out to tell them what went right. On the flip side, unhappy customers don’t always ask for help either. In many cases, a frustrated customer will simply abandon your company and go to a competitor instead of turning to a company's customer service for help.

"If we don't take care of our customers, someone else will." - Edgar Mitchell, United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, and NASA astronaut

If the customer experiences an issue and reaches out to your amazing customer service representatives, it is entirely possible that they will walk away with a good impression of the individual representative, but a bad taste in their mouth about your organization as a whole. That certainly isn’t going to give you a competitive advantage, so what will?

In an increasingly digital world, a customer often prefers to complete their entire journey without directly interacting with anyone from your company. In 2021 and beyond, it is time to focus on the holistic customer experience. You need to make sure your company gives your customers the tools and technology to have a great experience before they even contact you.

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Customer Experience – the next frontier of Customer Service

To put it simply, customer experience is what a customer sees and feels every single time they interact with a business. It is the sum of all the highs and lows of the entire experience. There are dozens of interactions in a customer’s journey. From the first time they Google search to find you, to completing a transaction, to ongoing support, these are all touchpoints that influence a person’s perception of your company. Focusing on how to maximize customer experience during each one of these interactions, rather than relying on just customer service, is the proactive approach to improving overall customer satisfaction.

Think about a company that you enjoy interacting with. Is it because of their amazing return policy like Nordstrom or Zappos? Did the free samples at Costco really pull at your heartstrings? Perhaps Squatty Potty’s impeccable sense of humor convinced you to buy a product that you never knew you needed. Maybe you like fun, interactive experiences like the one recently posted to Facebook by Outdoor Joe's.

Think about the last time a company provided an experience that you honestly, genuinely enjoyed. These are all examples of companies that have crafted memorable customer experiences designed to motivate and delight the customer.

Does your company have what it takes to elevate its customer experience?

Luckily, technology is a great enabler for customer experience! If you and your customers have access to the internet, there are a multitude of ways to up your game and stand out from the crowd. You have the tools to humanize the customer journey, whether there is a need for human interaction or not. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about the perception of the person on the other end of your company’s experience. Go through all the actions a normal customer would and think about how each would inspire, satisfy, or even confuse or annoy you. Here are just a few examples of things to pay attention to:

• Do you have negative reviews that you haven’t responded to? That will be one of the very first things an informed customer pays attention to.

  • Also, great reviews make for amazing User Generated Content (UGC) for social media and ads. Posts with UGC generate up to 690% higher engagement and 4.5x higher conversion than ads. In fact, 81% of Instagram users say that UGC has informed their buying decisions!

• Does the customer receive a nice and informative automated message when they fill out the Contact Us form on your site?

  • Better yet, are they redirected to a "Thank You" landing page? This is a great way to track conversion!

• Does your site have enough information on it to entertain or inform a customer to the point that they will complete a call-to-action?

  • Really put yourself in their shoes and think about this one. Good, strategic calls-to-action can mean the difference between converting a prospect into a client and becoming a side road in their customer journey!

• Is your website easy to use on a mobile device?

  • Remember that over half of all internet traffic is done on mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, most users will not want to stay there for long.

Finally, after completing a transaction, does the customer receive any sort of follow-up from your company? If so, what kind of impression does that follow-up leave? Consider not the Golden Rule ("Treat others as you would like to be treated"), consider The Platinum Rule.

"Treat others how they would like to be treated." - Dave Kerpen, Author of the book The Art of People

How Global Reach can Help You Help Your Customers

Global Reach’s web development, digital marketing, IT support, and graphic design teams are here to help you maximize your customers’ experiences. Whether you want to redesign your whole website or just bounce some ideas off of us, we can help you optimize every single step of your customer’s digital journey.

Contact Global Reach for a Free Customer Consultation