Fortunately, the world is thankful to the scientists and doctors worldwide, which helped and are still helping people when coronavirus was spreading fear all over the world and found the vaccines. The procedure of vaccination has also started, and I hope the world would now be a better and lively place again. But have you ever admired the economic loss the planet has to face?
Let me make it clear. Coronavirus – The Great Depression has created an environment of the biggest shock to the US economy, and economic growth of more than five years has been decimated. With this, the national GDP came down to 32.9%, which is the lowest since 1947. (source)
Massive isn’t it. Similar was the condition prevailing all over the world. Under such conditions, along with the restrictions to shut down all the organizations from the actual working premises, the businesses faced a lot of loss with their product selling and customer support. If you still want an example, just think about the business startups that came into existence in the early months of the year 2020.
Now you can relate to the title, as it highlights the increased focus on the customer experience in the year 2021. Regardless of the business scale, all businesses strive to put customer experience first after the beginning of unlocking nations after the decrease in COVID-19.
What Do You Mean By Consumer Experience?
Customer Experience or CX can be regarded to be the customer’s thoughts towards the product or services offered by any provider. In all, it can be said as the analysis of the company’s first impression by the buyer.
CX can include all the perceptions of a purchaser, which starts right from the moment he contacts the business, asking about the product specifications and how the seller explains it. Next comes the communication, which is done till product delivery, followed by the product training if needed, the constant support offered by the dealer, and lastly, the interaction made anywhere, including social media.
Customer notes every little detail of the conversation he/she has done with the dealers and then analyzes the organizational ethics.
Reasons of Making Consumer Experience as a Priority
There might be many reasons why employers and employees should put their consumers at the top. I mean, businesses are started to solve the problems of society and are meant for the customers. Without customers, business is of no use. So are customers the God of the market.
While resolving any query, customers always look at the way of being treated by their service provider. Even when buying anything, you might have observed the way the trader speaks to you, explains the product, and treats you. It’s a kind of impression the customer sets up in his mind. And that’s not enough; he might also share his ideas or recommendations about the product or the service offered.
Now that’s where the major dilemma occurs. You might be thinking of the times when you have treated consumers, and it has gone wrong due to any reason. But every problem has a solution, and so does this.
Here are some of the reasons why many small, medium, or large businesses need to think about customers as their first concern.
Increased ROI
According to Forbes, companies can increase their revenue up to around 4-8%, which tends to be more customer-centric.
There’s nothing wrong with the above line. The more importance an organization gives to their buyers, the more are the chances of them purchasing the products. How? If you are giving more priority and time to your customers, there is a positive effect on their minds.
If your customers appreciate the product and like the support you give, it is definite that they would recommend your brand first in their network. More time to the customers equals more customers to the store, and there would be a visible rise in your revenue.
An excellent example of the company reporting excellent revenue is Saudi Aramco, the Suadi Arabian petroleum and natural gas business. In 2019, the company was reported to be the most profitable, with a revenue of 88.21 billion USD. (source)
Increased Advocacy For Brand
We saw in the above point, if the customers are happy and satisfied, they will recommend the service to their near and dear ones also. That’s actually true.
Let’s begin with a quite understandable example. Assume you are buying a scooter from a well-known dealer. You don’t know if their services are good, but their market demand is quite believable. After all the processes, you are delighted with their services and finally buying the scooter from them. Not only this, but they also helped in other processes like insurance, schemes, etc.
A few days later, one of your friends also wants to buy a scooter, and you suddenly remember the service one company gave. You will definitely give your friend the suggestion.
This is how the whole system works, and your one good customer service can attract others also. Just think if your every customer gives such suggestions, how much profit you can gain. This is what makes your market value unique.
Happy Customers = High Market Uniqueness
As we are talking about happy customers, some of them might never fail to appraise the service by adding online reviews on the online platforms.
On the other hand, nowadays, when people want to buy something, they first refer to the same on online stores, check the reviews and the ratings that others have added. Positive reviews on the website refer to the support and help the company provides. It again helps in building a good product brand in the market.
