Gallop.com shows us the “thinking” components of customers and everything we consider before making a purchase.

Creating The Best Customer Experience

Today, we’re discussing Customer Experience or (CX), both online and offline and how you can Improve the customer experience of your business.

No business (online or offline) can succeed without customers, so why wouldn’t we focus our attention to ensuring customers have a great experience with our business.

SalesForce is one of the most recognized brands in the world and very few know “customers” like they do. Their Customer Experience Infographic gives you a visual detailed overview of what to focus on to improve your customer’s experience.

What Can We Learn?

Since we’re talking about both offline and online customer experiences, I’ve took the time to focus on each segment and highlight how you can use these insights to improve customer experience.

Online Customer Experience

• Website Layout And Design – We tend to overthink our website layout and design which often gets us in trouble. Simple and clean is better, make sure your customers have a clear understanding what you want them to do. You should have a clear path to purchase with strong copy that leads customers in the direction you want. Make all your call to actions clear for your audience.
• Mobile And App Usability – Your website must be be mobile friendly. More users are using mobile, so the mobile customer experience is important. Your apps need to be useful, engaging, fun and provide a great customer experience.
• Social Media Channels – Your social media channels are important for many reasons, one being customer support. We love to connect with our favorite brands and we want to engage in the fun. Customers should have a great experience there, so make sure you keep that in mind.
• Content Marketing – You want all of your content to be engaging, informative and valuable. With so much content being produced, content marketing is a vital strategy that you want to master to help your business reach more potential customers. Your content is how your audience engages with your brand, so make sure you always produce high quality content.
• Email Marketing – There’s no question that email marketing and list building is vital for any business. It’s also a great way to build personal relationships with your customers. We know if they sign up for an email offer, the customer is likely interested. You can also target different audience segments with different offers.
• Remarketing – We know from studies that 70 percent of our audience will never come back to your website. We can use remarketing and tracking pixels to follow those users that visited our website in hopes to bring them back, get them interested and then turning them into customers.

Offline Customer Experience

• In-Store Interactions With Staff – It feels inviting to walk inside a store and being greeted as soon as you get inside. We want our staff to be friendly, helpful and provide the very best level of customer experience. While we don’t want to be over their shoulder, we do want to make sure the experience is everything they expected and a little more.
• Phone Calls – When you call a business, you have a purpose for doing so. Great customer support means a lot to any business and it’s a great way to make sure customers hang up happy. You can’t make everyone happy, but even problems can be eliminated with great helpful customer service.
• Print Marketing – Even in our digital world of today, print marketing is still an effective marketing avenue and a must for brick & mortar businesses. You should strongly consider staff uniforms, business cards and local newspapers. You can even use coupons and incentives to raise curiosity.
• Interaction With Service Personnel – Just like interaction with staff is important, so is interaction with your service personnel. Although these interactions are less often, they’re equally important. Make sure your service techs are trained in this area.
• Shipping Policies – Customers care about shipping policies and guidelines. You can use this to your advantage if you can offer free shipping, especially locally. When customers make a purchase, it’s natural to be excited and eager. The sooner we can receive our product or service, the better.