Serving better food than other restaurants doesn’t matter if the service is slow and the waitstaff isn’t friendly. Offering a greater selection of products than competitors won’t make a retailer successful if their store is difficult to navigate and items aren’t well-organized. A hotel can offer the most comfortable beds imaginable, but guests won’t come back if the room isn’t cleaned properly.
Delivering an elevated customer experience is about taking a holistic approach to every step of the journey people take with you. This includes the moment they discover your brand to the moment they invest in your products and services, as well as the moment they may reach out for help afterwards.
Getting it right within most business functions isn’t going to cut it. As the most recent Salesforce Connected Customer Report revealed, the vast majority of Canadians (85%) said they want consistent interactions across departments. When they move from talking to talking
to those in a sales role to those on the customer service team, for instance, they should be treated with the same level of responsiveness and ability to problem-solve.
People are also increasingly expecting companies to see them as more than just another customer. The research also showed that more than half of those surveyed (56%) want personalized offers based on what brands know about their needs, interests and pain points.
Creating these elevated, engaging customer experiences has to span both the physical and digital worlds. Remember the businesses mentioned at the start of this post? A restaurant needs to offer a great mobile app to scan the menu and make a reservation. Retailers need to offer simple and easy-to-use e-commerce options to purchase products online. Hotels may use digital technologies to book everything from rooms to time at the spa.
This makes it imperative for companies of all sizes to equip themselves with equally powerful technologies behind the scenes. It starts with a platform like Customer 360, which unifies teams by bringing all data into a single view of the truth. Then, business leaders should consider all the tools that will support customers in all the ways they want and deserve to be treated. Read on to learn about five essential tech tools to help you level up your customer experience offering.
Customer journey management software
People may begin their relationship with your company by walking into a physical location or… by researching online first.
Customers may continue to want the same size, colour and style of their favourite products or… their tastes may change.
When a question or challenge arises, a customer may be quick to pick up the phone… or send an email (or even, a text message).
There can be a number of paths customers will take as they make their way through browsing your site, buying a product or asking for assistance. You can’t assume everyone will take the same journey, or even that customers will take the same journey twice.
Customer journey management software offers a way to listen for cues about what people want and adapt with their preferences over time. It’s also a way to ensure everything is connected, from marketing to sales and service. Investing in these kinds of applications is a way of orchestrating the right digital channels for each customer with one voice and guiding them to the experiences they want most.
CRMs
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the beating heart of an elevated, engaged customer experience. It’s the heart because it houses all the critical data such as customer purchase histories and contact details that allow businesses to learn about who they are and what they expect.
It’s a “beating” heart because it is constantly updated with new data as you collect it from your customers. Rather than relying on out-of-date records that might once have been stored on paper, for instance, a CRM is always pulsing with real-time insights to fine-tune every customer experience.
Personalization technologies
“Go visit our website,” many businesses suggest. Imagine if, instead, a business said, “Go visit the website we’ve made for you.”
This is more doable than you think. By leveraging data about each customer, you can ensure they log on to web pages that feature their favourite product categories and promotions specifically designed with them in mind.
The same thing can happen with email. Personalization capabilities within marketing automation let you turn mass-messaging into tailored offers that reflect the person whose inbox they land in. Customers are obviously more likely to engage with this kind of personalization, especially if you carry it through to other digital channels such as text messages and online ads.
Self-service tools and help desk platforms
The faster you connect with a customer in need, the better. The more you can show that you recognize them and their relationship with your brand, the better. The easier you make it for them to take a DIY approach to solving a problem, the better.
That’s a lot of “betters” to strive for, but the technology exists to achieve it. With chatbots and online communities, for example, customers can tackle many simple troubleshooting tasks on their own, which is often their preference.
When they require greater expertise, help desk software streamlines the workflows for agents to get to more customers, and to maintain the personalization they experienced earlier in their journey.
Customer feedback management tools
All the technologies we’ve walked through in this blog post can be used to harness data that will power the elevated experience your customers want, but it’s still a good idea to ask them directly.
Whether it’s a simple request to rate their experience or a more detailed survey, feedback mechanisms give customers an opportunity to make themselves heard.
This is something you can offer throughout the journey as well, not merely at the end. Think about how you could use feedback mechanisms to gauge the quality of an ad campaign, the process of making a purchase, or how their problems were resolved with the service team.
Creating an elevated, engaging customer experience is possible for any business! Get the right technology tools in place and become that trailblazing company today.
