HOW TO EXCEED CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS IN 2019
TRENDS FOR 2019: CX IS KEY
HOW TO EXCEED CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS AND ENHANCE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN 2019?
You don’t need to be a fortune teller to predict that improving the overall customer experience will be a top priority for any business (also) in 2019. Why? Because a happy customer is a loyal customer, who is likely to refer your products and services to their friends and family. That’s good news, since customer recommendations are more reliable than your marketing channels. Moreover, a positive customer experience ensures brand loyalty and increases brand awareness - and ultimately enables sustained growth for your business.
But how to exceed customer expectations in 2019?
1. PLACE PURPOSE AT THE HEART OF YOUR BUSINESS
Especially young consumers are highly conscious and expect the brands they support to take responsibility by taking part in delivering social and environmental value along achieving business goals. Consumers are more keen to support brands who connect their business to a bigger purpose and create a narrative that is easy to identify with. The best brands are the ones that resonate meaningfully. Read more about corporate social responsibility and purpose-driven marketing here.
2. CREATE A CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO REMEMBER
Customers can no longer be won over with price or product, unless we’re talking about a basic commodity such as toilet paper. Instead, loyalty is achieved by delivering excellent customer experience (CX). If you’re not the one to provide that, your competitors will. Developing customer experience encompasses the entire company, but building sterling customer journeys and ensuring extraordinary customer experiences primarily belong to the marketing territory.
Ditching old silo mentality is more imperative than ever when focusing on delivering seamless customer experiences. Silos can inhibit CX success greatly because customers don’t see your company as divided departments and understand the way they work (or don’t work) together. Customers only care about their own fluid experience when doing business with you. To sum up, investing in enhancing customer service and CX is not an option any more, it’s a matter of life and death (of your brand, that is).
3. PERSONALIZE TO THE MAX
Let’s get personal. Today, customers expect a personalized experience and information that is served for them rigorously, at the exact time they need or want it. Using data to analyse behaviour and buying patterns of customers helps you to provide customized experiences. Your competitors are onto segmenting, creating customer personas and personalized targeting - and so should you. To do that, getting familiar with marketing automation is essential. Both customer identification and nurturing customers with highly personalized content are enabled by marketing automation. Knowing your customers is everything.
4. ENABLE EXTRAORDINARY SELF-SERVICE
Customers expect to be able to self-serve. They want answers to their questions right away and solutions to their problems like yesterday. To dazzle you with facts, 60 % of today’s B2B buyers primarily do not want to talk to a sales representative and 68 % preferably hunt information on their own. Hence, over 60 % of the B2B purchase process is run without contacting the seller. Buying is becoming a self-service.
Whereas the older generation was ready to pick up the phone and dial a number, young consumers want to find solutions themselves. Marketing processes need to be adapted to the changing customer expectations. Customers expect accessible, global, flawless and timely information, as well as smooth user interfaces and personalised service that is accessible 24/7. Sounds rough, but chatbots are there to help you. By introducing a chatbot to your platforms, you’ll be able to interact with customers with more ease. Great customer service of today is providing the help your customer wants, whenever they want it.
5. OMNICHANNEL (READ: PRESENT A UNITED FRONT)
Omnichannel experience means a multi-channel approach to sales, marketing and customer service. The aim is to create a coherent customer experience regardless of how and where the customer decides to reach out to your company. The key is to be available whenever and wherever the customer sees fit; they might want to reach out to you for example via a contact form on your website, a chat, social media platforms, e-mail or by phone. All of these options should be available. For marketing, omnichannel means maintaining a unified approach in design, strategy and customer experience. Terminology aside, the truth is, the customer expects a seamless experience when doing business with you - no matter how and when they choose to communicate with your company.
6. DON’T EVEN THINK YOU’RE DONE WITH MOBILE DEVELOPMENT
These days, apps are used to do pretty much everything and anything - for example reading, shopping, learning and communicating. No matter what you’re selling or doing online, developing the mobile experience is more than essential. What it means is that maintaining a responsive website is a must and that the user experience needs to be smooth and fluent.
Mobile is so huge, that last year approximately 52 % of all web traffic globally was produced via mobile phones. And the number is growing. Finding a way into your customer’s mobile device is increasingly important, and once you’ve done that, improving the experience is an ongoing process.
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