It won’t be long before that familiar chill fills the air, and we all get out our cold weather gear.Fall is a beautiful time of year; a temporary reprieve from the intense summer heat, but a pause before the winter frost sets in.
It’s also a good time to reflect on some of our critical relationships and business practices, as we close another quarter. Are you certain that your customer relationship strategy is working to keep customers engaged?
In order to prevent you from letting your customer relationships turn as cold as the weather, we’ve compiled 5 tips to keep your online experiences positive. Here are 5 CX items to avoid in order to keep those relationships working most effectively.
1. Do Not Forget about Getting Social
One of the first ways you can turn customer relationships cold is by forgetting a critical social media presence. Customers want to know as much about you and your brand as possible, and so it is imperative that you have a strong social media presence, which is frequently updated and enhanced in order to keep people aware of any progress, changes or achievements you’ve had recently. Focus on developing a particular social media CRM platform for your customer engagement. Use the one where your customers are most active. Once you’ve set up your CRM hub, ensure that you’re ready to actively engage with customers and manage their concerns.
Gartner Analysts add: “Digital technology and digital marketing can do much more than provide new means to target, engage and transact between customers, products and companies. Digital technology has the potential to shape behavior and experience in real time.”
2. Always Remeber Employee Training & Engagement
Let’s face it, if your employees are disgruntled or unskilled, your customer engagement is going to be pretty dismal. Even the most eager employee will soon lose their zest for the business without training opportunities and a good work environment. Investing in your employees will result in critical boosts to customer relationships. A recent report indicates that social media is quickly outgrowing the skills of sales, marketing and customer service teams. This means that it is imperative that you turn your employees into brand advocates with evolving skill sets and abilities.
3. Build Customer Experience into your Brand
One of the worst mistakes a business can make today is not engaging with customer experience as part of both internal and external messaging. Don’t forget to set a high standard for your business through explicit declaration of your specific customer experience policy. Make it a companywide priority, but articulate this in the form of a customer-experience-based branding.
4. Don’t Overload your Customer With More Information Than They Need
One of the traps we always seem to fall into is the “more is better,” belief around data collection. While it may be instinctive to give our customers as much information as possible, a far smarter approach is to limit the amount of data that you present to customers, to ease in navigation. Remember you can overwhelm your customers.
5. Don’t Forget that Customer Experience is an Executive Responsibility
One of the most important oversights we can make is a lack of engagement at the executive level. A commitment from the CEO and upper management to customer engagement must be more than lip service. Elevating customer service from a low level responsibility to one that is exampled by the leadership in your organization will give it new priority. Leadership can establish an appropriate operating model which includes facetime with upper management. This will help facilitate a cultural change which will help to prioritize CX.
Gartner Analysts give us insight into the depth of CX: “An effective customer experience requires a broader approach to encompass being easy to do business with. This involves much more than concentrating on the user interface or execution of operational processes.”
In today’s markets, customer experience means more than good customer service. The result of excellent CX is improved revenue and profitability, and an enhanced bottom-line and strong brand value. The fall may be quickly coming and the air getting cooler, but your customer experience doesn’t need to feel the chill.
