When you consider how technology can be applied to enhance a customers experience, you immediately think of state-of-the-art CRM systems and other leading edge, often expensive systems. The reality is that there are countless simple measures that can be taken to leverage existing or free technologies to improve your customers experience.
Don’t you hate it when…?
You call a bank, you are led through a series of instructions, you enter your credit card number… and when you finally speak to a real person their first sentence is: “Thanks for calling, can I have your card number?”. It’s quite simple, if the institution has the technology to carry the card details through with the call then do it, if not then don’t waste the customers time. One credit card company that does it right it Discovery Card – well done!
You call a company and receive the exact same call waiting music as every other company out there? Did you know that most entry level PABX systems support a simple input from a computer to play your very own music?
You visit a company with a fantastic flatscreen TV in reception… and it’s switched off? If you’ve invested in a TV such as this, keep it on & keep the content it shows interesting & relevant.
Ideas for enhancing the customer experience
Provide Choice. Let customers interact with your business in a way that suits them. Does the customer prefer personal phone calls, email, text messages, or post? Accommodate them!
Be Quick. When you have the customers attention, use it to maximum advantage. If you are sending a marketing email, get the message across quickly & concisely. Make the call to action easy and simple. If your marketing email promotes a new product, make it clear to the customer how they can order it. If you sent a promotional email, it doesn’t take much effort to personalize the email to the point where the call to action click (e.g.: Click Here to Order Yours Now) – doesn’t just take the customer to an order page, but it actually populates the order page with the Customers’ profile!
If you have technology – use it. As illustrated earlier – if you have a flatscreen TV, state-of-the-art PABX, or other enriching technologies in your business – use them!
Consider free/low cost technologies. Need a free CRM solution? Try Sugar CRM. Text Messaging presents an extremely low cost, non-intrusive method to interact in a personal manner with your customers. Many self-service pay per use text messaging services are available online.
Simplify life for the customer
What defines good customer service? Immediate, relevant responses to a customers’ requirements. Make life simple for the customer and you have a winning recipe. If the nature of your business allows you to provide online self-service functionality – do it. Empower your customer to help themselves and drive your own back office costs down. Embracing technology to deliver better customer service doesn’t equate to becoming inpersonal. Maintain regular person to person interactions with key customers. Log your interactions in your CRM system if you have one. Make the customer feel special and identify their specific requirements.
