When you first establish a business, you usually concentrate on how to use your sales and marketing teams to reach and engage customers. If you don’t, your company won’t grow very quickly. However, sales and marketing aren’t the only tools you have at your disposal to persuade people to invest their time and money in your business.
A favorable customer experience will result in increased revenue. Some firms place a greater emphasis on sales and marketing than on customer involvement. Investing in the customer experience will increase customer satisfaction and retention. Customer loyalty will improve as a result of a positive customer experience, and you will stand out in the competitive landscape.
According to the graph below, rising businesses value customer success more than ever before, with 70% deeming it “extremely vital.”
Adopting a successful customer strategy, on the other hand, isn’t as simple as it sounds, and companies who have done so realize that mistakes are unavoidable. We’ll look at some of the most common customer experience mistakes brands have made and what your team can learn from each one in this piece.
Forgetting that customer comes first
Your team’s primary priority should be meeting client needs and assisting people in achieving their objectives. Customer success managers (CSMs) may, on occasion, put their company’s growth ahead of customer success. Because your CSMs aim to push clients through your sales funnel, this is one of the most prevalent customer experience blunders.
While this may be advantageous to your organization, it does not promote customer success and will drive customers away. Instead, demonstrating to your consumers how to attain their goals with your product or service and caring about them is the greatest way to avoid making this error.
MoviePass was a monthly subscription service that allowed clients to attend one movie every day for $10. However, the firm discontinued its service after receiving over 1,500 complaints from the Better Business Bureau, and it is “unable to determine if or when the MoviePassTM service will continue.”
One such claim that made headlines was from a client in San Francisco who had his account canceled without warning. This consumer saw a “premium movie,” which was against the membership policy and resulted in cancellation without a refund. This is an excellent example of prioritizing the company’s success over the success of the consumer. When customers signed up for MoviePass, the company should have made its regulations clear and provided tools that explain what constitutes a “premium movie.”
Not having a dedicated CSM Leader
The CSM’s leadership is responsible for a successful customer experience strategy. These individuals oversee team performance and provide CSMs with all of the resources they require to support clients. If you want to expand your company, make sure you choose the best individual for the job.
When it comes to customer service, airlines have an infamously terrible image. That’s exactly what happened when a flight attendant requested a customer to exit a plane on American Airlines. The man was carrying a cello worth $30,000 that was supposedly “too big” for the plane. As a result, she was asked to board a plane that would depart an hour later. However, the crew of that plane refused to allow her to board, and she was soon surrounded by airport police because the personnel thought she was “incomprehensible.”
It turns out that the customer had been correct all along. The instrument was permitted by the airline’s standards, and she could have traveled on her original plane. This issue exemplifies why having a committed CSM leader is critical.
Lacking Proactive Customer Service
A strong customer success strategy is built on proactivity. You should connect with your clients frequently if you want them to understand the true value of your organization. Investing in conversational marketing technologies, as one of the basic methods of growth marketing, will help you to answer your audience’s inquiries and develop a solid relationship that extends beyond live chat and emails. Your secret weapon for making them feel appreciated is to provide guidance and help throughout their customer journey.
Target faced a problem a few years back where a Facebook user created a new page impersonating Target’s customer service team. The user would mimic consumers who complained about Target’s new gender-neutral signage and respond to messages on the company’s page.
Target may have been more proactive in this scenario by sending customer support representatives to monitor social media networks. Because the company was changing its branding, it should have been anticipated that customers might have comments or opinions to share on social media.
Over Engaging Your Customers
You may wind up aggravating them rather than helping them if you are over-engaging with your customers. Over-engagement is a result of ambiguity, so if a consumer is silent about their experience, you’ll try to contact them to find out whether they’re having problems. However, over-engaging with them out of fear of losing them is a common mistake to avoid.
When a Comcast representative faced a consumer who wanted to disconnect their service, they performed the exact opposite. Instead of assisting them with the canceling process, the representative attempted to persuade them that Comcast was superior to any competition they had tried. The representative’s dedication to keeping the consumer involved resulted in a particularly unpleasant experience that drew a lot of negative press.
Setting inconsistent expectations
Customers will prefer a solution later rather than never at all, according to a decent rule of thumb. And, if your staff knows a deadline or expectation won’t be met, they can lessen the damage by contacting them right away. The more preparation time you give a consumer, the more likely they are to understand the problem.
One regular Amazon customer, for example, was purchasing toilet paper when she realized she had ordered a $88 item with a shipping cost of $7,455. So she contacted Amazon customer service in the hopes of resolving the problem.
She anticipated things to be resolved swiftly because she was a long-time Amazon client. After six complaints and a letter to the company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, she was constantly assured that the purchase would not be refunded because it was delivered on time and in good condition.
Generalizing individual customer outcomes
Offering generic experiences will defeat the goal of your plan, as personalization is a critical component of addressing client needs. Your CSMs must approach each customer outcome individually, reacting to their specific needs and desires.
The following is an exchange between a Samsung customer and a company service representative. The consumer is phoning because he needs to be home to sign for a box, according to Samsung’s policies. However, the consumer cannot afford to miss work to await a product.
In this scenario, the Samsung support representative should have contacted management to see whether an exception might be made for this customer. Even if it is against the business policy, altering the shipping timetable to fit the customer’s needs would have fixed the problem and demonstrated genuine concern for their success. Instead, the corporation stuck to its policies, resulting in a Reddit discussion that went viral.
The Bottomline
It’s not always simple to implement a new customer success strategy. If you want to succeed, though, you must devote time and effort to anticipating what might go wrong before it occurs. While there are many more blunders to avoid, remember to do thorough market research, prioritize your customers, be proactive, follow through on your commitments, break down customer success silos, and invest in the proper leadership.
