End-to-end customer experience is a term used to describe the interactions a business has with its customers during their relationship. It starts when the customer makes first contact with the brand and lasts throughout the entire customer journey if the customer experience management is good.
Amazing customer experience management is something a lot of businesses focus on nowadays. Because not only does it help with retention, it also boosts profits. In fact, there’s a huge increase in revenue for businesses that focus on improving customer experience.
And here’s what you need to do if you want to achieve great results and gain loyal customers.
Create emotional connections with customers
When it comes to dealing with customers, you need to remember that the way to express something is far more important than the thing you’re saying to them. If you want to learn how to build a loyal audience and have customers trust you, you need to create emotional connections with them.
Emotions determine how we make most of our daily decisions, even minor ones, and that includes purchasing decisions. People are much more likely to buy from a business that shows it cares about them and treats them like real people, not just as a source of profit.
Here are a few things you can do to create those emotional connections:
- Be authentic. When talking to your customers, make sure to be authentic and talk to them as if they were your friends. Show an interest in their lives, but also prove you know their pain points and are willing to resolve them in any possible way.
- Personalize your communication. Personalization shows you care enough to remember the little details. Some things you can do include addressing customers by their full name, sending welcome and birthday emails, and tailoring everyone’s website experience based on previous purchasing history.
- Talk about your struggles. Create content that will focus on the authentic stories of your business and the challenges you had to face while developing your products/services. And while telling your story, make sure people will be able to relate to it.
- Always keep your promises. Creating an emotional connection also means building trust, and the easiest way you can do that is to keep every promise you make, even minor ones.
Create user guides
User guides, sometimes known as user documentation, are the content a company provides to its customers to help them understand the product or service better. Some user guide examples include user manuals and instruction manuals.
User guides are there to help you ensure your end users get the most out of your product. However, they also serve as marketing material. If you have a well-written user guide, your customers will see you’re an expert in your field
These guides are not only beneficial to your customers but to your customer support team as well because they can use them as easy reference guides. You can even create special user guides as a searchable electronic document that only your support team will use.
And as an added bonus, if you create user guides, you will significantly reduce the number of calls your support team gets in the first place. Self-service is preferred by 67 percent of clients over engaging with a company representative and if you allow your customers to help themselves, they will.
Ensure satisfaction during each contact point
When a customer has any type of interaction with your business that is called a contact point. This includes contact with the business’ products/services, brand, website, advertisements, social media, and so on.
Contact points begin when the customer discovers your brand and last as long as they are your customers, even after they purchase from you for the first time. During each contact point, you have the ability to influence the customer, and even help build trust.
Generally speaking, there are three different contact points:
- Pre-purchase. All the information a customer gathers about your company through advertising, social media, word of mouth, testimonials from your previous customers, community involvement, and so on.
- During purchase. Everything they experience while in your store/office or on your website. This usually entails how your sales team acts or how easy to use and intuitive your website is.
- After purchase. When the transaction is complete, you will still be in contact with the customer through your support team, billing, marketing emails, follow-ups, thank you cards, and so on.
For a good customer experience, you need to ensure that your customers feel satisfied after each contact point, no matter how small or insignificant it seems. Make sure to use analytics to see how well-received your known contact points are and find out what resonates most with customers.
Final thoughts
It’s not surprising at all that more and more businesses are focusing on end-to-end customer experience, some even for the first time. It reduces churn, increases revenue, and improves customer retention, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t take customer experience seriously.
Your customers are the reason why your company exists, not the other way around. As a result, you need to provide them with the best possible treatment throughout their entire customer journey. That way they will keep coming back to your business.