5 Ways to Optimize Your Customer Experience

One of the main reasons consumers choose one brand over another is trust. Trust helps consumers move through the sales funnel, from initial awareness and sales to advocacy and support. 

When businesses fail to instill trust, it’s because they don’t understand what their customers’ needs are. This usually leads to poor customer experiences and lack of customer loyalty.

To build a strong relationship with your customers, the most important thing to remember is that it’s not just about improving products and services and ensuring short wait times. It’s also about understanding what customers experience through every step of the buying process: From the moment they consider a purchase to receiving the product or service.

Why It’s Important to Improve Customer Experience

Customer experience is a measure of how satisfied customers are when they engage with a business or its products or services. Studies show that a business with good customer experience has a 17% higher chance of growing year after year as compared to businesses that offer poor customer experience. (QuestionPro)

Prior to the digital age, consumers solely focused on quality and price before they made a purchase. Today, statistics show it’s that customer experience has the biggest impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Consumers want to engage with brands that are credible, dependable and offer the products and services they guarantee. The opportunity for businesses lies in the capacity to meet and exceed their customers’ expectations. 

When interacting with a business, a customer passes through various touchpoints. There are many touchpoints before, during and after a purchase. At any touchpoint, a single poor experience can deflect all the efforts a business has put into the interaction.

Let’s look at how to make your customers’ experience the best it can be. 

How to Optimize the Customer Experience

With studies showing that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product or service if they have a great customer experience, businesses need to understand exactly how to optimize their customer experience. (Smart Insights)

1. Getting To Know Your Customers 

Satisfying your customer’s needs is how customer experience is enhanced. So, a businesses needs to understand exactly what their customers want, from the first interaction through after-sales support. Make sure your team is using the right tools like surveys, online analytics, and sales data to get an accurate picture of who your customers are. 

2. Improving Website Performance

With increasingly more consumers shopping online, website performance is part of the overall customer experience. Businesses must invest in maintaining website performance to ensure the best experience possible for visitors.

Regular optimization is a necessity. Ideally, a website’s pages should load quickly, be easy to navigate, be compatible any device and have no broken links. 

3. Adopting Dynamic Innovations 

In today’s fast-moving and tech-driven retail world, consumers crave convenience. Brands that stay abreast of the latest and greatest innovations will have the happiest customers. For example, due to the emergence of chatbots and digital assistants many customers have come to expect support around the clock. Those that invest in providing their customers with digital 24/7 support options will reap higher customer satisfaction scores. 

4. Working As A Team

A business is only as strong as its employees. Extraordinary experiences come from the people who work for a business. Therefore, businesses have to work to build a customer-centric culture. It is also important to supply employees with the right tools and resources to successfully serve your customers.  Reward positive behavior, and invest in employee training.

5. Enhancing Communication

Maintaining effective communication with customers is key for a great customer experience. Communication includes all the ways a business engages with consumers, whether through a live chat session, marketing emails, social media interactions or a phone call. The easier it is to approach and engage with a business, the better.

The above points may seem like a straightforward process, however, many businesses do not have the capacity or resources to implement the steps effectively. As a result, many businesses are now investing in CTO-as-a-service to assist with the process of enhancing customer experience. CTO as a service involves hiring a chief technical officer (CTO) on a part-time basis.

Do not hire customer service agents without pre-employment call center assessment

The Role CTO-As-A-Service Plays in the Process of Enhancing Customer Experience

The responsibility of the CTO is to lead the technical and research and development teams of a business. The CTO’s tasks include identifying any technological needs and goals of a business and utilizing the capital investments of a business to achieve its objectives. But how does this improve the customer experience?

• Assisting With Data Around Customer Needs 

Understanding customer needs is a very important part of bettering the customer experience. A CTO works alongside a team to gather valuable data around customer requirements and what they expect from the purchasing journey. 

• Building Software Architecture 

Software plays a key role in how customers engage with a business. One of the responsibilities of the CTO, as the tech leader, is to design and build robust software solutions, including websites and mobile apps, that feature excellent user experiences.

• Selecting The Best Technology 

As mentioned previously, consumers are increasingly looking for innovative technology to enhance their shopping experiences. A consulting CTO can advise which innovations are most suitable for a business, whether investing in chatbots and virtual assistants or adopting more advanced technology such as virtual reality and augmented reality. 

• Optimizing The Workflow For A Business 

CTO services involve developing efficient structures and processes to allow employees to focus on their core tasks. In turn, this leads to a more focused approach to customer service and, ultimately, an improved customer experience.

Many businesses wonder how to find a CTO with the right experience and skills for their needs. One of the best ways is to hire a remote CTO  through outsourcing. Not only is this a cost-effective method, but businesses also have the opportunity to source candidates that are vetted and highly skilled.

Improved Customer Experience for Future Success

Businesses are starting to understand the incredible benefits and value of offering a high level of customer experience by hiring CTO-as-a-service. This does not only include how businesses interact with customers and prospective customers throughout their purchasing cycle, but also the way they develop the overall experience to boost conversions, enhance loyalty and improve support. Where businesses once believed that separating themselves through offering quality products and efficiency alone was the best way to stand out, distinction today is rooted in optimizing customer experiences to provide a holistic visitor journey.