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Pamela Mann is a leading UK manufacturer of fashion hosiery supplying high street and online retail shops with the latest fashion tights, stockings, socks and leggings. We wanted to promote our website to a wider audience and customer base. After working with Chris our website now has a much higher online profile for both our wholesale and retail businesses and we are happy to recommend.
How To Improve Your Customer Experience
The best way of learning how to deliver an outstanding customer experience is to simply go through a terrible customer experience personally. Which is, suffice to say, not exactly difficult to do. In fact, most people encounter pretty terrible customer experiences on a relatively regular basis.
Still, at least they provide the kind of food for thought that can be useful for running your own business. For the most part, horrific customer experiences communicate the importance of three simple yet crucial CE characteristics.
Which are as follows:
1. Every interaction is important
Some companies ensure that every customer is greeted with a smile, a meaningful exchange and is generally treated as a valuable asset. Be it a first-time customer, a returning customer or even the most difficult customer out there, every interaction is focused on with a sense of importance. From the perspective of the customer, it’s impossible to ignore the appeal and influence of this kind of attention. By contrast, experience just a single dissatisfactory interaction at any point and everything else is quickly forgotten. This becomes the one and only interaction you remember. Not to mention, the one and only interaction you tell everyone else about. Rather than simply focusing on first-impressions alone, treat every interaction as if this is the interaction that will determine the customer’s overall opinion of your business. Because it will.
2. Make the effort
Regardless of what it is the customer needs, you need to ensure you make the necessary effort to deliver it. There is nothing worse than expecting something of a brand, only to get the distinct feeling they simply cannot be bothered to make the effort on your behalf. By contrast, the more effort you invest in satisfying the customer in a method that makes this blatantly obvious, the greater their satisfaction and resulting loyalty to your business. Even if you don’t manage to provide them with what they need, the fact that you tried sufficiently is all that matters. This also applies to the common courtesy of keeping customers up to date, should there be anything in process that hasn’t yet reached a resolution. Delayed orders, complaints and so on - always make the effort to keep them in the loop, which in its own right demonstrates the fact that you are making every effort to get the job done.
3. Respect autonomy
Last but not least, what this basically refers to is the importance of giving the customer as much say as possible in the outcome. Particularly when it comes to complaints or issues of any kind, it’s important to remember that when autonomy is out of the question, it is replaced by control. And for obvious reasons, customers do not like to feel as if they are being controlled. Rather than assuming you know what the customer wants or giving them little to no choice in what you can offer them, try to give them as much freedom of choice as possible. The most obvious example in a practical setting being that of offering some kind of compensation in the event of a complaint. Rather than simply forcing the customer to accept a voucher worth 20% off their next order, why not ask them directly what would satisfy them?