5 ways to improve customer experience in 2019

People always prefer a brand that keeps them happy and satisfied, so improving your customer experience will be beneficial

‘Satisfaction’ and ‘happiness’ are the two critical factors that keep customers loyal to any brand and should be a be driving factors of your customer experience strategy.

People always prefer a brand that keeps them happy and satisfied. Happiness can be achieved when the product or service works perfectly and the customer service offered is exceptional.

Customers are also satisfied when a product or service is able to satisfy their exact needs, which means understanding what these are.

So, how can you provide a pleasurable experience to your customers so that they remember you and return again and again? Here are five great ways to improve the customer experience offered by your company in 2019: 

1. Leverage the power of artificial intelligence

Gartner has already predicted that by 2020, virtual agents like chatbots will manage around 85% of the customer interactions. A chatbot can help to transform the customer experience in the following ways:

• Chatbots can help minimize the effort it takes for a customer to resolve an issue.
• You can integrate them seamlessly in your website or app and people can start interacting with them directly, as though they are communicating with a real human.
• Chatbots are available 24/7 and it can handle an unlimited number of customers without getting distracted.
• They can help customers learn more about your products and services, as they fetch information directly from the related product page.
• Chatbots aren't driven by human emotion, so customers will always receive a polite and measured response.
• They can help to provide quick responses and deal with queries in a short amount of time, which is a vital part of a good customer experience.

Moreover, predictive personalization is on the rise and you must certainly use its power to increase sales. Predictive personalization is the ability to predict the action of the users based on their past behavior. In this way, you can present the most relevant content before your customer completes an action, allowing to improve conversions.

With the help of predictive personalization, you can easily predict the customer's next action at the very moment and take them to the next part of their journey.

[Image Source]

2. Work towards satisfying your customers' needs

Your customers should fall in love with your business and it can happen if you are able to satisfy their needs. Here are some ways you can do this:

• Ask for feedback whenever someone buys a product from you. Use both the positives and negatives to further optimize the customer experience.
• People take actions when they trust a brand so share information about your company and its values in an honest way while addressing the needs of your customers.

[Image Source]

• Make sure you deliver the products/services at the specified time and say thank you every time a purchase is made. Sending emails containing a thank you message can go a great way in improving a customer's experience and making them feel valued.
• While browsing your website, customers definitely don’t want to land on irrelevant pages, they don’t want to see annoying ads and don’t want to get engaged in a cumbersome checkout process. Keep the journey clean and easy to encourage conversion.

• Focus on metrics like customer lifetime value, search performance and app downloads in order to understand the true performance of your brand's connectivity with your audience.
• Optimize your website for mobile and keep the page loading speed as fast as possible to allow for mobile browsing.
• Collect and assess data to understand how your customers react to special offers. This will enable you to see what offers work, as well as what language drives action.
• Provide information to your customers as and when they need it, don't bombard them the minute they click through to your site or when you communicate with them, such as via email.

3. Streamline communication

Communication is the lifeline of a business. You need to choose the right communication mediums along with the right language and message to reach people at the time when they need you the most. In essence, you need to streamline the entire communications process and to create a seamless customer journey.

Here are some ways to effectively improve your communication:

• All businesses need to seek to effectively carry out communication between the in-house team and their customers. This is especially true in the case of retail stores. With tools like Zipline you track the communication between different stores, HQ and the field. This way you can get the right information to the people who need it and in the right way.
• Keep the communication proactive and ensure the customer is kept informed across all levels of the customer journey.
• Avoid taking short cuts when it comes to communication because today’s customers are smart enough to notice the difference and a lack of cohesive communication could cause them to dump the brand.
• It's easier to keep your customers happy when your employees are also happy. Tools like Workplace by Facebook are the future of internal communication, allowing you to communicate at scale using live videos and chats.
• Track the traffic sources coming to your website to see which channels are most effective. This will allow you to be better prepared to provide service via these channels. Use tools like Optimizely to check your messaging across channels in order to generate maximum engagement.
• Email still remains one of the best forms of communication. Send emails to your customers to help move them through the customer journey and keep them engaged. Mailchimp is my preferred tool for anything related to email marketing.

4. Provide enhanced security to your customers using blockchain

People prefer businesses that take the issue of their personal data security very seriously. This is where blockchain could come in handy. Here are the top reasons why blockchain impacts data security positively:

• The data is decentralized meaning small chunks of data are stored across a variety of computers over the network, hence data loss is never a problem.
• Blockchain offers stronger encryption and validation with full signatures across the node.
• With the help of blockchain, you can manage the customer retention process in real time. It also makes scalability easier without compromising security.
• Blockchain can effectively distinguish between real and fake news, and the data privacy concern is also solved.

The below figure accurately describes how blockchain works and adds to the security of the data:

It’s no doubt that people always prefer to become a part of a business when they feel the company takes every effort in keeping their data secure. So using blockchain and making sure your customers know their data is safe will be hugely beneficial to their experience.

5. Unleash the power of projection mapping to create an immersive experience

Projection mapping is a technology that is used to turn common objects into interactive 3D displays. This technology is immensely useful in events when you need to make your audiences feel like they are in a completely different environment. Your competitors won’t be able to match you and you can certainly secure the attention of your target audience.

Projection mapping is able to provide a more engaging experience with the help of visual simulation. This adds an element of interactivity and gains a better ROI in terms of publicity.

For example, as a car manufacturer, you can use projection mapping to display a 3D visual of your car where the users can touch and feel the different features of the car using an interactive touchscreen.

I have always believed that both offline and online marketing is important in order to turn any business into a brand. Hence, offline interactive experiences are extremely necessary to keep the audience's remain connected with your business.

Conclusion

Regardless of your business niche, customer experience is the most crucial factor when it comes to distinguishing your business from competitors. No matter, how exceptional your product quality is, if the overall customer experience isn’t good, the customers won’t return. It's important to remember that the customer is king and you need to take every step possible to offer a truly exceptional customer experience to bring them back, turn them into brand advocates and help your brand stand out.