The satisfaction levels of your customers are at the heart of your business. For too long, businesses ignored customer experience as they simply got by on being the only service-provider in the area. With the wealth of options available to consumers thanks to the Internet, however, the power has shifted to their hands. Here’s three ways you can improve your customer’s shopping experience.
Embrace Technology
If you could sum up the benefit of technology in one word, what would it be? Convenience. Embracing the latest in tech will mean you’re customers can more easily find the products or services they’re looking for. Developing a mobile app is a great way to help shoppers complete transactions on the go and taking advantage of inventory management software will help keep you on top of your company’s stock levels.
New payment methods are becoming one of the biggest trends affecting businesses right now, and installing a credit card terminal is one of the simplest ways you can encourage spending. Recent studies show that people spend as much as 18% more on transactions when using their card over cash. Companies like Card Cutters can produce mobile card readers, allowing you to take advantage of this finding. These terminals are much cheaper than previous machines so they’re ideal for small business working on a budget.
Reward Loyalty
We’re all familiar with companies offering the best deals to new customers in an effort to entice new shoppers. All this does, however, is encourage customers to regularly switch between rival competitors. Employing a retention marketing strategy is a much smarter, long-term goal in which you reward your customer’s loyalty to your brand.
Some of the ways this is commonly done is by setting up a loyalty “points” system or offering discount codes via email to your longstanding customers. If you decide to engage in the latter, make sure you target the services to the customer’s interests. Information, like age, gender, and past transactions, will give you a better idea about which of your products are best suited to them.
Seek Feedback
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, is seeking customer feedback. The key to this is engaging with your customers and actually putting forward the measures to change your business strategy to match their needs when you can. No-one knows how to improve your company more than your own customers, so make sure you take the time to elicit feedback from them, be it through social media, surveys, or product reviews.
You should work on continually improving your customer experience not purely on good will, but because it’s in your company’s best interests. Failing to do so will result in stagnation and being left behind by your competitors.
