The way a company handles the customer experience can make or break a company. Negative experiences can determine a company’s reputation, no matter how good the product or service is. However, without taking a close and thorough look at the customer experience, it can be difficult to determine where they went wrong.
Below, 15 ukbusinessupdates.com Business Council members share some ways companies can take a critical look at their customer experience to make improvements for the better.
ukbusinessupdates.com Business Council members share strategies entrepreneurs can use to view and improve the customer journey in their businesses.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Do the right thing
You will always find someone who is dissatisfied, even without a valid reason. Make it a habit to always look at how you can really improve your product and service. Knowing you’ve done your best to serve your customers wouldn’t get under your skin. If it does happen, do the right thing and deal with it, making sure to arrange things so that it is not a repeat. – Jean Paul De Silva Clauwaert, Web content development
2. Understand that every employee is in customer service
My take on a company is that every person in the company has customer service – from the secretary to the CEO. Everything that happens in the chain is customer service. That is why in my company we have adopted the AZ business model in which we control all processes from A to Z. This can be anything from manufacturing, logistics, etc. with minimal third party involvement. That way we also have control over the outcome of the customer service. – Rotem Eylor, Republic floor
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3. Find opportunities to learn
As an entrepreneur you can never really please everyone. When you look at your customer experience, take every opportunity as a learning experience. Don’t be overly harsh or critical, though, as there may be some customers who are simply unsatisfied. Ask your team how your processes can also be improved. – Hani Anis, kahani digital marketing
4. Offer a transparent feedback channel
Especially in the early stages, a CEO should be your product’s first Chief Customer Officer. Sort negative reviews, classify them into categories, resolve them one by one by providing clear answers and making sure there is a very clear feedback channel for users to provide feedback. This process must be transparent and efficient. – Edison Chen, Clapper Media Group Inc.
5. Optimize the customer experience for each market
Many companies are focusing all their attention on optimizing the customer experience in their home market and devoting less attention to their international opportunities. A modern customer experience strategy must consider experiences across all markets in which they operate. It’s never enough to just translate content and assume that international customers will respond the same as your domestic customers. – Richard Delanty, In23
6. Seek regular feedback to show customers that it matters
Ask for feedback early and often throughout the customer experience. This reinforces the idea in the customer’s mind that their feedback matters and is valued. Also address complaints directly through protocols that give complaints a high priority. This will help prevent things from spiraling downward online. – Clarence Lee Jr., Admonish health
7. Automate your review process
Combat negative reviews in this day and age by using review catcher software. The software will continuously ask for reviews, most of which will be positive if you are a decent company. So even if a negative review appears at some point, it will be surrounded by positivity. Automation is key. – Adelaide Waumboldt, ISET desk
8. Improve your employee experience
Your customer experience closely matches your employee experience. The closer employees are to serving customers, the greater the impact. Improving your employee experience should be related to your customer experience, especially when they can understand how their interactions shape that experience. Improving your customer experience without improving your work culture is pointless. – Doctor Donte Vaughn, CultureWorx
9. Respond appropriately to a bad customer experience
One bad customer experience doesn’t kill a company; rather, how you respond is what affects the company’s reputation. We recently turned our customer support team into the customer love department, and our satisfaction and response times have all improved tremendously. Really listening, being flexible and acknowledging mistakes is the way to always move forward and put the customer first. – Nicholas Vandenberghe, Chili Piper
10. Focus on the company’s culture and core values
It starts from above. The leader must focus on what the customer really wants and needs, and must believe that the customer’s experience is important. Then they have to instill that feeling in their staff. Usually, poor customer service points back to an organization’s culture and core values. Put your house in order and reward those who uphold the values. Develop those who don’t. – Natasha Miller, Full productions
11. Find problems and turn them into assets
One way to take a critical look at your customer experience and make improvements is to aggressively look for the biggest problems first and turn them into assets that can be used by the company. If it’s an inefficient process, add value at all points of inefficiency, including leading to and exiting the pain point. Attack is always the best defense. – Matthew Davis, GDI Insurance Agency, Inc.
12. Experience the customer journey yourself
Review your actual customer experience from start to finish on a regular basis. Ask your employees to walk you through the entire process as if you were the customer or customer and role play. You now have the full picture and can make adjustments where necessary to ensure a positive customer journey. – Adam Povlitz, Anago cleaning systems
13. Make sure employees are happy
Monitor both customer and employee satisfaction (e.g. via Net Promoter scores). There is a direct link to employee satisfaction, which is often a leading indicator of customer satisfaction. When employees feel good about their jobs and are committed to delivering quality work to meet customer needs, that leads to superior customer experiences. By tracking changes, you can catch issues before they upset customers. – Jerry Kan, Brilliant aging
14. Use a negative customer experience as a learning tool
Engage with consumers to understand where and why outages occurred, as this will enable you to change your approach in the future. It is also important to offer tangible solutions to solve the current problem so that you can turn a negative experience into a positive one. – Kelly Highney, Bug bite thing
15. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes
If you’re not the target audience, find someone you trust and put them through the same process as any other customer. See where they stumble, what confuses them and fix those things. Also understand that you will have bad reviews anyway, but as long as those are kept to a minimum, it won’t drag you down. The customer is not always right. – Aviv Shalgi, Solar energy simplified
