Customer experience has a big impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty, along with long-term business success. But it’s getting harder to keep customers happy.
Gallup research reveals that employees are becoming more demanding and they’re expecting higher levels of service, particularly as the cost of products and services is rising.
To keep pace with changing expectations, 86% of customer service leaders told Gartner that customer experience is a top priority for 2024. Organizations are investing time and money in finding new ways to boost customer satisfaction.
Here, we look at the true impact of happy customers on a business. We also explore eight strategies you can use to create a customer experience your customers are sure to shout about.
The importance of happy customers
Happy customers are a sign that your product and service are meeting expectations. Happy customers are also good for business. Here are the benefits you can expect when you keep your customers satisfied.
Customer loyalty
According to Forrester research, “customer-obsessed” companies enjoy 51% better customer retention than less customer-focused organizations.
When you provide excellent customer experiences, you get more satisfied customers. These people are more likely to shop or do business with you again — because they already know and trust your brand.
Brand advocacy
Happy customers are more likely to become brand advocates. They’re inclined to share their positive experience of your brand in person and online.
This matters to your business because 92% of people trust word-of-mouth marketing more than advertising — and because 50% say they trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family.
Brand advocates encourage others to trust your brand and shop with you, so you can spend less on marketing campaigns.
Improved revenue
By creating brand advocates, your brand builds a positive reputation that drives sales. And by encouraging repeat custom, you save on customer acquisition costs — it’s much easier and cheaper to convert an existing customer than it is to convert a new one.
This explains why, according to McKinsey, customer experience leaders achieve 2x greater revenue growth than those who lag behind.
How to keep customers happy and loyal
Now we’ve covered the benefits of prioritizing customer satisfaction, let’s look at how to create happy customers for your business. To improve the customer experience, tick off the following tasks:
- Invest in employee experience
- Ensure customer-facing employees have the resources they need
- Treat each customer as an individual
- Provide a variety of touchpoints
- Do customer research
- Leverage automation
- Track customer satisfaction and retention
- Create customer experience goals
1. Invest in employee experience
Customer experience is directly linked to employee experience (EX).
The more happy and engaged your employees are at work, the better experience they produce for customers. Achieve high levels of employee engagement and the quality of your products, service, and customer interactions improves.
Gallup puts a figure on it. Its research shows that companies with high levels of engagement achieve a 10% increase in customer loyalty and a 23% increase in profitability. Employee engagement also leads to better productivity, performance, and employee retention, all of which benefit customers.
To improve the employee experience, employee engagement software is a game-changer. The right software helps you foster a strong company culture, where every employee has the support and resources they need to succeed.
It gives you tools for employee surveys and recognition. Employees can use your engagement software to communicate with their managers and peers, which fosters a sense of belonging. You can also use these tools to analyze employee engagement, identifying issues and areas for improvement.
By investing in the employee experience, with tech tools that connect customer-facing employees to company culture, you build a workforce that cares deeply about customers.
2. Ensure customer-facing employees have the resources they need
You create more happy customers when employees can access the right resources at the right time. With easy access to customer and product information, employees can:
- Give quick and accurate responses
- Tailor interactions to create a more personalized experience
- Take the initiative to solve problems and enhance the customer experience
- Create a consistent and predictable customer experience
Make resources available via an employee app and frontline employees have everything they need at their fingertips. You can also incorporate internal communication tools, so employees can learn best practices and gain customer insights from co-workers.
When employees have the right resources, they feel competent and confident supporting customers. They’re also more likely to experience positive customer interactions, which improves the employee experience and (as we saw in the point above) further fuels customer satisfaction.
3. Treat each customer as an individual
81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience. But 61% say most companies treat them like a number.
To treat your customers like individuals, start with the basics. Learn and use customer names. Encourage your customer service representatives to listen and to have real, empathetic conversations with customers, rather than just repeating phrases by rote.
Also, ensure your systems and processes flex to each new customer interaction. Give customer-facing employees autonomy so they can adapt their approach to the customer in front of them.
For example, employees at the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain famously have a $2000 budget per day to improve guest experiences without managerial approval.
4. Provide a variety of touchpoints
Convenience means different things to different customers. So they should be able to reach out to you in the way that best suits them.
Looking at the demographics and communication preferences of your target market, determine which touchpoints are most in demand.
