Customers are the heart of any business in any industry. Without them, a business will not grow or at the very least, survive. That is why taking good care of loyal customers is something business owners put a high importance in.
To provide the best customer experience possible, businesses should innovate and have a concise idea management system. But contrary to popular belief, innovation and improvement are two completely different things. Sure, both are suggesting to change things for the better but the entire process isn’t the same.
Enhancing Customer Experience: Improvement vs Innovation
The difference between improvement and innovation is more evident in providing a great customer experience. The idea of improvement mainly focuses on the betterment of an existing process or agenda. It is incrementally done, taking one step at a time to reach the desired end goal.
In terms of improving the customer experience, businesses would want to hear customer feedback to know where they lack. This way, their idea management team can tweak their existing services to fit what most of the customers want. It involves removing systematic flaws to positively shift the business’ performance.
For instance, to enhance customer experience, some fast food chains tend to improve their ordering systems. Some fast food chains allow customers to order online and then pick it up from the store to save them from falling in long lines.
Another version of this improvement is where decided in-store customers can order through touch screen monitors and instantly get a queueing number right after as opposed to falling in line to order from cashiers.
Innovating customer experience on the other hand is building a completely new strategy from scratch through rigorous brainstorming of a business innovation management team. Although this will take more time than improving what already is, innovation brings something different from what customers have already experienced in the past.
Innovating customer experience can give businesses an edge over their competitors, providing more efficient and optimized systematic methods that could benefit many aspects of the business in the long run. It could be through the help of new innovation software or idea development tools.
For example, instead of improving the ordering system to avoid ordering queues as we have mentioned above, what if businesses innovate a completely new process to get rid of the ordering queues entirely?
But this doesn’t mean a change in the existing ordering system at all. It could only mean shifting an aspect of your business to reach this end goal. A fast food chain can invest in machinery to avoid long ordering queues. For instance, buying more grillers for their best-selling burgers could significantly reduce long lines since the product will be more accessible.
Innovating Customer Experience Beyond Improvement
1. Redesigning Onboarding Process
How you handle customers after a purchase is more important than how you treat them when they inquire since they are already paying customers.
It is a given that the customers might have a lot of questions regarding your product and services when they first try it. Thus, providing them with an innovative onboarding process will be appreciated.
For example, you can give out cards with QR codes redirecting to video tutorials and demos on how to use your product. You can also provide them with tips and tricks in the process. You can make this experience somewhat like they attended paid online classes for free.
2. Gamify the Pre and Post-Purchase Experience
Applying gamification to your website can be an excellent idea. Sometimes websites can be dull and unappealing. Gamifying them can make it easier to provide fun and engaging customer support. And there are certain elements that you can use to gamify your business website.
For instance, you can have games within your application. Have points that players can earn and level up. If possible, you can make the points redeemable with real-life items. This will make keeping your brand in your customers’ minds easier and encourage return purchases.
3. Provide Omnichannel Support
A business must invest in omnichannel support. Customers will contact you using the channel that’s most accessible to them. For instance, they might find social media more effortless than picking up the phone. Integrating all the channels into one can improve your services.
An omnichannel support system can help increase your response speeds. With such a channel, you can view messages from Facebook messenger and Twitter all from one point. This will help you reduce communication breakdown and, in the end, increase customer satisfaction.
4. Adopt Powerful Customer Service Tools
There’re new technologies that can complement your customer service team. This is especially if your customer base grows and your support team can no longer handle them effectively. Using AI tools will make it easier to simplify support and increase efficiency, and speeds, which will help boost satisfaction.
You don’t need a huge customer support team if you can invest in technology. An extensive support team costs a lot of money and might be unaffordable to a small business. However, AI is a one-time investment; you’ll only incur small costs for regular maintenance of the tools you use, like chatbots.
5. Creating a Personalized Experience
Your business should ensure there’s always a connection with its customers. Even though you might want to digitize everything to increase efficiency, don’t lose the bigger picture. Technology might be great, but it shouldn’t be robotic and phase out the human touch from your business.
Personalize your messages and emails by addressing customers by their names. These might look like small steps, but they impact customer experiences. Feeling the human touch behind a brand helps build a stronger customer-business bond.
Conclusion: Customer Experiences Can Boost Business
Innovating your customer experience can help your business achieve a lot of growth. And it isn’t as daunting as you might be thinking. This article has provided a roadmap to help you stay ahead of your competitors by innovating your customer experiences to ensure efficiency.
Ensure you don’t overlook technology when looking to improve customer experiences. Innovative software can help you develop great ideas that will boost your business. Also, ensure your software pack has organization, management, and idea development tools.