Customers willing to buy the product generally trust the reviews people have posted online, so this becomes very helpful in attracting customers. Now where this all started from, one good customer experience only.
What Are The Measures To Enhance Your Customer Experience?
Reaching here, we now know the reason to prioritize employee experience in any business. But what are your steps in offering your customers such a great experience that they recommend your product to others, and it helps you achieve a good marketplace? Well, you might have diverse steps of your own, but here I have collectively mentioned some of the major ones.
Be Transparent
Considering buyers as the God of the market, there’s nothing to hide from them. It is the customers for which you are building time-saving and advanced technologies to make their life easier. Transparency over the solutions offered to them helps you gain their trust at an early stage, which can be used to attract a considerable number of buyers.
Be transparent, how you will be in their contact and support them whenever they need it. Explain to them every little detail of your contract so that they don’t feel mistreated. This contract can include schemes, purchase quotations, discounts, etc.
Fulfill Expectations
Whenever a customer spends on any of his needs, it is sure to develop an expectation towards the product they are buying. It is obviously not satisfying if all of his expectations go in vain. A mistreated buyer may never advocate the brand identity, and thus it can degrade the market reputation.
Care should be taken that all your customers’ worries and expectations from the product are offered without any prevailing issues. For example, think about a company providing HR solutions, but without explaining to them how it helps in every hr process, their expectations won’t be fulfilled. This can be applicable to any business, whether it is selling cars, scooters, software, or hardware.
Greet with Great Experience
Along with fulfilling the expectations, greet your clients with an exceptional experience that pulls them to buy the product from you only. This not only counts with the buying experience, but your after-sales services should also be satisfying and helping to the buyers.
Offering your clients such love and care at every stage will make them love and cheer you the most. This also helps in building partners at a later stage who can further advocate the product brand and attract potential buyers.
Regularly Engage
An understanding and supportive feeling reflecting from your engagement with the client is what they notice and appreciate the most. The time when your customer enters your shop, your way of handling them is what captivates their hearts and minds.
Even regular customer communication related to common queries and updates is worthy to the customers. They appreciate such efforts, and it can be a good kickstart to a healthy customer-seller relation.
Talk About Benefits
You may never see a customer who doesn’t talk about benefits/schemes/discounts from their buyer. This is the inherent habit of any person to ask for it; even while buying groceries or regular needs, people don’t forget to ask for a price reduction.
But this actually can benefit you as a seller. You might know more about market prices, discounts, and reduction schemes that may be applicable to the product. Not offering it just for the sake of gaining more might be the loss of a customer. Because somehow, the client may find out that you might have mistreated them.
Offer them every applicable benefit and discounts which can be applicable to the product. Doing this increases the amount of trust and loyalty a customer builds for the company.
Appreciate Loyalty
Customer loyalty in this world is very expensive to gain, especially in a buyer-seller relation. If your buyer is loyal towards the efforts you put in, it should be your duty to thank your customers on behalf of it. After all, all of these client-winning approaches that we talked about before are for enhancing their experience and keeping the bond alive.
As part of showing gratitude, you can offer them gifts (obviously, a gift doesn’t mean offering an air conditioner), special vouchers, discounts on further purchases, store credits (wherein you don’t have to pay every time you purchase, instead, you can complete the payment at the end of the month), etc.
To End Things Off
The major point of view of this article circles around giving priority to the consumer experience, majorly after the impact of the pandemic.
For owners who just have started before COVID-19 might have a remembering experience about the difficulties coming right in the way and the probable ups and downs, any business can suffer. Fearing away from this and shutting it down may not be the solution. But this can be your top experience of your life if you are able to fight it. You can help others with how you succeeded.
One final thing you can do as a part of your product selling experience is: put yourself into the place of customers and think about how you want someone to explain about the product you are purchasing. This might help you in understanding the expectations of a purchaser from the seller. Now, this is not impossible to implement, I mean, you just have to be prepared mentally, and you can win the war.
Author Bio:
Shubham Joshi is an experienced content marketer at FactoHR. Passionate about training and development programs, he is always ready to help colleagues and customers by representing concrete ideas and methodology. Beyond work, he is well-equipped with problem-solving abilities.