Customer experience is hugely responsible for the success of an enterprise. That’s why small businesses need to focus on providing an impactful customer experience to become a prosperous enterprise. Otherwise, their target audience will look for an alternative solution provider in a highly competitive and saturated market.
As 63% of the clients switch to a different brand after one or two negative customer experiences. Customer experience is a strategy small businesses can (and should) focus on that will help the company in multiple ways.
Building a strong relationship with your customers is a challenging task, but it’s a crucial one. Neglecting your customers can make business growth even more challenging and costly. Our blog will show you that when small businesses implement the right customer experience strategy, it will not only boosts revenue but also fosters customer loyalty, paving the way for a brighter future.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience is a conviction your customers have about your brand, which is gathered through numerous aspects of their purchasing journey. CX’s ultimate motive is prospects are able to connect with the brand. It can be through a simplified sales process, brand perception, great customer service, and easy navigation.
At What Point Customer Experience Start?
To deliver highest form of customer experiences, business need to start from the inception of customer experience. It begins when a prospect hears about your brand, takes necessary steps, i.e. make a purchase, use your product, reach out customer service, and provide a feedback and more. In simpler language, whenever a customer interact with your brand to they take an experience back with themselves. As a brand it’s your job to provide a good experience.
Don’t confuse it with customer service! The concept of customer experience and customer service is very different. A good customer service is a part of effective customer experience. Check out the below image to understand how both are linked, but each have completely different purpose to serve.
It’s not that small want to overlook customer experience. However, it is posed by significant challenges, which we discuss in the section below.
What are some of the Challenges Small Businesses face Regarding Customer Experience?
Small businesses trying to provide customer experience unleash new opportunities, which emerge with new challenges. Let’s find out more about it.
Demolish Organizational Silos:
Many times, departments within small businesses start running independently, rather than every department working together towards the same goal. In such scenarios, communication among teams is limited, and silos start forming within the organization.
Organizations with silos provide hindrances to a customer’s purchase journey, as businesses are not prompt with providing the necessary assistance through the customer’s journey. It is only when organization work is streamlined manner the customer experience doesn’t take a hit.
Unfortunately, as per one survey, 83% of the respondent informed that silos existed within their organization, and 97% of the respondent agreed that it negatively impacted their organization.
Working Towards Omnichannel Consistency:
Maintaining an omnichannel consistency means every platform your business is present on is in sync with one another. For example, for an organization following omnichannel consistency, customers who started a conversation via email will be seamlessly able to continue the same conversation on another platform, which could be chat or call.
Customers acquired through the omnichannel approach have 30% better lifetime value, as they can avail an impressive exposure of the brand. However, a small business with limited staffing and budget finds it challenging to provide a consistent and cohesive experience.
Keeping Up with Hyper-Personalization:
As per present-day norms, customers expect personalization. It is not enough to get their first name right on any form of communication. Organizations have to mine more relevant information about the customers to offer relevant content and offers.
Living in highly competitive times, 62% of the customers won’t remain loyal when provided with a generic experience. As there are “n” number of options available in the market, today’s customer wants to be assured that businesses can meet their requirements.
These are the three most prominent problems today small businesses face when they have to outshine in the customer experience department. Conversely, when enterprises emphasizing on customer experience the benefits are innumerable. Let’s find out more about those benefits.
Why Small Businesses Ought to Focus on Customer Experience?
As we learned that, customer experience delves into how users feel about a brand after interacting with the brand. We are not just stating it, 65% of the customers attest to the fact, considering positive experience to be more influential than advertising.
Hence, let’s look into a few more benefits of customer experience for small business:
Helps in generating positive reviews:
When small businesses are able to create a customer experience that ticks all the boxes of the customer’s requirement, it generates positive word-of-mouth. Customers can discuss amongst their close acquaintances, or leave positive feedback on your website. Did you know roughly around 20%-60% of the purchasing decisions are influenced by enthusiastic customers who are impressed with your brand?
Competitive Advantage in Fierce Marketplace:
The US alone has 33,185,550 small businesses, and globally, there are 400 million small and medium-size businesses. For a small business to thrive in such a competitive market, the business needs to stand out from the competitors. When a business becomes capable of delivering top-notch customer experience, it helps it hold a strong ground within its target market. 81% of the organization site CX is a fantastic competitive differentiator.
Keep your Employee Motivated and Productive:
When employees are empowered to deliver an outstanding customer experience, employees become more productive. A 5% increase in the employee engagement can boost the revenue by 3%. So here is another reason why small businesses cannot de-prioritize the idea of customer experience.
Data Driven Insights and Continuous Improvement:
Every time a small business decides to focus on the CX, simultaneously, they have to opt for a data-driven approach. The foundation of customer experience is knowing your target audience inside out. Data about customers provides indisputable evidence about likes, dislikes, pain points, and more. Knowing these intricate details about the customers will not only help the business to outshine in the customer experience department, it will enable them to better other business strategies, making the business 23 times more likely to acquire new customers.
