Poor experience with a brand can be fatal. A good experience is essential for a customer to return. Satisfied customers will recommend your site/brand/product/service/company to others, and people are much more likely to make purchases from somewhere that has been recommended by a friend. Satisfied customers are walking, talking billboard advertisement which are a great way to boost your business growth.
Every time a customer comes into contact with your organization/company, they will judge your brand and decide if it's worth their trust and money or not. These days one of the first contact points with potential customers is your website, so it is absolutely crucial in determining the overall brand experience. Site usability can have a key influence on this experience. When searching for a restaurant and presented with 2 options, which will be preferred – one with an online website that show menu including prices, good directions and a clear phone number, or one with just a map and a basic description of the type of food?
A Good website usability has several advantages. It ensures people are able to use the site – making purchases, signing up to subscriptions, etc. It also reduces points where people get lost or frustrated. After people finish using the site they walk away with a positive perception of the brand.
All further points of contact can add to, or detract experience of interacting with your brand. This means every touch point may ruin or reinforce your hard won trust. Touch points such as email communications, packing slips, how phone calls and emails are handled, all continue to influence your customers perceptions of the brand.
How can you ensure a good experience throughout? By diligently checking your contact processes and content. Checking your user experience will give you a clear idea where your communications are letting you down. Do a couple of test runs of what the entire flow of contact is like, for both a newly arrived potential customer and a returning customer.
Keeping track of all these touch points can be a hard work. But when it comes to business, customers' satisfaction comes first and it is your responsibility to make that happen. Whether you own a small business or a giant enterprise, customers' satisfaction comes before anything, and the best of customers are the ones who keep returning for more and promote you to other people in their circle that you can not reach by any means of advertising materials. If you cannot manage to keep track of your customers, they would probably think that you don't respect them as they had respected you in the first place when purchasing your product/service. And with a bad user experience, one person can negate many of the things you have done in your promotions and you will lose many potential customers.
Things that you should include:
- Automated emails. Both their content and time.
- Packaging and all accompanying letters and flyers.
- How customers do the most common tasks.
- All advertising methods.
- Call centre/customer service/support responses.
- Troubleshooting.
Common questions to ask for include:
- Communications: Do they make sense? Any risk of misinterpretation? Do they have all the information needed Do they reflect your brand? Are all communications consistent? Do you give the same information in your call centres, on emails and online?
- Processes: Have you made them as easy as possible? Are there points where what was planned and what happens differs? What must the customer do to solve common problems? Is it reasonable? Is there anything you can do to help?
All contact with customers is a conversation about your brand. Ensuring clarity and uniformity throughout the contact and good troubleshooting is the best way to ensure your customers will come back and, perhaps more importantly, help you in your business growth.