What are the fastest ways to improve Customer Experience?

Customers are one of the most important assets of any business, which is why keeping them happy should be a priority. The best way to keep track of this is using Customer Experience (CX), which measures how people perceive your brand and how they feel when interacting with it.

Global spending on Customer Experience is estimated to reach $640 billion in 2022, which goes to show how important it is for businesses to pay attention. And don’t worry, it isn’t a waste of time or money because research shows that 90% of buyers are prepared to pay more than ever for a better customer experience. 

The problem is that Customer Experience is constantly evolving and it can be difficult to know how to improve it for your customers. If you’re wanting to optimise your processes to suit their needs, you probably need to do it quickly and efficiently so that’s why we’ve collated some of the most effective ideas to help you get started. 

Personalise your communication with customers

Customers have increasingly high expectations for businesses, including for their communication. It’s important to ensure your communication is personal, empathetic and helpful to each customer. In fact, 33% of customers say they will abandon a brand if they feel the experience isn’t personalised enough. So how can you ensure your communication is effective? 

How to improve communication with customers:

1. Firstly, you can use personalisation so that each customer receives messaging targeted to them specifically. That means you can include their name, company name or other details to make them feel valued and heard.
2. Secondly, you can use automation and chatbots to ensure your responses are fast and consistent. This reduces frustrating delays and irregularities across different channels that could upset customers. 

Improve your website 

A common turn-off for customers is when a brand’s website is poorly designed, glitchy or confusing. That’s why investing in your website can dramatically improve your customer’s experience and keep them engaged for longer. Your website should be easy to navigate, informative, and appealing because that way, your customers are more likely to continue interacting with it. If you think your website is a sticking point for customers, it’s worth tracking the bounce rate and session time to see where exactly they are coming up against problems as well as asking them directly with surveys.

Streamline everything 

Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and other integrated tools allows you to keep everything organised and consistent. If everything is in sync and in the same place, it’s much easier to provide customers with a personalised and tailored experience. Integrating customer feedback with your CRM means you can map each customer’s journey and track their Customer Experience as you go. For example, Review Tui and Hubspot integrate to make receiving, reviewing and acting on feedback as seamless as possible. 

Add value to the customer journey

Customers can leave a brand and find an alternative easily, so it’s important to ensure you are providing yours with a compelling reason to stay. You can do this by including some kind of benefit in the customer journey, such as helpful guides, personal consultations or a chance to win a giveaway. In doing this, you can create an enticing point of difference from your competitors and build rapport with your loyal customers.

Listen to your customers 

Getting information directly from your customers is crucial because it is relevant, actionable and accurate. Without listening to what your customers have to say, how can you really know what their experience is, or what they want? 

How to get useful customer feedback: 

• Ask open-ended questions.
• Surveys should be brief and to the point.
• Use consistent scales for different questions (e.g. 1-5 or 1-10).
• Don't make assumptions.
• Don't ask leading questions, let them give you accurate answers.
• Be prepared to listen and take relevant actions. 

Implement quantifiable metrics to track CX

Once you decide to improve your Customer Experience, it’s important to have a way to track whether or not your methods work. That’s where metrics come in. Having a quantifiable metric to measure Customer Experience over time allows you to see what works and what doesn’t. 

Metrics for Customer Experience include:

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is useful for tracking how satisfied customers are at any given point in the buyer’s journey. You can use a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 and ask why they scored the way they did.

Customer Effort Scores (CES) assess how easy it is for customers to interact with a brand. Using a scale of 1-5 or 1-10, you can see which processes work smoothly and where customers are encountering frustrations. 

Net Promoter Scores (NPS) ask how likely a customer is to recommend a brand to someone else on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10. These are popular but tend to be vague and difficult to act on. 

Reporting and analytics 

Using automated reporting and analytics, you can extract useful insights from your customer feedback so that you can improve your Customer Experience. When you can see the trends and commonalities between your customers, it’s much easier to refine your business to suit them better. A platform like Review Tui will help you to track and analyse these patterns easily so that you can quickly act on them. 

Implementing a customer feedback strategy

Asking customers for their input is a smart business move because it saves time and resources and eliminates the need for guesswork. In fact, feedback gives you all the information you need to make the most effective improvements to your Customer Experience. To get started with a customer feedback strategy, you can sign up to the Review Tui platform for updates and free access or download our guide with all the tips and tricks you need.