Heightened Brand loyalty and Retention Rates:
Out-of-the-ordinary customer experiences foster a strong emotional connection between customers and small businesses. Almost 89% of the companies consider customer experience as principal factor that drives customer loyalty. That’s why being committed to meeting your customers’ needs will increase customer retention and heighten the steady stream of business.
Improved Risk Management:
An organization with commendable customer experience is forced to focus on risk management. Such organizations always put forward transparent communication and are forced to focus on regulatory compliance.
As per one research study, 74% Americans feel it’s “very important” to know who might have access to personal information. All the more reasons for organizations to focus on customer experience, it diminishes the chances of legal complications, preventing the organizations from a negative reputation.
Now that you’re well-versed in what CX is, the obstacles in delivering top-notch customer experience for small business, and the rewards of offering a positive CX to your audience, let’s delve into the last part of the blog-“practical technique for small businesses to enhance the customer experience”.
What Small Businesses can do to Improve Customer Experience?
Here are three intricate steps to follow in devising a highly impactful customer experience for your target audience.
Collecting Data:
As mentioned earlier, small businesses have to focus on data to deliver an extraordinary customer experience. To have access to the right data, organization need to have a process in place, as 81% users face potential challenges while collecting data, which basically outweighs the benefits of collecting data. Therefore, below, we have listed a few ways to help your organization improve the data collection.
- Start by defining the type of data set your business requires and then decide upon what will be the approach for collecting data. For small companies, the data collection has to be repeatable and scalable. It will help small businesses avoid time-consuming and costly mistakes.
- The method of accumulating data could be customer feedback form, web analytics, and other form of data collection. However, maintaining a data dictionary is crucial, as it defines all the data points you are collecting and how to utilize them in the best possible way. A template for data collection makes the process even more systematic.
- Be consistent with the data collection timing; it will help your business spot data trends over time. Keep the collection process simple; for example, if your data collection mode is survey forms, make it short and simple. Prospective clients aren’t interested in filling out a 20-question-long survey form. All the data you collect should be stored in a safe and secure format.
- Evaluate the process of data collection, 3 out 5 organizations use analytics. It is one fine way to understand whether the data is benefiting the organization. Try to modernize the data collection with latest features and technologies to enhance the quality of your data.
Building Personas/ Ideal Customer Profile:
Depending upon the type of industry sector your business belongs to, you have to either create a buyer persona or an ideal customer profile.
- Ideal Customer Profile: The business you want to sell your product and services.
- Buyer Persona: In-depth representation of people who can benefit the most from the product/service you are selling.
The image below will provide you with a better understanding of the differences between an ideal customer profile and a buyer persona.
- After the data is collected, and depending upon the type of target audience, start sorting multiple ICPs and buyer personas.
- Once you have created an ICP/ Buyer Persona, take time to really understand the pain points that will push them to invest in your product or service. By doing so, businesses will be able to deliver products that will speak directly to customer’s needs. Acquiring a new customer costs from five to twenty times more than retaining a customer, however, it increases the customer lifetime, boosting the organization’s ROI.
- Understanding the buyer persona/ICP will improve the marketing effort of the organization with respect to content generation, customer acquisition, customer retention, and lead generation. For example for, your organization’s ICP is “Auto parts incorporated,” an organization with 500 employees, catering to the manufacturing industry, operating in France, Germany, and UK. Consequently, the content you create should be related to the manufacturing industry located in France, Germany, and UK.
- Just like relevant content can be created, other aspects of business can be personalized, keeping the target audience in mind. When done with the best efforts, it will boost your business’s customer experience.
Mapping the Customer’s Journey:
The customer’s journey is all about mapping the target audience’s entire experience with the business. After you have gathered enough information through ICPs/buyer persona, you can put yourself in the target audience’s shoes.
Basic Elements of Customer Journey Map:
- Stage: Segregating the customer journey into different stages simplifies the process. The five stages of the customer journey are.
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Preference
- Action
- Loyalty
- Touchpoints: Each of these stages has several touchpoints where customers interact with the audience. These touch points are usually visiting a website, contacting customer service, going through social media, and more. 65% of the prospects who experience a superior CX at these touchpoints become loyal customers of the organization.
- Action: The third stage is an action taken by customers at each touch point. It impacts the customer’s behavior, needs, and emotions during every interaction with the brand. For example, if a customer goes through confusing instructions while going through your business website or has to wait for a long wait time before the page loads, it will leave the customer with a poor customer experience. However 88% prospective clients take the right action, when CX is customized to meet their requirements.
To put forward a highly impactful customer experience for small business; start by collecting the right data and segmenting the data into multiple ICPs/buyer personas. Lastly, work on optimizing the touch points of your target audience. Analyze the observations drawn from the process to figure out the areas of improvement and iterate.
Conclusion:
Businesses succeed when customers are treated with respect and gratitude. A good customer experience sets the same message loud and clear. You are keeping your customers happy and encouraging them to stick around to discover what more your business can offer. The more loyal customers a small business has, the faster its growth rate.
Therefore, utilizing data-driven strategies to deliver the finest customer experience will help your small business stand out from its competitors. From now, all small businesses companies start focusing more and more on customer goodwill to help achieve brand loyalty in less time.
