14 Ways To Improve Customer Experience For Small Businesses

What is one way to improve customer experience for small businesses? 

To help you improve customer experience, we asked business leaders this question for their insights. From having a customer success team to creating an emotional connection, there are several ways to provide the right customer experience.

Here are 14 tips to getting it right with customer experience:

• Focus on the Customer

• Train Your Employees

• Personalize the Experience

• Plan a Surprise with Exclusive Information and Offers

• Increase Innovation and be a Thought Leader

• Create an Emotional Connection

• Develop a Customer Success Team

• Respond to social media comments

• Create a FAQ Page

• Invest in New Technology

• Listen to Customer Feedback

• Use Online Chat

• Send Handwritten Notes

• Listening and Responding

Focus on the Customer

Customer service should be focused on the customer, not the company. You must evaluate every moment your customer interacts with your firm in order to improve the client experience. I strongly believe that customer-centric businesses are more successful than businesses that do not concentrate on customers. Customer satisfaction increases with good customer service. Positive word of mouth about you is spread by happy customers. Real-time assistance is one of the most effective ways to implement an exceptional customer interaction strategy.
You can make conversations more involved and improve client experience by employing digital customer interaction technologies.

Alisha Taylor, Alisha Taylor Interiors

Train Your Employees

We conduct customer training programs and initiatives that can help improve the abilities of our staff and educate them on our dental products, services, and target market. Their ability to interact with customers develops as a result of training. We also offer other incentives that can drive them to give excellent customer service.

Henry Babichenko, Eurodenture

Personalize the Experience

Customers want to feel like the companies they work with are aware of their demands, therefore it’s critical to personalize their experiences where possible. You can, for example, send consumers email marketing campaigns depending on the things they buy from your firm, send birthday and anniversary greetings and promotions, and remember their preferences so you can make purchase suggestions when they visit your website or store.

Randall Smalley, Cruise America

Plan a Surprise with Exclusive Information and Offers

Customers enjoy being the first to learn about company changes and exciting new products and services. Every once in a while, we send our customers a special surprise to keep them interested, talking and sharing about our brand online. Our customers like being part of our “Lash Gang” that gets first dibs on new products, services and special deals and offers.

Vanessa Molica, The Lash Professional

Increase Innovation and be a Thought Leader

To improve your customer experience, it’s important to stay innovative so that your clients feel confident they are working with the best. Unleashing innovation is equal parts art and science, and knowing when to pivot from the standard processes and unleash your creativity is essential to enhancing the customer experience. If a campaign is no longer working or a process isn’t producing the results that you’d hoped for, understanding when to shake things up can make all the difference.

But, being innovative doesn’t mean shooting darts in the dark. Do your research, compile data, and take a close look at the competition. This will ensure successful innovation that will position you as a trendsetter and thought leader in your field, which will enhance customers’ trust in your business and thus strengthen the partnership.

Greg Gillman, MuteSix

Create an Emotional Connections

Customers who experience an emotional connection with a company are more likely to recommend your product or service, return as a customer, are less sensitive to higher prices, and are less likely to search for an alternative to the company’s service or product. Creating an emotional connection with your business’s customers through customer support teams or other employees they interact with is one of the most effective ways to create loyal customers. Some ways to establish an emotional connection with your customers are by communicating in a personal and empathetic way and showing that you care about the problems your customers are experiencing.

Than Merrill, FortuneBuilders

Develop a Customer Success Team

One way to improve customer experience for small businesses is by developing a customer success team. A customer success team is responsible for the health of the customer once it has been passed on by the sales team. The customer success team makes sure that the customer is successful with the product, service, or platform and is a satisfied customer. This leads to more positive reviews, referrals, and word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

Chris Gadek, AdQuick

Respond to Social Media Comments

Don’t forget to pay attention to the comments people leave on your social media posts and respond to them, especially if people are asking questions or bringing up concerns. For example, if a customer who has bought one of your products leaves a comment indicating that he or she is not seeing the results they had expected, you should definitely reply with sincerity and a problem-solving attitude. Even if people leave positive comments, it’s still worth it to respond even with a short comment. Overall, letting your customers know that they’re being heard can go a long way in increasing customer loyalty.

Maegan Griffin, Skin Pharm

Create a FAQ Page

One of the easiest ways to improve customer experience for small businesses is to create an FAQ page. Before doing so, however, consider setting up an on-page chatbot function. This will enable you to understand the most popular questions, and help you formulate your FAQ page.

Limit the FAQ questions to 10 maximum, dedicate an entire landing page to them, and have an easily accessible header dedicated to them. With FAQs, conversions will increase, customer experience will improve, and site visitors will gain more knowledge from your brand.

David Wolfe, Olivers Apparel

Invest in New Technology

Customer experience plays a significant role in the success of an organization. There are many ways to enhance customer experience, but investing in new technology should be at the top of your must-do list. Thanks to technological advancements and automation solutions powered by Low-Code, RPA and AI capabilities, businesses have a number of options to rapidly respond to their customers’ requests. For example, you can use RPA to automate the most time-consuming tasks of the front-line customer support team, or AI to develop an efficient ticket routing system.

Spiros Skolarikis, Comidor

Listen to Customer Feedback

Customers want items and services that will simplify their lives. Improve your customers’ experience looking to your customer reviews or feedback for patterns and take action. When we continually heard from customers with disabilities that they found our text prediction software helpful, we decided to create a setting that best optimized the experience for those users. It’s a feature that we were happy to further develop and it all started by listening to customer feedback.

Guy Katabi, Lightkey

Use Online Chat

Speaking from personal and professional experience, offering a low-friction way for customers to actually talk to a real person is a huge plus for customer experience.  If you have a live chat, skip using a bot to try and answer questions and instead staff it with a real person – it will make a big difference and you’ll get both insights into our customers’ needs as well as much happier customers!

Sylvia Kang, Mira

Send Handwritten Notes

It’s important to show your customers that you care. It could be something as small as knowing your customer’s birthday, business/work anniversary, or more. By knowing these details, you can personalize and handwrite a note or a card when you hit milestones together. One of my favorite things to do is to send out handwritten holiday cards to my customers, along with something written in the card that’s more personal based on our relationship. It helps build the relationship even more in the long run.

McKenzie Nelson, Markitors

Listen and Respond

It’s critical to listen and respond to consumer feedback and requests when owning a small business. Simple surveys are a great way to communicate with customers to understand their needs and help shape parts of the business plan. Additionally, hiring problem-solving and personable employees will help improve customer experience. When you do this, customers feel heard and will be more likely to leave a positive review, purchase more frequently, and tell their friends about the business. Small businesses have a competitive advantage in that they don’t need advanced software and a large customer service team. They can be scrappy and give customers a world class brand experience.

Hayley Albright, Xena Workwear

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