“The key is when a customer walks away, thinking ‘Wow, I love doing business with them, and I want to tell others about the experience.’” – Shep Hyken
Corporate leaders, speakers, and gurus throughout the world give speeches on how important customer experience is to a particular company; going as far as saying that an average-rated customer experience is what is holding back a company’s growth. A Walker survey reported that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the main differentiator. Companies focusing on customer service are shown to have seen more growth than companies which does not focus on being customer-centric but rather a product-centric one. In the same survey by Walker, 86% of the people reported that they will be willing to pay for a great customer experience. Corporate leaders say that any aspect of your product and service can be duplicated, but customer experience is unique. In this day and age, gaining that advantage is not easy and it takes a lot of work. Here are a few ways being customer-centric can give an advantage and actually save you bucks on marketing.
- Reviews– These days, whenever someone has to buy a product or hire a service, he/she will surely search for it on the internet for more information regarding it. Internet is the main source of information for consumers to choose a brand or take recommendations from a friend regarding it. Search engines allow the option of seeing ratings given by previous consumers on a service. There are also plenty of websites on the internet such as Sitejabber and Trustpilot which allow users to give reviews on a company. If the company is customer-centric and has great customer support available, they will be able to ask for reviews of their company or users might give the review without asking. One such industry where reviews play an important role in influencing the purchase decision is Assignment Help. Word-of-Mouth is another form of marketing that a company only gets the benefits of if their prime focus is being customer-centric; that is one of the best ways a company can be marketed, a company makes their customers happy and tell other people about how great that company’s service is.
- Digital Platforms– There are tens of thousands of social websites and blogs to where people go and discuss about trends, ask about a product, or just seek an opinion. Platforms like Tumblr, Pinterest, and Reddit are great platforms where people seek to gain insight from a social community. Companies do try to push marketing agendas through these platforms but they do not get picked up so easy or backfire. If a customer is not satisfied with a company, he/she can trash it on such platforms leaving a bad impression on the potential customers; the opposite of it is true as well, authentic posts on such platforms can drive traffic to a company and boost their sales. This is part of social listening where the brands keep a tab on what is being posted about them on social media.
- Creating Competitiveness – In a survey by Kolsky, it showed that only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain, the rest do not return to buy. If a company is customer-centric, it would never happen as that company will be more focused and try to keep the customer as engaged as possible. As Seth Godin says,” “Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can’t see it but it’s happening, daily.” Customers can destroy a company by opting to choose for service of another, the more a company focuses on its customers, more it will thrive. “Marketing is not limited to advertising and sales, it is vast concept and taking care of one’s company base is one of the best ways to grow and market itself.” – says Becky, marketing manager, from EssayWriter4U
- What’s In A Name– Everybody knows that Google and Xerox are huge brands, so much that we use the companies’ name as verbs in our day-to-day talks now. Bubble Wrap and Velcro go the same way. This is every marketer’s dream; to have their company achieve that level of status in marketing. We know that every name on this list had a unique product of that time, even if it might have been duplicated later. Only a unique product or service provider can reach that level again. Companies need to realize that to build a name, they have to be customer-centric. According to the survey by Kolsky, 72% of consumers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people. A company with a name like Thanks For The Help had an idea that the customers would be saying the same thing to them after experiencing their services. Amazon and Aldi are known for their customer satisfaction rate leading up to 90% at a time, which is huge for any company, much more for multinational giants. Many even prefer Amazon over other online retailers because of the customer experience they receive; we can safely say that it has become a differentiator for them and given an advantage over other companies.
Conclusion
We read and consume so much information about the ways companies go to market themselves. From spending millions on advertising campaigns to providing discounts and free trials, each year marketers try new methods to gain an edge over their competitor and capture the market. We need to look back in our shop, and realize that providing the best customer experience should be our objective, that is the prime tool to grow as a company and market ourselves. As said by Maya Angelou “People will forget what you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.”
Soban Usmani is a marketing associate at BestOnlineAssignmentHelp. When he is not making sure that people around him are productive, he likes to watch thrillers.