10 Customer Experience Examples You Can Learn From
Customer experience is vital to the success of your business. A single negative experience can have a huge impact on customer retention. In the contact center niche, 41% of customers end a relationship with a product or service merely if they have to repeat the same information to different reps.
Customers can communicate, complain or enquire online via live chat, on social media, on the phone, and in person. It’s important for a business to understand who they are, what they want, and why they’re contacting you regardless of the channel. As the number of touchpoints, a customer can make use of increases, creating a memorable and positive customer experience feels more complicated than ever.
It doesn’t need to be. Start by getting the basics right: delivery methods, an online booking system, customer support, call handling, social media management, and inventory knowledge. To help with that, here are 10 customer experience examples you can learn from.
1. Put Your Customers First
For over twenty years, Amazon has led the way in e-commerce with an unrivaled inventory and competitive prices. What’s made them a legendary brand, however, is their focus on customer experience. The brand combines competitive prices, easy purchasing options, next-day delivery, and, most importantly, near-perfect customer service.
How did they get here? Simply, by ensuring that the needs of their customers direct every business decision. While “the customer is always right” feels like a cliche, it’s an ideology that forms the very foundation of the Amazon empire.
The brand’s return policy was created with consumers in mind. There’s no cost or extra effort required from a customer. If a package gets lost, Amazon sends a replacement. If a customer has an issue, they have a dedicated help page. If you’re a Prime member, you’re guaranteed next-day delivery on millions of items.
“We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer-obsessed,” says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “We start with what the customer needs and we work backward.”
Excellent customer service should start at the top and permeate every level of your company, sometimes with the great of excellent remote work tools. Your customer’s happiness should come first, even if it means being patient with profits. And, serve them in the way they want to be served, not the way that’s convenient for the company.
2. Personalise the Customer Experience
91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations. Constructing a personalized experience comes from collecting quality data and analyzing it intelligently through an Apache Kudu architecture. Many businesses today are merging their consumer data with new advertising technology to engage with consumers in more innovative ways than ever.
Personalization can be displayed in a number of ways, some of which are more obvious than others. Like how homeware and fashion retailer, Laura Ashley, made a customer's day. The brand took note of the bedding they'd ordered and included a pair of matching socks for free to go alongside their order.
Ensuring that all branches and service centers have access to centralized information was vital. It ensured that, in this case, customer service was able to liaise with the distributor, and a little extra treat was included. With the right customer retention guide, you can find ways to thank your customers for their patronage, encouraging them to act as brand ambassadors. Things like loyalty schemes, discount vouchers, and free additions to their orders have a proven success rate. If you know enough to make it personal, go for it.
3. Provide an Omnichannel Experience
Today's consumer connects with a company on their mobile, over email, via social media, on the phone, via conference call, and with video chat. This omnichannel experience demands a consistent approach to ensure the customer's experience is the same no matter the platform.
Disney continues to stand out with its omnichannel experience. This is evident in the customer journey one makes at Disney World. The smooth end-to-end journey begins when someone visits their website to purchase tickets.
Before visiting Disney World, customers receive their Magic Bands in the post. Each family member or visitor is assigned their own Magic Band, which provides them with an experience like no other. The Bands function as a room key, ride reserver, and payment method.
Photos also get stored on the Magic Band and can be accessed later. And, in a true end-to-end customer experience, Disney follows up with visitors once they're home. They get thanked for coming and sharing their photos with discount offers for a future visit.
The takeaway here is that from the moment a customer makes their initial inquiry; they're reminded of the worth of their purchase. They're assured of support, and it's the little things that make the most significant difference. Know the journey your customer goes on, on every device, and ensure they're given all they need from start to finish.
4. Organize Your Service Structures
Apart from being responsive to customer concerns, you have to provide the right support to the people who need it. Investing in customer service can be incredibly valuable - both for improving brand perception and minimizing customer attrition rates. Remember, you're not just spending money on managing existing relations here.
Pull the data from your ML pipeline on how many leads or potential customers ask questions before buying. You may already have a sales team dedicated to the pre-sale nurturing process. The person or organization running your contact center or IT help desk should be your first port of call.
Along with the relevant parties, investigate:
- Are first-contact and service resolution service levels at an acceptable standard?
- Is the support team equipped to handle customer inquiries promptly?
- Consider your market segments. Does a customer get in touch via email get a faster response from a CS rep than one who messages you on Facebook chat? Do you get a larger volume of questions on social media? If both answers are yes, it may be worth reallocating resources to ensure better coverage.
- Can customers communicate in the channel of their choice, and is the process seamless? How are they mainly communicating, shopping, booking appointments, or asking for more information?
- What quality assurance controls are in place? Some have realized that manual QA is no longer as useful as it once was. In essence, complaints or queries may be slipping through the cracks, and investigating calls or tickets manually is incredibly time-consuming. Voice analytics may serve as a potential solution if you're ingesting large amounts of calls.
- Do our representatives have access to the information they require to deliver the best possible assistance? When a client asks for assistance, you want your staff to have fast access to their previous contact notes and purchase history. You must also ensure that while creating contracts for small business, everyone is satisfied. If not, do they have a good internal communication system?
