6 mins read
Startups have taken over markets across the globe. More of them come to existence in a day than they used to over months.
In such a saturated market, startups need to stand out from the crowd. However, most of them focus on scaling up rather than building a loyal customer base. And the latter is what makes the difference.
But how do you ensure that your customers remain loyal?
The answer is quality customer experience.
Brad Cleveland, the founding partner and former CEO of the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), shared some insight on this with us. During our recent discussion on customer experience and startups, we talked about how startups can retain their customers.
How can startups earn customer loyalty right off the bat
The best way startups can ensure that their customers stick longer is to establish a broad understanding of quality customer experience throughout their organization. Cleveland says, “Build a customer-focused culture. Goals, objectives, what you celebrate—everything should be centred on customers.”
Every employee from the bottom to the top, must have this factor engraved in their mind. To ensure this, you must communicate your goals with them. Set benchmarks for customer experience so that every employee can strive for their fulfillment.
Ensure regular communication with your employees, and also your customers through direct conversations, social posts, product reviews, operational data, etc. The idea is to direct the company’s objectives towards the needs and expectations of the customers.
Ensuring a better customer journey
Find out ways to gain information about your customers’ experiences. Use surveys, forums, interviews, or employee enactments. In those enactments, ask your employees to act on what the customers go through during their experience with your business. In the meantime, surveys and interviews can help you get direct information from the customers and employees.
To support this concept even more, have departments collaborate to come up with better designs and processes that resonate deeply with the customers’ unmet expectations. Organise operations like marketing, billing, product management, contact centers, etc. to better suit the customers.
Lastly, you want to establish effective governance. Having control over how the departments churn out results matching your objectives, ensures a better buyer’s journey.
Maintaining minimal service costs without affecting quality
—Ignore customer service at your peril—
Customer service is your way of telling customers that you value your relationship with them and understand what they need. You can take the information that you gain from their feedback and use it to structure your designs and processes.
Hence Cleveland suggests—that customer feedback is something that gives you insight to what they experience, while customer service gives you the chance to respond accordingly. It is your golden opportunity to show your customers how much you value their inputs and needs.
He further says “Customer service can help you see where and how to improve, simplify products and services, fine tune processes, etc.—all of which can reduce the need for customer service. So, ironically, you have to make an investment in customer service to keep those costs down.”
With that, you get the significance of customer service costs. You must invest actively in customer service to keep the customers satisfied which can help you keep those expenses down.
The importance of customer feedback to improve overall service experience
We just read that customer feedback is a tool that tells you about the customer’s expectations. To know truly how important it is, you must listen to the experts here. In Mr Cleveland’s words, “feedback from customers and employees is like oxygen.”
He talks about the “Voice of customer (VoC) program” and finds it highly strategic. He further explains “the process and initiative captures a wide range of feedback, analyzes it, identifies priorities, and ensures the organisation is taking action.”
Nonetheless, there aren’t many organisations that give importance to customer feedback as much as they should. Those who do it at all, use surveys as the only means to gather feedback, and still don’t look into it.
Therefore, the key factor that’s going to help you stand out, is utilising customer feedback. Listen to what the customers have to say and design your processes in that manner.
Creating a customer-centric thinking in your organisation
Cleveland calls this “ developing a culture of customer advocacy.” It entails the actions you take to keep your organisation focused on doing what is best for your customers. In return, your customers advocate for you and your business.
To bring this practice into full effect, you must encourage it into your conversations and operations. Teach your employees to advocate for your customers’ needs and operate accordingly. Doing so might require you to realign your business’s vision, objectives, and functioning to do right by the customers.
Is Artificial Intelligence an ally?
AI is a powerful tool, yet not many companies are utilising it at its full potential. While it is quietly and significantly improving customer experience, its effects are not properly being looked into.
On the other hand, there are a few companies that have been making headway with it. AI has been working hand-in-hand with employees to improve the customer’s journey and enhance the human touch simultaneously. It has been able to reduce many working hours spent doing lengthy, repetitive, mundane and less important tasks.
According to Mr Cleveland, “most are working in tandem with employees, enabling technology to do what it does best—and humans to do what we do best.” Therefore he suggests us to look at AI as an ally rather than a replacement for humans.
The verdict
The single solution that will make startups survive and grow is focusing on providing their customers with the best experience possible. Give importance to customer feedback, and allow that insight to reflect in your services. The more you focus on satisfying your customers, the longer they will stay with you and even bring more with them. In return, your business will flourish not just today, but also in the long game.
If you’re a startup too, and wish to get the same results, we can help you do that. At Acefone, we focus tremendously on quality customer services which is why we have also been rated as one of the best in the industry by Capterra.
You can check out our solutions page to know more about our products and services. You can also book a call by simply following this link here.
About The Expert
Mr Brad Cleveland is a speaker, consultant and author. He has worked across 45 states and 60 countries, with clients like Apple, American Express, USAA, University of California. All the more, he still serves at the ICMI as an advisor, and other organizations as a keynote speaker, and workshop leader.
One of his bestselling books is– Leading the Customer Experience: How to Chart a Course and Deliver Outstanding Results. It has been nominated among numerous lists for best reads on CX in 2021.
