How can your SME exceed customer expectations? This post reveals three important ways to achieve this feat.
Customers crave the friendly, informed service. When your customers are happy, they will spread the word through social media and referrals. The current competitive business landscape is incredibly competitive and it is becoming even more critical to meet and exceed client expectations.
No matter how you want to see improving customers’ expectations has an impact on your business’s bottom line. In a survey by Deloitte, customers are likely to spend 140% more after a positive experience that exceeds their expectations.
What Do Customers Want?
According to the 2018 Salesforce CX Report, 80% of customers believe a company’s experience is just as essential as its products and services. This means customers are willing to move to alternative brands where a brand’s service does not meet their expectations.
What do rising expectations look like? Despite the increasing number of self-service options, customers still want to have access to live-agent support. Frustration spikes when customers are unable to reach a live person for support, especially when they need immediate solutions. For most customers, they say the most important aspect of a good customer service experience is speaking with a knowledgeable and friendly agent. The bottom line is that customers want their experience to meet their expectations, whether they use self-service or need assistance from an agent.
However, meeting expectations and resolving difficulties are no longer sufficient to retain clients. To win over customers, businesses must go above and beyond. Otherwise, they may experience customer churn. While client expectations vary, each seeks out high-quality goods or services and expects the best in return.
3 Ways SMEs can Exceed Customer Expectation
Humanize Your Customer Service
Everyone desires to be recognized. They want to believe that the people in their lives are thinking about them, that they are being considered, and that they are being understood.
Customers are interested in brands that know their specific demands and preferences. Why do they share personal information with their preferred businesses? This is because they hope to receive more personalized experiences. Customers, in fact, place a higher value on personalized experiences. According to a recent Oracle study, 68 percent of consumers value personalized experiences based on their tastes and preferences. Personalized experiences have a way of surprising and delighting customers because it demonstrates that the brand “knows” them on a more personalized level. Going above and above to make your customers feel seen, heard, and cared for may have a huge impact on their experience as well as your business’s bottom line.
Collaborate With Your Customers
Customers that have an emotional attachment to a brand have higher chances of returning. So as a brand, you should strive to remain top-of-mind in your customers’ minds and establish an emotional connection with them. Believing that there are other alternative brands that customers may try out should drive you to improve your overall brand experience. However, an approach to forming a strong bond with clients is co-creating with them and involving them in designing the experience they want.
Working closely with your customers allows you to create a memorable customer experience that exceeds your expectations. During the journey, invite customers to give feedback on positive experiences and suggest areas for improvement.
Create Innovative Ways To Offer Customer Service
To exceed your customers’ expectations, you need to Innovate to meet the needs of your customers. But first, you have to understand more about your clients in order to reimagine your customer experience. Investigate how your customers live and work, as well as what motivates them. What are the emotional, social, and identity-related factors that your customer is surrounded by? Creating fresh questions to ask your customers that are crucial to gaining a comprehensive awareness of them. Use the new knowledge to come up with fresh ways to meet and surpass your consumers’ expectations in unexpected ways. Design services to create a lasting impression that improves customer relationships and is consistent with the company’s ideals.
Conclusion
You must first understand your customers’ expectations before you can create ways to exceed them. Businesses can achieve this by requesting input from customers through customer surveys, focus groups, interviews, and other venues. Learn about their wants and service expectations, where your brand may be falling short, and what they consider to be an amazing experience. This will help you pinpoint important areas they want to meet. Ranking the focal areas by perceived value is one way to prioritize them.
Meanwhile, remember to check out other posts from SME360 to help you grow your business.