You may like to provide customer support over the phone, email, or live chat. Social media support is proving popular with Gen Z and Millennial customers, with 17% of all consumers getting customer service over direct messages on social channels.
Just ensure the experience is seamless. Your customer service agents should be able to see where a particular customer is up to, no matter which combination of communication channels they’ve chosen to use. This prevents customers from having to repeat the same story each time they speak to someone new.
5. Do customer research
McKinsey recently shared the story of a mobile telecom operator that was having a hard time hanging on to its customers, many of whom were being enticed by cut-price offers from competitors.
After trying and failing to stem the tide by tying customers into contracts and offering great deals to new customers, the CEO listened in on customer service calls. He identified countless customer pain points.
By tackling these pain points, the company reduced its customer churn rate by 75% and doubled its revenue over the next three years. As the CEO said, “It’s amazing the things you can do when you shut up and listen to your customers.”
You can’t keep your customers happy if you don’t understand what they want. To find out what your customers really think of your products and services, you need to seek and analyze customer feedback.
You can gather this feedback using customer surveys. You can also surface customer views with the help of existing customer call transcripts, social media posts, and company reviews.
Also, tap into the knowledge of your frontline workforce. They deal with your customers day in and day out — so they’re well-positioned to shine a light on customer needs, frustrations, and expectations.
Using this research and insight, identify the most common customer pain points. Then develop a plan for resolving them to boost customer loyalty and create more happy customers.
6. Leverage automation
77% of customer service teams are already using AI. It’s helping to make customer support quicker and more effective.
Customers can use a self-service knowledge base to find answers to their questions. Chatbots can answer routine queries, passing customers onto an agent when requests are more complicated.
With the help of automation tools, your customer service team has more time to provide stellar service to the customers who need it most.
But getting the balance right is important. Consumers still value human interaction. Live phone conversations are still one of the preferred methods of contacting companies for help and support, even among younger age groups.
So leverage automation — but maintain a variety of communication channels to ensure every customer gets the experience they expect.
7. Track customer satisfaction metrics
You can identify issues with customer happiness by tracking customer satisfaction and retention rates using your customer relationship management (CRM) software.
You could track metrics like your net promoter score (NPS) and your customer satisfaction score (CSAT). You can keep tabs on how your customer service team is doing with resolution rate, first contact resolution rate, and customer effort score (CES) metrics.
By tracking customer satisfaction at all stages of the customer journey — and by analyzing customer behavior across your website and other interactions — you get to know which areas of your business have the biggest impact on customer happiness.
You also identify areas where there’s room for improvement and can then allocate resources based on your findings.
Follow the right customer KPIs and you can identify gaps in the customer experience — and close them — before they begin to erode customer happiness.
8. Create customer experience goals
Once you have a clear handle on how happy your customers are, you can set customer experience goals based on customer satisfaction metrics.
Choose goals you can measure — such as driving 10% more revenue from existing customers or lowering your average customer service response time to five minutes. Measurable, time-specific goals are easier to track and work towards because you have a clear definition of success.
Finally, everyone on your team should know what you want to achieve and why. Using internal communication tools to share your goals gets all employees on the same page. This is particularly useful for those who facilitate the customer experience.
In summary: 8 strategies to create happy customers and boost loyalty
Prioritizing the customer experience helps you keep customers satisfied. It also boosts brand advocacy and revenue.
Providing fast and convenient customer service, via a range of channels, is essential. You should also treat your customers as individuals and seek their feedback regularly.
While AI is a feature of customer service in many organizations, it’s important to harness its benefits while ensuring customers can always access an empathetic, human customer support agent.
These strategies are all crucial if you want to keep your customers happy. But they’re unlikely to be successful if you don’t also invest in the employee experience.
Workers who enjoy a positive employee experience provide a better standard of customer support. They’re more likely to go above and beyond to give customers the kind of service they remember positively.
To better engage your customer-facing employees, mobile-first employee engagement tools — such as an employee app — are key. They’re a place where you can share useful resources, where co-workers can connect with each other, and where you can build a strong company culture.
Using these tools, you improve the employee experience and employee engagement — which means you’ll find it much easier to satisfy customer expectations and win customer loyalty.
To learn more about communication tools that empower your workforce, including your customer-facing team members, explore Blink today.
