Deliver a Great Customer Experience

The days of doing business with a local company because they were the only option around are long gone. People can now do business with companies across the globe, day or night, giving your business more competition than ever before.

A great customer experience, however, can give your company a significant competitive advantage and keep customers returning. Is your company delivering a mediocre customer experience, a good one, or a great one?

Always Keep Your Focus on the Customer

An unwavering focus on the customer isn’t just great customer service — it leads to great branding, too. Start by thinking about your target audience. Look at your sales data, talk with your customer service team, or poll existing clients and prospects. Your goal is to answer these questions:

• What do your customers really want and need?
• What are their biggest challenges and concerns?

Then, determine how your company can solve those challenges and address those concerns, in a way that your competitors aren’t. Look for ways to not only meet customers’ expectations, but exceed them. If customers are time-pressed, for example, offer expedited shipping. If they want easy ordering, offer them value packages or automatic shipments of frequently used items.

Be Consistent

Provide a consistently high level of customer service across all customer touch points, from your phone greeting to your packaging and invoices. Make sure your website is easy to navigate and that key information is simple to find. Be upfront about your policies and procedures. Make an effort to remember customers’ names and preferences, and focus on building relationships (a long-term focus) rather than just sales (a short-term focus).

Consider getting a family member, friend, or someone else from outside your company to play “mystery shopper” and experience doing business with your company from initial contact through to receiving an order and any follow-up. This outside perspective will help you identify any areas of weakness as well as strengths.

Get Employee Buy-in

Make sure all your employees understand your goals and customer experience expectations, and that they have the training and tools they need to do their jobs quickly and well. Encourage company loyalty and generate internal excitement about your brand by giving employees items like t-shirts, mugs, and notebooks imprinted with your logo, brand tagline, or customer service goals.

Remind Customers of Their Experience

Logo’d promotional items that tie into your brand can help reinforce the customer experience and remind customers why they want to do business with you again. A promotional products distributor can help you select promotional items that support your brand messaging.

Providing consistently a great customer experience can give your company a substantial competitive edge and pay off in higher customer loyalty and repeat business!