- Do our reps have enough data on hand to provide suitable solutions? They'll need immediate access to prior contact notes and purchase history, so the customer doesn't need to repeat themselves.
Making changes to your workforce or improving your customer service with CRM data integration solutions are big decisions. However, if you've completed your investigation and know the changes you wish to make will provide a tangible benefit to your CX, it's time to get it done.
5. Form a Tangible Bond
The most enduring customer experiences are ones that establish an emotional connection with customers. Companies that provide this connection with customers outperform the sales growth of their competitors by 85%.
A great example comes from Zappos, the online shoe store. A customer ran late when returning a pair of shoes due to a death in the family. The Zappos' CS team took care of the return, arranging a courier to pick them up without charge. They also delivered a bouquet to his door with a note offering their condolences.
You can always add a human touch.
How does your business begin to create customer connections? It starts with listening to your customers and showing that you genuinely care. You'll soon uncover their needs, challenges, and pain points. Make use of social listening tools like Hootsuite or SocialMention.com that follow relevant hashtags to monitor the conversations people are having about your brand. That’s alongside making your actual interactions with customers - in person or over the phone - more personal.
6. Make Use of AI
You know how vital customer data is, but there are other ways of getting it. You no longer have to rely on only surveys, feedback forms, and questionnaires. In fact, AI and legacy system modernization give us ways of collecting in-depth customer intelligence using a basic neural network without even lifting a finger. US-based mattress company Casper, for example, released a free chatbot specifically for insomniacs.
All customers had to do was text "Insomnobot3000", and the Insomnobot was there for them at all times of the night to help them fall asleep through live chat.
Using the Insomnobot3000 meant Casper could gather mobile numbers and send promotional offers and discounts for their comfy mattresses. As a result, Casper netted $100 million in sales within the first year of launching the chatbot for support.
Netflix uses predictive analytics to deliver show recommendations to its subscribers. Google uses AI to help redirect drivers around traffic jams. The potential of the tech is almost limitless.
Discuss with your product and development teams where you could incorporate AI, and update your agent agreement template if you wish to collaborate with an agency that can assist you with AI. This may be done to assist with data collecting, scheduling software solutions, and general customer satisfaction.
7. Collect Data from the Source
By maximizing your customer interactions, you'll better know their interests and what they're looking for. Today, there are multiple online options for food and beverage brands, so those in that space really need to know how to stand out.
The president of SuperValu conducts a monthly roundtable discussion with twelve customers picked at random using a prepared questionnaire. It comprises questions related to product quality, service levels, ad promotions, and pricing.
The feedback is then used to examine the store managers and their service and to enhance the procedure of strategic planning for the company.
It's helpful to offer multiple channels for customers to drop feedback. It’s crucial to take their opinions seriously. Conduct regular surveys (online or offline) to collect customer feedback and impart them directly into strategies. It would be best if you made the customer experience a strategic objective in business practice.
8. Deal With Customer Service Problems Quickly
Adobe had an outage due to an issue with Amazon Web Services and posted a tweet about it before they started getting inevitable customer complaints. However, they also got creative with it.
While some Tweets indeed asked when Adobe would be up and running again, most replies focused on the adorable puppies.
It's usually better to acknowledge a problem before it snowballs, to let your customers know you're aware and are attending to it. Most customers understand technology by its very nature doesn’t work all of the time and appreciate it when you keep them in the loop. In this case, also adding some humor helped.
9. Straightforward Communication
Is your industry saturated with jargon and tech talk? Your customers may be drowning in a sea of confusing terms, just waiting for someone to throw them a lifebelt.
U.S. insurance company, Oscar, has based its brand on 'speaking human'. Their model is to simplify the often complex task of purchasing health insurance.
Customers enter their details – income, number of dependents, and location – and they're delivered a quote in seconds. Oscar's business is expanding as we speak, with customers preferring an insurance-buying experience that simplifies the process.
Remember, the people you're dealing with may not want to hear any acronyms, buzz words, or technical jargon. Keep it conversational, direct, and friendly.
10. Empower Your Own Team
Lastly, it’s essential to create an environment that promotes moments for your staff to create great CX. Make use of tools like salesforce integration software to have a smooth workflow for you and your team.
Grocery store chain Publix is renowned for its friendly staff. It's the biggest employee-owned company in the U.S., and also one of the most profitable. The chain offers staff career paths and stock options. That creates a sense of engagement and investment that opens the door for daily excellence in customer service.
The majority of excellent CX happens at ground level. That makes it vital for those in customer-facing positions to feel as much a part of the team as a manager.
Fundamentally, excellent customer service comes from genuine care for your customers. You can’t make it up. With so much choice for the consumer, refining, delivering, and investing in CX is vital.
About the author
Yauhen Zaremba is Director of Demand Generation, the best electronic signature app in the market. He’s been a marketer for 10+ years, and for the last five years, he’s been entirely focused on the electronic signature, proposal, and document management markets. Yauhen has experience speaking at niche conferences where he enjoys sharing his expertise with other curious marketers. And in his spare time, he is an avid fisherman and takes nearly 20 fishing trips every year.