A happy customer is someone who had a great experience with your company and wants to repeat it. This type of buyer can be of great help to your business, so you need to provide more than a good one-time experience.
Having happy and satisfied customers in your business helps to:
- Make it more profitable;
- Build a loyal community of potential consumers;
- Increase the number of repeat buyers.
Lately, there has been a shift in people’s purchasing behaviour. Customers are now looking for more feelings and serving needs from a product rather than a low price. And for most businesses, it has turned customer experience from “nice to have” to must-have. You don’t choose it anymore. Companies are competing for the happiness of customers, and some of them fail because they can’t adapt to it.
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Having happy customers is the only way for your business to have permanent growth. Here are the four steps you need to follow in order to have more satisfied buyers:
1. Fulfill their need to be heard
Every person needs to feel that they are heard, it’s basic human psychology. And the same applies to a customer. Mutual trust and understanding are the basis for any good and lasting relationship. The feeling of belonging is the most important need after safety needs. In today’s world, buyers want their expectations to be fulfilled and their feedback to be considered. The easiest way to make people feel like their feedback is valued is to:
- Ask their opinion about a product;
- Ask them to write a review or recommendation;
By doing this, you will show them that you actually care and value them as customers.
2. Meet the customer needs to be delighted or surprised
Customer experience always comes from what people expect and what they receive. Examine your target audience’s expectations and exceed that by providing higher standards. Your products should have a “wow” factor to them – something that will make them unique. People like the feeling of surprise when it comes to purchasing certain products.
3. Make your customers buy from you again and again
To ensure that you have loyal customers who will buy from you again, you need to examine your audience. There is a common misconception that you need to please everyone, but it’s not what you should aim for. Focus on repeat buyers, because this is your main audience. You need to ask their opinion, ask if they want to buy more, provide a good offer to them, listen to customers’ feedback and fix any mistakes. Many people usually agree to give feedback and knowing that their voice matters, they will be more drawn to buy from you on a regular basis.
4. Invest in your employees
Don’t forget that happy employees make happy customers. Employee satisfaction affects their performance and customer service. The key to achieving customer satisfaction is focusing on employees’ happiness as well. Invest in your team, reward and recognize their potential and train them. If you make your workers happy, they will make your customers satisfied too. What is happening inside of your business will show on the outside as well.
These are the four main steps that will help you achieve customer happiness. You must use these eCommerce growth strategies to improve your performance and build happy customers.
To evaluate customer experience, you need to measure your ROI. There are different methods to find out value driver from an ROI perspective:
1. Indirect ROI
It is difficult to test an indirect benefit but the causality can be proven over time. Employee productivity is one of the examples of an indirect benefit via technology. The increased efficiency does not always result in the elimination of current expense items. Nonetheless, it enables employees to work better and more effectively.
There are also several steps you need to take to measure the satisfaction of your customers:
- Attach customers’ feedback to financial KPI. Observe the correlation between your financial data and customer experience. You also need to compare customer service with the purchase number. If there is a problem with customer service, does the number of orders decrease, and how much? And if the problem is fixed, how does that influence the number of purchases?
- Through recommendations. Ask your most engaged customers to give feedback on your products. You can also ask them to recommend your store to their friends. If you don’t ask them straightforward questions, they will probably not give any feedback. Ask for feedback and attach a direct link to the review platform. The more empowerment and direct offers you provide to your buyers, the more sales you will have.
2. Direct ROI
Direct ROI is based on the fact that people who offer you feedback are the most engaged customers. Thus, these are the people you should make happy customers. You can track the effects of direct benefit by the customer activity. Here are some methods you should use with the direct ROI:
- Enhance lead conversation. Ask feedback of your clients first on the website and then turn them into known leads.
- Invest in your team. As already mentioned, making your employees happy will lead to more satisfied customers. Don’t forget to train your workers and reward them because they are the ones who represent your business.
3. Cost Savings
Even if you improve customer service, they will not buy your product if it is too expensive for them. But if you can’t make the price lower, you can reduce the costs. To reduce the costs you need to:
- Workflow optimization. Use automated systems and technology;
By using available technology, you will make your workflow easier and it will save you a lot of time. The automated software will do all your job for you. And you will need to analyze the link between your actions and outcomes.
- Pay attention to your workforce;
This refers to making your employees happier and investing in human resources.
These methods will help you increase your customers’ satisfaction with your services. Don’t forget that these methods are not specific and thus are not applicable to every field. You should choose recommendations that are relevant to your industry. Focus on improving one section of your business at a time to see how it will change the situation.
