Nowadays, there is a lot of chatter about customer experience going around in the industry. Customer Service and Customer Feedback are given priority. But, brands have started to focus on customer experience also. So Let's discuss about Customer experience.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer Experience is defined by what the customer perceives of the brand based on their interactions. This interaction can take place at many levels like getting acquainted with the brand, purchasing the product, quality of the product, service received from the brand, etc. Example, a brand makes a high-quality product with the best packaging and advertising. However, the sales person selling the product behaves rudely to the customer. This will give a bad experience to the customer, which indirectly impacts the image of the brand.
You might think why a brand needs to worry about this situation. They can always get more customers. However, this approach is wrong. Let’s see how good customer experience can have a positive impact on customers.
Why do brands need to be careful about Customer Experience?
For any brand, the key to success is having more customers. The best kind of customers are the ones who are loyal, who keep coming back. Apart from trying to get more customers, brands need to retain the existing ones. The importance of focusing on customer experience is constantly increasing as a happy customer not only stays loyal to the brand, but also promotes the brand in their own way. As per a research conducted by Oracle, 74% of senior executives say that customer experience strongly impacts their brand loyalty. Whereas, 40% say that customers are willing to pay for a better experience.
Due to this direct relationship between Customer Experience and Brand Loyalty, brands need to focus on it.
How can brands know what their customers are feeling about their products or what more can they do to enhance their interactions with the brand? The answer is simple. Just ask them! And the best way to ask them is through Surveys.
Using Surveys to enhance Customer Experience
There are multiple ways a company can interact with the customers through surveys and obtain data about their product or services. Following are some ways to do the same:
1. General Feedback
Brands can ask the customers for feedback about their products or services. It will help in analysing what the customers feel about them. This data can further be used to take strategic decisions of making improvements in their products or services and increase customer likeability. These surveys are mostly conducted immediately after sale of the product or service, be it online or offline.
2. Mystery Shopping
Mystery shoppers use surveys to input their observations of how sales people sell products or services. Some survey apps also allow mystery shoppers to capture pictures and videos for authenticity of data. In this way, brands get a first-hand experience of their product sales as experienced by a customer.
3. Poll Surveys
It is important to keep customers engaged with the brand by increasing interaction. Creating Poll Surveys are a good method to do this. Example: ask your customers about their favourite design of the month or favourite ice-cream flavour of the week. This will give the customers a feeling that the brand is concerned about their likes and dislikes and works the same for the brand too.
4. Segmenting Customer Base
Very often, a company’s existing customer base might not be the same as their target customer base. Using surveys, brands can segment their customers as per their age group, profession, industry, etc. With this data, brands can make strategic changes to make sure that their customer turn loyal and return to them.
5. Periodic Observations
By using the same set of questions over a period of a year, surveys can be used to observe the change in the customer experience. They can compare quarterly or half yearly data and track number of new customers vs. number of returning customers.
6. Just for Fun
It does not always have to be work. Often companies or brands can create surveys to build a relationship with the customer. Asking them about their favourite holiday destination, favourite cuisine, etc. will bring a personal feel to the brand-customer relationship. However, this data might not necessarily be important to the brand, but will help in increasing customer experience.
With all this data, brands can identify the gap between the customers and their product. They can further make marketing strategies or make the right changes in their product to bridge the gap and ensure the customers have the best experience with them. After all, a happy customer is what a brand needs.
GoSurvey is a one stop destination for all your survey needs. Be it creating surveys for a product or a service, or mystery shopping, GoSurvey has done it all. We have catered to many companies across multiple industries helping them interact with their customers and drive them in a direction to increasing Customer Experience.
