Customer satisfaction brings numerous advantages to businesses. When your clients are happy, they stay longer with you and they spend more on your products and services. Studies show that more than 80% of a business’ revenue comes from its existing clients so it’s crucial to keep them satisfied. And where do you count that attracting more clients costs five times more than keeping your existing ones happy?
But let’s get to the subject of this article, here is how you can boost customer satisfaction.
1. Treat All Your Clients As If They Were VIPs
You should customize your services to offer your clients the same experience you would want to receive. It’s quite simple to keep clients happy, all you have to do is to offer all of them an excellent treatment. Here are some approaches that can help you.
- You should keep your promises and maintain your integrity. If you promise them that your products will help them solve a certain problem, you should make sure they do it. Sometimes businesses forget their promise and fail to keep their audience happy.
- Assist your clients at every step of the way, from the moment they get in touch with your business to when they buy something
- Do not forget to thank your clients both in writing and in person
2. Your Support Team Should Talk Simply to Your Clients
Morris Pentel, the Chairman of The Customer Experience Foundation, recommends companies to use a simple language to communicate with their clients. There will also be times when your customer service team will not thoroughly understand what your clients say, and they should not be afraid to ask them for further details. Train your staff to remove jargon out of their language when they interact with their clients because it will help them complete their tasks quick and easy. When using confusing phrases they can irritate clients so it’s important your brand representatives to know how to communicate with your audience.
For example, your employees should say “I will find out for you” instead of “I don’t know what to tell you”. It doesn’t matter if you communicate in person or via phone with your clients, you should adopt this strategy if you want to retain them.
3. Lowering the Customer Effort Should Be Your Priority
You should continually search for ways to lower the effort your clients have to make to get your products or services. Research shows that an app is a great way to improve satisfaction and engagement rates. How can you lower customer effort with the help of an app? First, you should come up with an app that can be used on all mobile devices, no matter their operating systems. When using it, clients want to get discounts, so you should offer coupons and discounts to the users who prefer to make purchases through the app. You should hire app developer to create an app that allows your audience to order products and services with a click or two. Your app should also provide support to its users. Include a FAQ section that allows them to solve common problems without getting in touch with your support team.
By identifying the time gaps in your clients’ journey, you lower their effort and you create a straightforward experience. When you streamline a process, you improve the experience people have, boost their satisfaction and meet their emotional expectations. Therefore, you have greater chances to retain them as loyal clients.
4. Engage in Social Activities
Research shows that social presence, networking, crowdsourcing, and digital campaigns are a great way to boost customer engagement and to drive innovation. It’s advisable to run a company that encourages your staff to engage in social activities because they know your clients better than you, and they can establish a better relationship with them. They can come-up with ideas that facilitate networking because they know whom they have to attract. If you don’t know how to improve the relationship between your staff and clients, you should try to answer some questions that will help you figure the things out.
- Are your employees doing only what you instruct them or they do more?
- How would you define success?
- Are you running a successful business?
- Which social areas have your employees been involved in?
- How often your clients and staff connected the last year?
5. Check What Your Clients Say about Your Brand on Social Media
It’s crucial for businesses nowadays to track their customers on social media because they can check if they get positive or negative feedback. Most of the people use their mobile phones around 150 times a day, and when they are satisfied with the services and products a company offers, they will definitely turn to social media to share their opinions. The same they do if they have a complaint. The best way to use social media in your advantage is to create social media pages and to have professionals managing them. By using social media as one of your support channels, you can boost customer satisfaction. But for doing it you have to make sure that you are active and you respond to their messages and comments in less than 24 hours. To boost engagement you can share tutorials, hold live chats and even Q&A sessions.
6. Happy Employees, Happy Customers
The key to keep your clients satisfied is to keep your employees happy. Most of the times the clients mirror the mood of the advisor, and when your staff isn’t in the mood to show your clients how a certain product works, the customer is less likely to try to figure it out. So you should offer your employees prizes and incentives regularly if you want to keep them motivated. The smallest reward can make a difference and boost their morale. You should always look for ways to keep your team motivated to attract clients and to share with them the company’s values.
Community manager at Visual Contenting. Jacqueline loves to talk about social media trends, new technology and how they help businesses accelerate their marketing efforts.
