-min.png)
Creating a lasting impression on your customer's minds is all about leaving them with a sweet taste in their interactions with your brand. The human psyche is a complex interpreter that applies built-in filters to reality and derives a wide range of perceptions. Although it may sound daunting, being aware of this process helps you gain some degree of control over the perceptions formed in customers' minds about your brand with every interaction. With a bit of practice, you can hack it to improve the brand image significantly.
A happy customer is the best brand ambassador you can get. Satisfied customers return to the brand and spend an average of 140% more on the next purchase. They also spread your brand image by word of mouth and increase brand following, bringing in new revenue. Every business needs to become customer-centric and realize that they exist solely to serve customer needs. All other aspects of business are just a byproduct of customer-centricity. You build a goldmine where you strike gold, instead of building it where you want and expecting gold to come to you.
So how do you live longer in your customer’s minds? Well, for starters, there are plenty of brands who have achieved that and went beyond to become almost immortal by gaining a community following. Be it Apple, Google, Zappos, or Amazon, every success story is built on the firm foundation of excellent customer experience across their journey. How did they do that? It all boils down to a few pillars and frameworks that structure their business. Let's look at some.
Understanding your customers
This one is easier said than done! But it's also the most important. Unless you have a firm understanding of your customers' expectations, you cannot create a lasting impression by delivering on those expectations. This is where it gets tricky, like the chicken and egg dilemma. The customers themselves are predominantly unaware or unclear of their needs and expectations. How do you hack your way into such unknown terrain?
A fantastic way of discovering your customer's preferences is to do it with them. Engaging with customers during product promotions, educating them about the new features, conducting surveys, market research, and customer feedback are different routes to understanding your customers. Differentiating your products, market segmentation, and building customer profiles could help you gain insights into aggregate customer behavior.
Testing new features with customer feedback, engaging customers in product improvements, and making a sincere attempt at becoming customer-centric will go a long way in growing your business. A thorough understanding of your customers and their needs requires that you put them at the center of everything you do.
Customer Satisfaction
Understanding your customers directs you towards better customer loyalty, and tracking customer satisfaction ensures that you stay on course. Companies experience a flood of distractions in creating fantastic customer experiences ranging from competitive cost optimization struggles to product innovation challenges. It is quite easy to go astray, and most companies do veer away from the path of customer satisfaction. So how can you stay on track? You can do it by measuring customer satisfaction levels.
The best part of putting a number to something abstract like customer satisfaction levels is that it gets measured. In the words of Peter Drucker, what gets measured, gets managed. You can use several metrics to measure customer satisfaction levels like CSAT score, NPS, and CES. Most customer satisfaction metrics and methods are universally well known and easy to structure. Top it all with subjective customer feedback structured to monitor the business vitals, and you have your compass ready to point you north.
Staying connected
This is an absolute no-brainer! If you want to be remembered, stay in touch. Leveraging technology, you can take it a level up and stay connected with your customers. How connected? Everything from WhatsApp, email to social media are tools you can use to engage with customers if you think about it. Everyone has a digital presence, and people have a massive appetite for digital content. Naturally, connecting with your customers through multiple channels makes sense.
Creating WhatsApp helpline numbers, automated email responses, phone services, and engaging customers with high-quality digital content on social media are some of the ways of influencing customers using technology. Having multiple choices of communication gives customers a sense of accessibility about your business that improves customer trust levels and loyalty. It is all about improving customer perception and brand image.
Handholding
Customers are looking for a great experience that enhances the value of their money. It's no longer a transactional relationship that ends with a purchase. Customers expect handholding and a smooth experience throughout their journey with your products. Customer support is also a great way to complete the customer's journey and bring it back full circle to start anew. Good customer support is what brings your customers back to your sales desk for repeat purchases.
Supporting your customers is making them feel important by listening to their problems and addressing their pain points. Customer support is also a source of data to drive improvements in overall business operations that boost the bottom line. Excellent customer service is a combination of speedy service, priority issue resolution, listening to customers and understanding what they need, and tapping into resources like knowledge bank, historical data, and AI to improve the overall support service. Customer support is the icing on the cake that draws the customers back to your brand.
Conclusion
Creating a great impression is vital for any business to have customer loyalty and market share. More organizations are realizing the need to be customer-centric to grow and thrive after emerging from a tumultuous period of globalization-driven cost optimization. With an increase in buying power, customers are willing to pay a premium for guaranteed quality backed by a reputed brand that puts customer needs first.
At Wolken, we help our partners drive customer-centric helpdesk initiatives with our IT capabilities. Our helpdesk solutions have set benchmark standards in the industry by delivering the highest quality customer-driven services to enhance customer experience. Get in touch with our team to find out how we could help your business flourish.
