Everyone knows that giving the customer a great experience builds trust, ensures long- term retention, and promotes brand loyalty. However, many companies do not give customer experience the importance it deserves, especially when it comes to the online or self-service experience. The online customer service experience should not be the place where a business can make shortcuts and cut costs. The online customer experience is critical to the growth of a business and ignoring it could have damaging long lasting effects.
In recent studies, research has shown that even during times of economic stagnation, customers are willing to spend more if they are getting a better customer service experience.
To help your company provide the best online experience possible, make sure you are not making these mistakes!
1) Not Having a Social Media Presence
With a billion active users just on Facebook, your company shouldn’t have to think twice about having on online presence on a dominant social networking site. But just taking a few minutes to throw together a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account just to keep up with the times isn’t enough.
In early 2012, Gartner advised clients that the emerging need to support customers on the Internet and social media, as well as on mobile devices, was having a profound impact on future planning.
A good social networking presence will interact with customers, grabbing their attention, making them interested in coming back to your page. Social networking is also a great way to measure how others are spreading the word about your company. Measuring metrics such as “Likes” or “Virality” and “who is talking about this” are great ways to gauge customer engagement and will also generate value to your page!
2) Having a Confusing Navigation process
If your customer is bombarded with information when simply opening the front page of your website, or can’t find what they are looking for with just two or three clicks, you might have already lost a customer. As well, many companies have incomplete or misleading product information, which only contributes to an unprofessional online impression, leading to greater distrust in the customer. While this might appear as a terrible, the cause might simply be forgetting to update product information and not taking the time to make the page look updated and refreshed.
Great customer experiences carefully plan their navigational structure by minimizing clutter and constructing a visual hierarchy; they will minimize steps for finding help or product information and make it easy to order online. Good online self- serve experiences make sure their site is secure and use only the highest quality images and font types and provide the most detailed and well-written information on their products as possible.
3) Ensure Your Employees are Happy
Your employees drive your customer experience. If they are unhappy or not satisfied with their jobs, their attitude will be conveyed in the experience of your customers. This is the case for an online customer experience as much as it is the case for a physical customer service center. Joanne Galimi, Garner analyst, writes: “Low staff morale and high turnover not only impede successful system implementations but could cause delays and raise costs as a result.”
It is crucial to hire the right person who is passionate about customer service not just someone with the right resume or skillset.
There are many more ways to ruin an online customer experience, but companies who make these mistakes are bound to lose clients. These problems can be easily remedied by keeping your online presence polished and up to date, which will have your customers coming back to you for years to come!
