Digital age is here to stay, and it has changed not only ways businesses sell their products and services but the way customers by. Not that long ago a good customer experience was very different than it is today, so we need new ways to make our customers happy and loyal.
I chose to read this article about How to provide an excellent customer experience in the digital age because it defines a good customer experience and teaches how to provide a good customer experience.
It’s also relevant to our study unit since it teaches where and how to start customer service planning and what are most important things and potential pitfalls.
Key factors to excellent customer experience
There’s many thing businesses should keep in mind when trying to make customer experience as customer friendly as possible. Things such as usability, relevant content, consistency, speed, security, personalization and self service are important. (How to Provide an Excellent Customer Experience in the Digital Age 2017, 11-17.)
These factors couth my attention because there’s so many factors to keep in mind when creating customer friendly website. All mentioned are important, but I would say that out of all factors usability, relevant content and consistency might be the most important ones.
The fact that more and more people are using mobile devices when searching products and services it is important that websites work on mobile also. Usability also means that website is easy to navigate on and easy find needed information and if website is hard to use customers find some other page to find that information on.
It’s important to keep your website relevant to the business so customers who are looking for something you don’t serve your website don’t pop in search results. Not only that your content is relevant it also must be consistent. You need to give same image about your business to customers on your website and social medias. Consistent adds or any content helps you also build your brand for example local, sustainable, and loyal.
I think that you also need to use some tools that tells you what is working on websites and social media and what is not, otherwise you will never know there is something wrong. Tools helps you to make content, usability and performance more customer friendly when needed.
Potential pitfalls in customer experience
Customers expect are high and they expect high-quality, they want fast deliveries and transparency and communication. In other hand they don’t want to be spammed with adds and they want low prices. Customers want the golden midway when interacting with business. Even customers’ expectations are high, but you don’t have to move mountains to keep your customers happy and satisfied. It says in Harvard Business Review article “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” that “exceeding their expectations during service interactions (for example, by offering a refund, a free product, or a free service such as expedited shipping) makes customers only marginally more loyal than simply meeting their needs.” (How to Provide an Excellent Customer Experience in the Digital Age 2017, 7-10.)
It’s true that sometimes when businesses are trying too hard to satisfy the customer, they miss the basics. Businesses should keep their communication with customers simple and well-functioning because it’s more valuable for customer.
Conclusions
To sum up, there is many things you need to consider when improving customer experience and you need to plan your goals first. Based on those goals you need to start from the beginning and try to think like your customer.
Top 3 things when providing customer experiences:
- Don’t get overwhelmed, remember the basics and build from there
- Facing, learning and moving past mistakes or issues
- Learn how to use tools to your benefit
I learned that customer experience is a lot more complicated than I first thought. All factors and things might be hard to but to action. Also, I learned that simply and well-functioning is much more important than trying too hard. Lastly, I learned that making mistakes is part of the journey when improving customer experiences and it is okay to worry a little how things are going to work out. It’s also important to move past them.
References
How to Provide an Excellent Customer Experience in the Digital Age 2017. SANA. Linkki.