Don't let your customers have a better experience somewhere else or you might lose them forever.
Introduction: Why it is important to measure customer experiences
What might customers expect when they arrive at your business? A clean and welcoming environment? Helpful staff? Affordable prices? If your customers don't feel like these are the things you offer, they're not going to come back.
A lot of businesses neglect to measure customer experience, but it is important to understand what customers think about the services they are receiving. When you know what your customers want, there is a better chance that you can give them exactly what they need.
Metrics: Why not just look at the numbers?
It is important to measure customer experiences for several reasons. It helps companies understand and meet the needs and wants of their customers, it provides insight into what needs to be improved or changed at the company, and it informs managers better about how their teams are performing.
There are many methods of measuring customer experience, but what does it all mean for the companies? It's hard to get an accurate sense of how customers feel about your company. So instead, why not just get the data and look at the numbers?
One way is to measure customer sentiment through social media, which can be good or bad. This then lets you know what needs improvement on your end. You can also watch for mentions in online reviews (From Google, Yelp to G2Crowd and Capterra) or in general conversations.
How do you measure customer experience?
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT),
- Net Promoter Score (NPS),
- Customer Effort Score (CES)
What are the characteristics of a satisfied customer? Non-tangible attributes such as empathy, attentiveness, availability, listening skills, and product knowledge can all affect how satisfied a customer feels. But what about tangible attributes such as price and quality? And who's to say one person's satisfaction with a product is more or less than another person's satisfaction? Yet we measure customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and they matter.
It can be difficult to measure customer experience, but two popular methods are the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES). NPS measures how likely customers are to recommend a product or service. A negative score means that customers are not satisfied with their experience, while a positive score means they would recommend it to others. CES also measures customer satisfaction but can also make predictions about how customers will behave in the future based on their experience.
The Customer Effort Score is a simple and direct way of assessing the effort you put in before you get your desired result. It is an index to measure customer satisfaction and it can be used to understand and improve your interactions with customers.
What are common mistakes?
Ignoring customers, focusing on the wrong things.
Businesses should start by broadening their customer base by targeting the right people at the right time. Develop Personas for their main customer types. Once they have a better understanding of their customers, businesses should focus on improving their customer experience and satisfaction levels.
There are many ways that businesses can improve their customer experience and satisfaction levels. One way is to find out what frustrates and worries customers and then try to fix those things. Always be answering the question, why. Another way is to be more transparent about almost everything, policies, and other information about your company. People respond to the fact that you are treating them as partners and not always keeping them in the dark.
Many businesses make mistakes when it comes to customer experience - even though they should be aware of this and aim for the highest level of customer satisfaction. Most people don't go back to a business because they had a bad experience, but instead because of a good or better experiences elsewhere. It is important to not only provide excellent service, but also ensure your customers are well informed about what's happening. Don't let your customers have a better experience somewhere else or you might lose them forever.
Lastly, many businesses have a lot of misconceptions about what a customer experience should be. From not being able to answer questions about the products they sell, to not having enough staff on hand to help customers, there is no shortage of mistakes that can be made by those who provide customer service. Especially with all the inertia every business if feeling today during the pandemic, keeping a close watch on these things and not turning a blind eye to them is key. The sad thing is that many of these companies don't even realize the mistakes they're making as they go on with their day-to-day life. Business owners today need to be more objective but also talk to more and more of their customers to really hear what they need. Listening to customers is one of the most eye-opening experiences a business owner can have.
Conclusion: All companies need to be aware of customer experience.
Customers are the most important part of any business, there is no point in having an awesome product if nobody ever buys it. When customers have a bad experience with your company, they will not come back and will tell their friends. Most businesses do not know how to measure customer experience because they do not want to hear the reality of how their customers feel.
