Innovations to Keep your Customers Satisfied

Basic business sense tells you that your business needs to take steps to ensure that your customers are satisfied.  Your leaders may have an idea of what steps need to be taken to ensure this, but what if their ideas are outdated or just plain wrong?  Don’t fall behind on your customer satisfaction innovations.  We’ve complied some of the latest trends below to help you stay ahead of the game.

1. Easy and Secure Self Service

In today’s high tech world, customers are becoming increasingly comfortable with the online shopping experience.  Devote the resources you need to ensure that your online shopping portal is user friendly and secure.  Remember, your brick and mortar credibility won’t be seen over the internet.  An antiquated and unstable website will drive potential customers away quickly.

2. Transparency

Customers are paying attention to what their peers are saying about your business and they want to voice their own opinions in ways that they know will be heard.  Creating real-time customer feedback channels improves transparency and provides you with the opportunity to respond and engage with your customers so they feel in touch with your brand.  The internet allows businesses to establish a unique personal connection that is still a relatively new experience.

3. Voice of the Customer

Allowing customers to interact with your business online in real-time is a great start, but giving them a true voice in how you operate your business is even better.  You will undoubtedly receive some very frank and negative feedback along with positive accolades.  It’s important to face negative feedback head on.  Listening to your customers and acting upon their feedback is your opportunity to improve your processes, solve a problem, create goodwill, and foster long-term customer loyalty.

4. Total Access

It is estimated that one-third of adults own smartphones.  This growing trend is signaling the end of trimmed down mobile sites.  Previous cell phones couldn’t handle full websites, forcing businesses to hit the high points with their mobile web pages.  Now smart phones have closed that gap, but many businesses continue to offer lean mobile sites.  This approach will hurt your business.  Mobile is no longer about trimming, but beefing up.  Don’t discount the desire of customers to purchase products on the go.

The tips above can be applied to a wide range of businesses, but it’s critical to research your particular customer base to discover exactly what is important in their buying decisions and what fosters their long-term loyalty. Customer surveys are deployed around the globe by leaders in a wide range of industries to help them better understand their customer’s needs and desires.  The recommend approach is to deploy a customer satisfaction survey to determine your baseline scores, and then resurvey periodically to gauge the effectiveness of your improvement initiatives. Contact us today to start listening and innovating.