The 6 Ways Digital Marketers Can Help Customers | Simply Measured
- Updated on: 2017-08-08
- Read original article here
“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000.”
Customer support is undoubtedly a crucial aspect of any online business. Clearly, in the virtual world, the importance of keeping your customers happy has reached new heights. As Jeff Bezos points out, errors you commit online will echo through the web much further than in the case of traditional retail. Moreover, online consumers tend to be much more impatient. In fact, 60% of them prefer to pay morefor a guarantee of a better customer experience.
On the web, the success is not just about what service you provide but also about how you communicate it. As mentioned, online consumers expect more and are not afraid to ask for it and share their experience with the rest of the world. Thus, while customer support team is indispensable to any store or company, digital marketers are the ones who can take your image and customer experience to the next level.
While keeping your customers happy is not exactly a rocket science, it has proven to be challenging. So we decided to walk you through 6 commandments of keeping your customers happy (thank us later????).
Every digital marketer knows that the key to online experience is ease of access. The simpler the route to the goal, the happier the customer.
But, what is easy? Each of your customers is different and favors a different type of communication. Some prefer to call while others like to chat or contact you via social media. The good news is, in the digital realm, you can utilize multiple communication channels without outrageous investments.
If you want to encourage all types of clients to contact and engage with your business, you need to meet them halfway. The answer is simple: multi channel customer support and engagement. Being available on multiple channels such as social networks, email, phone, live chat, SMS, or WhatsApp and treating client interactions as real conversations, are the roads to customer happiness.
In fact, a study by Aberdeen Group Inc. found out thatbusinesses with the best multi channel strategies maintain 89%of their clients as compared to the 33% retained by companies with weak or no multichannel presence.
Trust is one of the key ingredients of the customer service. Your ability to build trust with customers is based on the way you communicate on your website, social profiles, and/or in person.
This means that your website and social accounts need to be clear and consistent, stating:
in the same way, on every digital channel and touchpoint. The more easily accessible information you provide in the form of “self-service,” the higher your credibility score becomes. This will also put less strain on your internal or external customer service organization.
One final note: you must always keep your customers in the loop when it comes to changes, updates, and failings in your products and services. Be methodical in your communication, and deliver a healthy mix of good news, as well as honest information. Customers whose complaints have been resolved to exceed their expectations arelikely to become loyal customers and company advocates.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
No study or research will ever be as useful as the direct input from those who have experienced your service firsthand. Taking out the small percentage of consumer complaints, who are not satisfied no matter what, most of feedback you receive is quite insightful and an important source of knowledge. It allows you to personalize and tune your services to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience.
You can use the following methods to gather data and make your clients feel valuable:
Next on the list is content! When it comes to online businesses, you’ll find several resources out there that recommend having a solid content strategy. How exactly can content make your customer happier?
Valuable, informative content gives you an opportunity to share and display your know-how while helping your clients get answers to their most pressing questions. The best way to think about content is as “going the extra mile”. Useful content may not always directly affect your sales or promote your product. It can also be used to build trust, expand communication, create a relationship and, most importantly, provide extra value.
Some of the best examples ofcreative, valuable contentinclude:
Another boon of digitization is the ability to personalize. According toAdobe research, one-third of marketers claim that personalization is the key to online marketing in the future, while 61% cited social media, and the remaining respondents cited mobile. Mobile andsocial media marketingare essentially tools that drive personalization.
Personalization removes the inhuman aspect of online shopping and interactions. It gives brands and businesses a more human face while making the consumers feel relevant and cared for. You can personalize everything from your website to your email strategy:
Nothing can hurt business reputation more than failed promises. It is one of the reasons why transparency and ease of reach play such a significant role in keeping your customers happy.
Experienced digital marketers know how to communicate your business values while managing customer expectations to ensure realistic goals. For example, you cannot always guarantee a process will go smoothly, but you can promise you will attend to and fix the issue at hand promptly.
The key isrestraining from overselling or underselling yourselfand your business. While bold, confident claims look good on a marketing campaign, if not fulfilled, they often backfire. Similarly, not communicating well the quality of your service leads to lost opportunities.
Customer expectations grow exponentially with ever improving technology, and thus, customer service and communication cannot afford to stay behind.
While a reliable customer support team will take you a long way, digital marketers have the skills and know-how to create a holistic customer experience from the first click to your website, through conversion to a stable business relationship.
