6 Things You Can Do Now to Improve the Customer Experience

Who are you more likely to do business with?

Assuming both companies offer similar products and price points:

Business A has a user-first website design, relevant blogs for your vertical, troubleshooting content, a chatbot, and friendly faces on social media.

Business B, however, has an intimidatingly edgy web design, sparse content, faceless social media, and makes it nearly impossible to reach out.

Probably Business A, right? You might not consciously say, “wow, this company offers an awesome customer experience.” But you’re just drawn to them — and the experience they create is why.

84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Look at all the leading consumer websites like Amazon and Spotify providing optimized customer experiences. Your buyers’ expectations for a killer experience don’t suddenly vanish once they get to work.

Fortunately, you can take a few steps right now to improve your customer experience.

How to Improve Your Customer Experience Right Now

An excellent customer experience isn’t only about preventing churn and boosting lifetime value. Leads and prospects want to see that you’ll maintain the same level of attention and care once they buy.

1. Create Better Content

Content is essential to any online experience. In-depth, relevant, and useful content proves your authority and solidifies trust in your brand.

Buyers want to know you can solve their problems with expertise.

However, Forrester found that 66% of buyers say companies give them way too much content — and over half of it is useless.

Buyers don’t want to hear about product features. They want concise content that solves their problems and answers questions.

Ask your customer service department for some frequent questions or pain points and make sure you address them in your content. Make sure to create content for distinct verticals and accounts as well. That ensures your content is always relevant.

2. Offer a Customer Resource Center

A resource center is a quick way to improve your customer experience.

Separate from a blog, a resource center provides specific content for customers or certain audience segments. For example, you might include:

• Troubleshooting guides
• Product tutorials
• FAQs
• Webinars or online courses
• Video interviews with experts

A resource center shows leads that you won’t disappear post-purchase. They can physically see that you care and aren’t just trying to win a sale. 83% of buyers say treating them like a human instead of another number in a spreadsheet is the key to winning their business.

3. Boost Your Social Selling Strategy

Social selling is useful, but no one wants another cold message in their inbox.

Sadly, that’s the exact strategy many marketers take.

People don’t use social media because they like advertisements. They want exciting ideas, useful links, interesting infographics, and engaging conversations.

That’s what every social selling strategy should entail.

Connecting with leads and current customers puts a human face to your brand. It shows that you’re available to talk and genuinely care about helping — not just closing sales.

4. Add a Chatbot and Live Chat to Your Site

Buyers only spend 17% of their time connecting with sales teams. They don’t want to plant the lead nurturing seed unless they’re seriously considering you. Instead, your website should answer most of their potential questions through content.

However, it’s still important to give website visitors plenty of communication channels.

A website chat gives leads a low-profile route to ask questions about your product/services. A live chat is nice during business hours, but a bot can close the gap.

Plus, you can use the data and analytics you collect through the chat to gain customer insights to build new content.

5. Ask for Customer Input

Customers want to feel valued — and just saying it isn’t enough. Everyone knows you must show you care through actions, if you mean it.

Wondering how to improve your customer experience? Just ask.

Make it easy for customers to provide input. Quick popups that ask if they like certain features have proven to be useful. Of course, surveys are smart as well.

Depending on your product, you might even let customers customize their entire interface themselves.

6. Hold Your Customer Service to a Higher Standard

Most of the time, leads and current customers prefer to solve problems on their own. However, there’s always a small chance they’ll run into a huge problem they can’t fix, and they’ll need help — ASAP.

If they reach out and get radio silence, that may push them into the arms of a competitor right away.

Being helpful isn’t enough. Emotions like empathy are important too. In an increasingly digital world, people crave human connections and empathy to their pain points. Use a real photo and name to show who customers are speaking with.

It’s also smart to create brand forums where customers can crowdsource answers from other customers. WordPress, for example, has a robust support forum.

The Bottom Line

The customer experience matters tremendously in both B2B and B2C. Top consumer brands set the standard for the rest of us to follow.

Improving your customer experience is critical not only for generating and converting leads, but maintaining your current accounts as well.