If your customer’s flight arrives early and you’re able to make arrangements for changes in stay and travel plans beforehand, then that’s a great experience for the customer. If your customer needs to call support portal and request for changes, then that’s just customer service.

Bain & Company together with Harvard Business School foretold- increasing customer retention rates by 5% brands can increase profits by 25% to 95%. Decades ago, customer retention programs involved friendly customer service. Today, the strategy for customer retention has shifted to experiences that customers appreciate. Here are innovative ideas to improve customer experience.

#1 Preparing Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map outlines customers’ emotions from the time they come to know about your product to their purchase and post-purchase experiences. 

It helps to point out unsatisfactory instances and discover bottlenecks in operations. You can then device strategies for better customer experiences. According to Oracle’s Executive survey, hassle-free experience drives 74% of loyalty from customers. The customer journey is going to be integral to almost every digital product soon. 

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New Product is the Customer Journey.

While building a customer journey map, it is important to include stakeholders’ viewpoints.  These can be from leadership, UX, customer success/service, product, sales and/or marketing, analyst, and third-party vendors/store managers. 

Also, the customer journey would be an understatement if you’ll not include Customer Experience Management (CEM), Communication and Persuasion techniques, Customer Relationship Management, and understanding of the retail environment.

#2 Living Up to the Promise

Customers are also brand advocates. They’re also playing the role of influencers. Therefore, not delivering the promised service might disappoint the customer and will eventually spread a negative reputation for your brand.

Delivering experiences more than promised is rare, but once achieved, loyalty towards brand from customers and their referrals is beyond imagination.

Here are a few Zappos’ “Deliver WOW Through Service” stories featured in Forbes.

#3 Bringing Better Mobile and Hand-held Device Experiences

Millennials have evolved from using CRTs to smartphones. And the unanimous reason is convenience. For instance, a VP of a leading firm, who is also a home-maker is now able to arrange dinner for the family while taking an uber ride.

The point is- mobile phones, tablets, or portable laptops have surpassed the limitations of portability. Customers are using their hand-held devices for accomplishing tasks anywhere and anytime.

You’ll be surprised to know, 77% of mobile searches are from locations where people are also having access to PC.

To improve customer experience on smartphones, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and optimizing key complex pages like homepage can turn beneficial. E.g. FRANK, a UK-based drug information service provider was able to increase its traffic by 39% by providing the best mobile experiences. 

IKEA was able to calculate the omnichannel return on ad spend (ROAS) for footfall in Belgium. It found out mobile campaigns brought 80% more footfall than the desktop campaigns.

#4 Adopting Omni-channel Service Can Help to Improve Customer Experience

Most businesses are investing in multichannel experiences like social media, website, mobile-first, smartwatch, and different offline and online marketing channels. Often these channels are not connected and aim to provide esoteric experiences. 

But, people expect the same service from brands regardless of channels. It can be social media like Instagram or Facebook- people want brands to hear their complaints or resolve their queries then and there itself. 

Or, while visiting the physical store, customers want the store representative to be helpful throughout the time they’re spending in-store. Google research states, over 70% of all shoppers say they are open to learning about products on YouTube from brands.

Omni-channel services seamlessly integrate different communication channels irrespective of how and where customers want to reach out.

For example, Bank of America allows paying monthly bills, depositing cheques, etc. via mobile app and website. Users can schedule appointments, connect with representatives via phone, chat, or in-person interaction.

#5 Providing 24 X 7 Support

About 72% of tech-savvy customers appreciate the real-time response from companies. They also acknowledge immediate query resolution can win their loyalty for the brands. Let’s talk about how to improve customer experience by enabling 24 X 7 support on your portal or website.

1. Human support: The average cost per customer support is $1/minute, according to VHT. 
2. Remote human support: Using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) call-center support, the average cost drops to $25-$45 per agent per month. And human agents from different geographic locations can provide customer support according to their time-zones.
3. Chatbots: The best of today’s’ technology is AI-powered chatbots, which are capable of handling customer queries at less than $0.1/minute. 

Cost is just one factor to determine your brand’s customer relationship management strategy.  To-the-point real time response to each and every customer query is what makes a great customer experience.

For example, brands are using AI-powered chatbots to provide 24 X 7 customer support, especially during off-working hours and holidays. These chatbots allow integrating document processing workflows, ticket management systems, etc. to further simplify and automate customer support. Therefore, you can opt for Smart bots which are not only cost-effective but also scalable across enterprizes.

Source: Hitee

To learn more about great customer experiences and strategy consulting to bring the best to your brand, feel free to contact us at hello@mantralabsglobal.com.

Contributing Authors: Nidhi Agrawal (Content Writer @Mantra Labs)