CLUMBERSOME — THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY NO ONE WANTS — A GUIDE ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE FOR SMEs
Yes, I know that CLUMBERSOME is not a real word but it kind of defines what I’ve been seeing a horrible amount of whilst on the web or social media. Many, many online experiences, particularly for local businesses whom I want to support, are simply atrocious. You can’t get to what you want easily, the store is poor, the payment process is horrific and the load time is awful. What lockdown in Cheshire has taught me is that many small businesses are being led down the proverbial garden path when it comes to creating a useful, revenue-generating digital presence.
Businesses everywhere are in a ‘battle for mind space’, trying to win the attention and loyalty of more customers online (see my earlier posts on COVID19 digital trends here). This post aims to help small businesses get the customer journey right by focusing on that experience end to end. In fact, the annual Digital Trends report by Econsultancy and Adobe, 20% of B2B companies said the single most exciting opportunity for 2020 is customer experience. So why is customer experience so exciting to businesses? Let’s take a look.
Customers Are Willing to Pay More for a Great Customer Experience
46% of consumers said they would pay more for a friendly and welcoming experience, and 55% said they’d pay more for fast and efficient service. 52% of consumers have made impulse purchases after receiving a personalized experience. You can reduce friction in your customer journey by providing high-quality personalized content to your consumers, reducing the need for them to look around your website or app and potentially look through lots of products that aren’t a good match for them.
Now, more than ever with many people spending more time on the web and on social because of COVID19 (check out my post on stats here) it is paramount that your business shows up and not only shows up but that the experience on social media or your own website helps you convert those researchers into customers and repeat customers. In short, your digital brand ecosystem needs to set your business apart from the competition and generate sales!
What I’m seeing on many websites or landing pages is sad. The customer journey is broken or laborious. CLUMBERSOME! Getting to what I want, transacting quickly and efficiently is SO time-consuming more often than not I give up. This is because too little time has been thought about what the customer journey is from A to Z. There is no real attention being paid by some SMEs to understand how a customer gets from a Facebook ad to the store and then to the cart.
Customer experience is, in essence, a consumer’s perception of your brand, everyone in the business plays a part in shaping it. From the quality of your product to the cleanliness of your store, to the relevance of your email marketing, to the speed of response on social media, each interaction contributes to brand perception and therefore your CX.
It is a well-proven fact that improved CX help reduces churn and makes the customer journey smoother and can also improve advocacy from current customers and drive new business.
CONSISTENT EXPERIENCE ACROSS ALL TOUCHPOINTS ONLINE
Customer touchpoints are simply your brand’s points of customer contact throughout the purchasing and or signup process. For example, consumers may find your business through your brick and mortar store, by seeing reviews online, by visiting your website or app or seeing an online ad. Remember, touchpoints are anywhere your customer is coming into contact with your business. Today consumers are using almost six touchpoints, and nearly 50% of people regularly use more than four. Take a look at some examples below so you can get a feel for what counts as a touchpoint:
- Contact form on your website.
- Newsletter subscription button or bar.
- Free product demo.
- Client testimonials.
- Live Chat.
- Customer service
- The Comments section on your website or social media post.
- Your social media profiles.
- Blog posts on your website, LinkedIn, or elsewhere.
- Surveys.
- Contact page.
- Marketing emails.
MAKE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE EVERYONE’S JOB WITHIN YOUR ORGANISATION — NOT JUST MARKETING/SALES
Ensure that all of your staff are focused relentlessly on delivering great customer experiences. Companies that are successful normally have leaders that inspire employees across all business areas to have an ‘Outside-in’ customer view which acts a catalyst for growth.
This includes not letting technology alone define the customer experience. Customer Experience needs to be ‘human-first’ with all employees aligning around meeting and exceeding your customers’ needs.
DIVE INTO THE DETAIL
Ask yourself, how many steps there are in the buying process, how long does a customer have to wait for a response (in the case of chatbots, live chat, and customer service agents and is that acceptable?
If your marketing emails have a Call-To-Action, is it easy for customers to take action? For example, if you’re offering them a deal on specific items, do you link to a page with all of these items listed? Or does the customer have to trawl through your website to find it themselves? Do you include a Signature on your emails so your customers know who the message is from and who they should contact if they have any comments or complaints about the content of the emails?
PRESENT YOUR PRODUCTS + SERVICES QUICKLY + HIGHLIGHT OFFERS
You have less than 0.003 seconds to get a customer’s attention — so make sure they don’t have to wade through pages of your website to get to what they want. Ensure that what you are offering is quick and easy to understand and all prices + costs involved clear for the customer to digest. For example, if orders are over a certain price do you include free shipping etc? It is incredible how sometimes you have to spend 3 or 4 more clicks from an ad on Google or Instagram before you find what was advertised.
MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM TO PAY!
How easy is it to get to that touchpoint? Is it prominently displayed on your website so it’s easy to find? Once on the page, do customers have all the information they need on that page in order to make a purchase and feel confident in that investment?
Not everyone wants to use PayPal — with services like the wonderful STRIPE clients can easily transact in whichever method they prefer. We found on one client website that using STRIPE gave an uplift in the conversion of up to 50%.
FOCUS ON THE DATA! UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMER VOICE
Facts don’t lie and it is really key to look at the analytics of what is happening with your customer. You need to monitor customer opinion, competitor activity, and trends happening in real-time in order to understand what they want.
It’s now possible to listen to what your customers are saying and where they’re going online. This Voice of the Customer data (VoC) can be used to better understand and meet their needs. A great example of a company that does this well is Zoom — they ask each customer not renewing their annual subscription for reasons why and looks to make changes accordingly. They’d rather give the customer the product for free and, where required, fix any issues raised rather than lose the customer.
MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE IS SECURE!
75% of the local business websites I’ve used over the past 4 months have been hacked or not secure. It doesn’t give a great impression and means I won’t be sharing any credit card details with you any time soon. SSL Certificates are expensive but really worth the investment!
ENSURE YOU REVIEW YOUR PROCESSES + TOUCHPOINTS REGULARLY
Try and think like masters of ‘frictionless’ shopping, Amazon. Amazon has designed its app and website around easy shopping — you can buy an item with one swipe and have it delivered the next day, and they only have to put in their card details once (when they sign up). You can even get a little ‘Dash’ button from Amazon for products you buy regularly, and reorder the item and Amazon will send it to your doorstep for things like laundry detergent.
It would be a good idea to follow these steps every six months, every year, or every 18 months. By continually reviewing friction in your touchpoints you can ensure you’re always staying ahead of the competition and not CLUMBERSOME!
