7 Tips to Create a More Positive Customer Experience

Fortunately, there are a few tips and tricks that can help, regardless of your industry or customer demands. To get you started, we’ve put together our top recommendations to create a more positive customer experience.

1. Understand your target audience

Before even looking at strategy, you need to know who your audience is. Identify general characteristics such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Budget

Don’t get specific, as this can create an experience that’s too closely focused on one area of your demographic. Stay broad, but know the sort of audience you can expect.

Once you know who you’ll be interacting with, you can create a more tailored experience. For example, if you know you have a much older audience, then you also know you need a website that’s simple to navigate, along with well-lit stores that are easy to maneuver. If you have a younger audience, snazzy websites, social media and trends will be more important to your company.

2. Implement proper training for your service staff

Although your customer experience strategy shouldn’t only focus on staff working directly with customers, it’s undoubtedly an important aspect. After finding the right talent, you need to have set programs in place to provide proper training. Even the best of hires won’t perform well without guidance.

Ensure your team knows all of your best practice rules and how to communicate with customers. They should also be clued up on everything a customer may ask them about, including:

• Information about your products/services
• Your company ethics and values
• How to do certain processes (e.g. return an item or receive a refund)
• How to find out any information they can’t answer themselves

When a customer speaks to a knowledgeable employee, it can make the world of difference in how they view your business.

3. Make the purchase process simple

Over 80% of customers abandon purchases after adding them to their cart. To reduce obstacles in their way, be sure to make the purchase process simple.

For ecommerce sites, create checkout pages that are intuitive and easy to navigate. Don’t ask for personal information that you don’t need, and give your customers plenty of options for how to pay. For in-store purchases, take credit card payments and use a reliable payment provider that suits your business and client needs.

4. Hire enough staff

Hiring enough staff sounds simple, but it’s one of the biggest causes of complaints across businesses. From restaurants to travel agents, you need enough staff to avoid long wait times. This doesn’t just mean the right number of people for every shift, but also backup staff for when others are ill or on holiday. Being able to find last-minute cover is essential.

If you don’t have the capacity to hire a whole troop, be sure to work with an agency. They can help you find temporary workers when your permanent staff are away, filling the gaps so that your customers aren’t let down.

5. Consistently get customer feedback

Customer feedback is something you should always be encouraging. It’s the best way to learn more about what your audience wants, the areas of your business that are ticking those boxes and the areas that need to be improved. You can encourage feedback in a number of ways, including:

• Offering discounts
• Holding competitions with an entry requirement of giving feedback
• Creating exclusive groups of opt-in customers to conduct surveys
• Reaching out personally for feedback

It’s important that you don’t just do this with existing customers but those who bounce, too. If a client hasn’t visited your website or shop in a while, reach out to them with a survey to learn more about why. Explain that you value their opinion and need it to improve your experience.

Once you’ve received feedback, don’t just read it and forget about it: take action. If a customer has a complaint, explore what you can do to prevent the same complaint in the future.

6. Address issues immediately

Customers hate to be kept waiting, especially when there’s a problem. Whether it’s delayed shipping, an out-of-stock product or an issue with a staff member, be sure to address it quickly and efficiently.

The aim here is to go to them rather than wait for them to come to you with a complaint. Send them an email or give them a call as soon as you can, keeping them up to date with what’s going on.

Customers know that no business is perfect all the time, but they’ll think it’s far less of a problem if you let them know as soon as possible. You should also be able to avoid negative reviews with this tactic. However, be warned that if you’re consistently having shipping problems or staff issues, no matter how early you notify customers, they’ll quickly become annoyed.

7. Don’t forget the bigger picture

Creating positive customer experiences is about more than just the shopping and purchasing processes. It’s about the consumer’s entire view of your company. From the moment they make contact with you, be it by reading your metadata or seeing your window display, you need to be showing them the right image.

The same applies once they’ve made a purchase. Don’t forget about your customers once they’ve converted. To keep improving their impression of your business, you can:

• Hand out loyalty cards
• Send them discounts on birthdays/Christmas
• Invite them to exclusive member groups for discounts and early news
• Send personalized thank you cards or emails after a purchase

Remember that it’s far cheaper to keep a customer than it’s to acquire a new one, and these gestures can go a long way in terms of loyalty.

Final thoughts

Managing your customer experience is definitely a long-term project and one that should never stop. It isn’t always easy either, but the benefits to your business make it well worth it. Hopefully, these tips help you get started, creating more positive experiences for everyone who finds your brand.