With almost daily changes in what customers expect from the businesses that serve them, it is essential to maintain the best knowledge about how to satisfy their needs and desires if you want your business to grow. Brand reputation and success depends on treating customers as individuals and offering them everything they need when they need it. Here are three key strategies you can use to fulfill your customers’ expectations in 2017.
Fast Service and Special Attention
With so many options and so much information available to customers online, it is incredibly easy to lose your customers to competitors. When a customer perceives any lack of interest or dedication from a brand in the services they receive, they tend to re-evaluate their choices. This is exactly why hearing out (and putting right) the grievances of your customers is so important, and why a smattering of personalisation and taking immediate action when they need help is essential to keep customers coming back.
Customers do not normally assess experiences with your business over different platforms as being separate entities (even if the truth is different); they expect each and every step between sections of your business to be a seamless experience. This means providing a cohesive experience between your online offering, customer helpline in you have one, and the service you offer in store. Your physical shops are often considered the most immediate expression of your brand, so they need to be personalised and expressive of your business’s values and aims, as well as proactive hubs for customer service and care, in order for you to stay ahead of the pack.
The Importance of Well-trained Employees
Your hiring of employees plays a crucial role in your customer’s overall experience. Whether you run a retail chain or a small shop, your employees’ behaviour is a reflection of your brand. It is important to remember that this does not simply mean that producing great employees is a case of training them via structured handbooks and videos. This method is going to result in perfect customer service representatives. No, employing and training motivated, well-presented employees, who most importantly share your brand’s vision and the mission will allow you to compete with your competitors and online retailers alike.
The Growth of Voice Search
It might once have seemed like something from the distant future, but voice input applications are now a widely accepted part of people’s lives, in the form of Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, etc. So, it is not a surprise to see that virtual assistants are quickly becoming part of online marketing, due to their practical nature.
Customers want to streamline their searches by using voice commands, and this will only help reinforce the trend of new applications that integrate these platforms and facilitate multitasking. It is very likely and worth considering that these applications will in the very near future, become central to the decision making of your customers, which will most often choose brands whose products are easiest to search for and purchase.
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