4 mins read
According to industry veterans, it is easier and more cost-effective to have customers make repeat purchases with your brand, as opposed to onboarding more customers.
Surprising. One would expect most companies to work for a larger customer base rather than extract the most from their present clientele. But that’s precisely what this is: Quality over quantity.
A loyal customer base means more opportunities to upsell and cross-sell your products, fueling your growth. To build this loyalty, businesses need to invest in developing a dynamic customer experience strategy.
Debbie Akwara, founder of the NicheCX group, is a customer experience (CX) expert who has been helping businesses scale up by working on their CX practices. We picked her brain for some new insight on the topic.
Products vs product experiences
What sets a company apart is not only a high-quality product, but one that comes with good product experience. But the only way to understand what experience a customer is looking for is through regular feedback and communication.
In Akwara’s words, “If, as a customer, I get value from using a product, i.e., it solves my problem, for sure I will be happy.” She adds, “Customer feedback is highly valued because it is how businesses know if they’re delivering value to customers through their products or services.”
When a customer communicates that they are satisfied, it helps stay on track with the services provided. When they say otherwise, it is important to ask why and how to make those changes accordingly.
This process will boost your word-of-mouth marketing, with existing customers referring their friends and family to your business.
Hidden barriers faced by businesses
Brands often have a tough time communicating their intentions with their customers.
Akwara said, “The real barrier faced by businesses while building brand trust is brand motive.”
According to the Harvard Business Review, there are 10 high impact emotional motivators that cause customers or employees to trust a brand:
- Being the person you want to be
- Enjoying a sense of well-being
- Standing out from the crowd
- Protecting the environment
- Confidence in the future
- Sense of belonging
- Sense of freedom
- Succeeding in life
- Feeling secure
- Sense of thrill
If your business reflects any or all of these in your brand motives, you can build trust with your customers and employees effortlessly.
Customer service practices to achieve loyal customers
The practices that help businesses gain loyal customers can be put together as the LACID principle. ‘Lacid’ is an actual word, but to Akwara, it’s an acronym encompassing the practices she recommends for businesses to retain their customers. It goes like this;
L- Listen to the customer’s feedback and track their experiences before and after buying your products. Check whether your products add value to their lives or not.
A- Act according to their feedback. Make changes to your brand motives and products to match the customer’s needs.
C- Communicate with your customers to assure them their feedback has been looked into.
I- Innovate new ideas to meet customer and employee demands and keep the relationship alive.
D- Design structures and products that align your innovations with the customer’s demands, fear, and expectations.
Implementing self-service in the customer support department
Akwara’s thoughts about implementing self-service in customer support is that “it has to take into cognizance the organization’s customers, their preferred channel of communication and of customer support operations (people, processes and systems).”
What that means is that businesses should consider customer expectations and experiences. Simply adding self-service options to your organization might have a negative impact on your branding.
There are many companies that add self-service channels to their operations without consulting with the frontline operators. As a result, customers are driven away rather than being reeled in.
Simply adding self-service technology from big name brands to your business is not going to benefit you from any end. If you do apply it to customer support, make sure they are oriented towards improving your customer’s experience.
You can also work on designs and technology inspired by respected brands that use self-service in their businesses as a mode to improve customer support.
The bottom line
“My tip on how professionals can scale up their businesses effectively, is to let customer needs and not business needs inspire innovation. Don’t be caught in a vortex by Keeping up with the Kardashians and doing everything your competition does,” Akwara says.
What Akwara means here is that businesses should be customer centric. They should prioritize customer needs and expectations over everything else. It helps innovate and come up with products and services that help customers solve their problems and improve their state of life.
It’s even better if you provide a unique solution to your customers that no one else does. Akwara suggests businesses “start with the need of the customer, the gap in the market and how their solution can solve real problems that customers have.” Ultimately, this practice leaves a positive impact on the brand reputation and helps scaling up faster.
