5 simple ways to improve customer experience

Learn how brands can enhance experiences, from anticipating customer needs to improving record-keeping and communication.

Alicia Arnold is an award-winning marketer and consultant, she shared her experience with a service: the good, the bad and the improvement recommendations.

Do you also look at your interactions with companies and organizations through your industry lens? What would you recommend they do better?

Let's review what Alicia tells us to provide an improved customer experience.

This applies to all businesses but my service providers friends out there should pay special attention.

The Story

Over the past few months, Alicia has been plagued by a disappointing customer experience with an administrative agency. Some friction points included:

• The overall experience (some positive and not-so-positive moments) was dependent upon the customer service representative I was paired with at the time.
• She had to submit the same paperwork multiple times. 
• She drove 60 minutes to a physical office to speak with an agency representative only to be told her type of issue could only be handled through the phone.
• She called 2-3 times weekly for 10 weeks to get through to a live person. 
• When calling in, she was placed on hold for two hours.
• She was promised follow-up emails and phone calls that never materialized.
• She had to restate the facts of her situation from scratch with each interaction.

Any of it sound familiar?

Unfortunately, these complaints are common across many industries. Ouch.

But she gives us five foundational best practices for B2B and B2C brands to drive higher customer satisfaction.

1. Understand your customers’ key goals and help them prepare

Customers will always need help. By planning ahead, you can make the customer experience frictionless and more enjoyable. For example, while in the waiting room for the agency, Alicia heard three reasons why the majority of people were seeking help. 

Knowing customers’ key goals and anticipating what they will need would have avoided queues at the physical location and decreased repeat visits due to unpreparedness.

2. Document interactions in downstream systems

One of the basic needs humans have is the need to be understood. Feeling heard and knowing someone acknowledges what you said helps to create a positive experience. In contrast, having to repeat your story to a service representative multiple times causes an erosion of trust. 

Do you track the interactions with your customers? You know, in a CRM or industry-specific tool.

Technology can become a competitive advantage when done right.

3. Dispel ambiguity

Alicia started her journey with the agency not understanding how long resolution would take or the path to solve the problem. When asking about a timeline, the reply was either “I’m not sure” or “I can’t say.”. “Your information is in the system and someone will get back to you.” 

While there is a degree of variability in customer service, a golden rule is to provide approximate timeframes and the process for resolution. If these do not exist, a good practice would be to analyze the key issues to understand how long they took to resolve and the resolution path to provide a baseline. If all else fails, the next best step would be to routinely communicate with customers to let them know the status of their issue and that you are still working on it, silence will cause customers stress.

4. Train customer service representatives in empathy

There are thousands of training resources available for customer service representatives. Among all the training, empathy is one of the basic requirements. One of the ways to show empathy is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes to understand his or her viewpoint.

My mentor would say:

"Better yet, hire people that are naturally empathetic already, and you don't have to train them."

5. Designate a responsible party or parties

Last, but not least, designating a responsible party helps with accountability. Round-robin customer service is the norm these days, but knowing there is one person who has the final accountability and final say is valuable. 

President Truman had a famous sign on his desk: "The buck stops here."

All service providers should have a person like that. The owner if needed.

Takeaways

While customer service is challenging, having a simple systems and your people trained in it will put you so far ahead of most (including your competition).

Remember, customer service is an opportunity to delight your customers, something you should aim for at every touchpoint.

For customer-facing team members, hire for empathy and train in your systems. Learning systems is easy, empathy is hard.

The buck should stop with someone. Nobody likes to get the run around, if you don't like it don't do it to your customers.

Finally, have tech that helps you with customer service. Document interactions with the purpose of making the next one better (not just keeping a record), and use this to improve your systems and training.

Do you look at everyday interactions through your industry lens?

What have you noticed? And how can it be better?

Let us know by sharing with the community for all to benefit.