Customer service has never been more critical. Businesses not focusing on providing good customer service will see their customers leaving in droves.
According to Accenture, 66% of consumers would switch companies after a bad customer experience.
Your business’s customer experience must always be top-notch because today’s consumers can be fickle. They have a wide range of choices.
How can you tell if your customers are happy?
Many businesses carry out annual or semiannual customer satisfaction surveys to gauge their company’s performance and health. The data collected from these surveys can be outdated when analyzed, given how fast information is shared today.
This is not to say that you should stop doing customer satisfaction surveys. But they shouldn’t just be one arrow in the quiver of your customer experience.
It takes time and fine-tuning to make the most of this data.
This article will explain how to monitor the customer experience and why taking a holistic approach is beneficial to both your business and your customers.
Listen to your customers
Social Media Platforms are both a blessing for business and a curse. As in traditional marketing or advertising, you can speak directly with your customers without intermediaries. Consumers have a stronger voice to speak up when they feel they have been wronged.
Implementing a tool for social listening will help you better understand what your customers are saying online about your business. Social listening not only gives you the ability to listen in on conversations about your company, but it also helps you understand their overall sentiment.
Many businesses spend too much time talking to their customers on social networks, offering offers and promotions. They don’t listen or engage.
You would be wrong if you didn’t believe your customers would notice.
Daniel Newman is a best-selling author, CEO of V3B, and a published author. He noted in an article recently that businesses should not bombard their customers with promotional messages but instead engage them to discuss what they can do to improve the company.
Newman wrote, “Although social media platforms can provide useful data, the focus should be listening to customers.”
Request feedback
Listening passively to the feedback you receive on social media is not enough. You should actively seek feedback from customers and online reviewers.
It may seem redundant to collect feedback from multiple sources, but the data you gather is vital for monitoring and improving the overall customer experience of your business.
You can get a quantitative business overview by conducting customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys will provide insights into what works well in your business and what needs improvement.
Online reviews will provide you with qualitative and detailed data in real time about the individual experiences of customers. This is crucial because it can help you identify problems before they spread and become systemic.
Analyze data to implement improvements
Having all this data but not using it to improve the product, service, or customer experience would be a mistake. We live in a Big Data era, so you can use data analytics to break down the data and make it more understandable.
Your business should also be evolving to keep up with the changing consumer. Big Data helps you to identify trends, improve your marketing and offerings, and give your customers a more customized experience.
Rinse/repeat
Monitoring and measuring the customer experience is a continuous process, just like many other things you do.
Your customers will leave you if you stop improving and paying attention. If you strive to improve your business and provide the best experience possible, you can build trust and loyalty and create vocal advocates for your company.
Having advocates by your side is valuable. Even if you create marketing messages that resonate with customers, they will always pale compared to recommendations from peers.
The rise of online review platforms such as Google, Facebook, and social media has allowed consumers to rely on online reviews just as much as on recommendations from friends and family.