How to improve Customer Experience

If you’ve read previous entries of this blog, you already know the importance of exceptional Customer Experience and its impact on business growth. But reaching Next-Gen Customer Experience is not an easy job! This guide reveals what to do to improve customer experience.

It’s all about the people

No matter what the tech companies say about chatbots and AI, you still have to have the right people! No software will help customers as much as talking to a real human will. So, to improve customer experience, you need to have a dedicated team of Customer Experience Representatives (CXRs) who will always be there to take proper care of your customers.

This team of skillful, knowledgeable, resourceful, creative, educated, well-trained, and helpful people will be accessible whenever your potential or existing customers need them. They’ll listen to your customers, understand their questions, and keep them happy. Your team needs to prioritize learning everything about your business, its products, competition, strengths, and weaknesses, and knowing how to provide solutions best to help your business grow and improve customer experience.

[Business Process Outsourcing: examples ]

Get there on time

Customers hate being on hold, no matter how nice the music is. 
A report by TalkTo shows that customers spend, on average, 43 days of their lifetime being on hold, which is equivalent to 13 hours per year. That is 43 days (and nights!) that one can spend doing something – less frustrating.

Reduce call wait times and improve the scheduling and coverage of your contact center – crucial on how to improve customer experience. Have flexible support personnel available during peak times. Add extra call queue settings like Queue Call Back, which provides callers with a call-back service as soon as possible. The queue to Voicemail, which allows callers to leave a message rather than wait in line, and Queue Size Limit, which sends callers directly to voicemail when the maximum queue limit has been reached. These changes can significantly improve customer experience by reducing frustration.

Your customers just want their questions answered or their issues resolved. Not in minutes, seconds. And at any time, day or night. So, no matter the time zone, business hours, or communications channels – You. Have. To. Be. There. This is crucial if you want to improve customer experience.

The Omnichannel experience

The omnichannel experience combines interactions from several channels into a single, seamless experience. As a result, if a customer abandons an item in their shopping cart on one platform, they will see an advertisement for the identical item on another. This ensures a personalized journey that helps improve customer experience, leading to higher conversion rates and more loyalty.

Furthermore, omnichannel support links to every customer service channel. As a result, data is centralized, and customer effort and time are reduced across all interactions. Customers can carry on a conversation with customer care from chat to email, an app to phone call, without having to describe their problem from the beginning.

That’s exactly what customers expect from brands—seamless communication and exceptional care. 

Delivering the omnichannel experience is challenging but essential if you want to improve customer experience and drive business growth. Make sure you put effort into everything you do.

Seven tips on how to improve the Omnichannel experience

1.     Mobile-Friendly

A mobile-friendly website ensures that users accessing your site from mobile devices have a positive interaction—this is critical for businesses aiming to improve customer experience. Aside from being informative, stable, and speedy, it is critical that your website be mobile-friendly, given that over 63% of Google queries are mobile-related.
There are two ways to optimize the website for mobile devices. The first is through a responsive web design, and the second is a “mobile-first” approach.

A responsive web design automatically resizes the elements in the website to make it look good on all devices. Mobile-first refers to initially developing a website for the more restricted mobile phone version and then expanding its functionality to build a tablet or desktop version.

While responsive website resizes – but keeps – all the content to make it physically possible to read, mobile-first websites have proactive changes in the overall design. Mobile-first design reduces bulky content and considers factors such as white space, font size, and load time, resulting in a better overall user experience.

When designing the mobile version of the website, avoid including too many animations and other elements, as these will make loading the page’s content more challenging. Remember that visitors will leave your website if pages don’t load quickly enough.

Thanks to a mobile-friendly website, anyone who attempts to access your website on a mobile device will have a positive experience, encouraging people to view you as a reliable source of information, goods, and services.

2.     Live chat support

Many of us fret about making phone calls and choose to message instead. At the same time, we seek immediate solutions. Live chat provides immediate solutions for customers who prefer messaging over phone calls. It’s an excellent tool to build rapport with customers and further improve customer experience.

In an ongoing chat, agents can evaluate the customer’s tone and create rapport by mimicking style or changing formality to match the customer’s. Aside from providing a more genuine method to demonstrate your agents’ personality, chat tools facilitate query resolution by allowing the agent to share a screen with the customer or provide links and screenshots.

Even if your customers don’t need to talk immediately, being ready to assist them creates trust – a step away on achieving how to improve customer experience.

Have a chat prepared with quick and instant replies, or for connecting with a CXR. Live chats are an excellent tool for immediate response and an appropriate bridge for linking with a CXR.

3.     Social support

According to Statista, the average daily social media usage of internet users globally was 147 minutes per day in 2022, with 86% of users following a brand on social media and 25.1% doing so to communicate with them, according to a report from Sprout Social. Social media is a powerful channel for communication and support that can significantly improve customer experience when used effectively.

Whether the experience was pleasant or negative, many customers use social media to share their thoughts and communicate with brands. Social media is a wealth of opportunity for developing a meaningful relationship with your target audience. 

Customers need to find you via social media. If you have the proper communication and support on social, it will massively add to your CX equation.

4.     Self-service solutions

While some customers may contact you for an immediate answer, some customers would rather self-serve to find a solution by reading a FAQ or watching a video. In fact, more than 60% of consumers prefer digital self-service over alternative service choices. The reality is that customer self-service, in actuality, serves a distinct need; it delivers faster fulfillment. 

Apart from contributing to improved customer experience, self-service reduces costs by allowing you to assist a huge number of consumers simultaneously. It also improves customer service by decreasing duplicate requests in your queue, making support work pleasurable, and contributing to more engaged and happier agents.

Bear in mind that not all self-service is effective at assisting consumers. Complicated technology and poorly configured chatbots that make it challenging to find a quick answer keep customers in endless loops can only add to customer frustration.

Self-service options like FAQs and video tutorials cater to customers who prefer solving issues independently while helping you improve customer experience by reducing wait times. Good self-service provides flexible automation features, FAQ knowledge base, video tutorials and product training, and chatbot escalation options. 

When effectively implemented, good self-service solutions increase business productivity while decreasing customer-service expenses.

5.  Email support:

Email support offers a formal way for customers to communicate while leaving a paper trail—another way to improve customer experience effectively.

Have an email dedicated to your customer’s queries, and check it frequently. Reply to their emails immediately, and provide solutions right into their mailboxes.

Email support is excellent for lengthy discussions and sending large files. It also comes in handy for boosting sales. The advantage of using mail is that it allows you to incorporate promotional materials and recommendations while replying to consumer inquiries. Email is an efficient, quick, low-cost communication and marketing tool that adds to the funnel.

6.     Phone & SMS support

Personalized phone support remains vital for resolving complex issues quickly and efficiently—an essential step to improve customer experience.

As the human voice has a significantly stronger influence on the brain than written text, phone support allows you to make a pleasant and lasting impression on customers. The phone is still the number one contact method when customer experience complicated issues.

Always have a dedicated support number available for your customers. A line that they’ll be able to reach at any time. And if they prefer to text instead of call, give them that too. They will appreciate the effort – a big step on how to improve customer experience.

7.     In-app support

Finally, have a prepared solution for all your customers who don’t text or call and don’t prefer email or live chat. Find out the channel or the app they use and be there. Customers who are used to communicating via messaging apps will find in-app assistance a familiar experience. Offering support through messaging apps like WhatsApp or Messenger aligns with modern communication habits and helps brands further improve customer experience. Adjust to their communication habits and show up in the right places. You will not believe the satisfaction you’ll get with such a simple step.

[Read about] Main elements of a good customer experience

The Bottom line

Customers will always have questions or concerns. While you can’t predict every scenario, you can anticipate how they’ll try reaching out for answers. Make it easy for them by offering multiple channels of communication that suit their preferences—this is one of the most effective ways to consistently improve customer experience.

satisfied customers lead to growth and success when businesses prioritize efforts that genuinely aim to improve customer experience! Get a quote today.