The customer experience market was valued at $6.5 billion in 2019 and is expected to experience a 17.7% compound annual growth rate each year until 2027.
With happy customers being the lifeblood of all businesses and the value of customer experience, it’s no surprise that 45.9% of businesses rate customer experience as their most important priority over the next five years.
But in an increasingly competitive world where consumers have so much choice, how exactly can businesses go about keeping their customers happy?
This article will give the answer to this question. We’ll take a look at strategies you can implement to boost customer happiness and some of the most effective ways of measuring customer satisfaction.
8 Ways to Make Your Customers Happy
We define a happy customer as someone who’s not only made a purchase, but has had a great experience with that purchase. Here are eight ways to make your customers happy, and improve the reputation, and longevity of your business.
1. Don’t compromise on the quality of your product
The quality of a business products or solutions and the results they produce go a long way toward determining the business long-term success.
Consumers expect the products and services they purchase to function flawlessly and solve whatever problem they’re having.
With these expectations, companies should do everything they can to ensure product quality. You have to make sure that any product performance faults or bugs are kept to a minimum.
If you’re in the process of designing or looking to release a new product or service, make sure you can confidently answer these questions regarding product quality:
- Does the product solve a problem?
- Is the product tailored to your user’s needs? (is there a product-market fit)?
- Do you know your ideal customers?
- Are customers able to understand and effectively use the product?
- Is there a demand for the product?
While there’s much more that goes into defining and developing a quality product, these questions are a good place to start when you’re beginning to plan a new product or service.
2. Have an effective customer complaint resolution process
Even with the most professional, proactive customer service, customer complaints are inevitable. No matter the reason for the complaint, it’s the business responsibility to find an appropriate resolution.
This is why it’s vital to have an effective resolution process in place.
3. Deliver a consistent, omnichannel customer service experience
Customers have more ways of getting in touch with a company than ever before — they can pick from email, phone, live chat, social media, SMS, and messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Apple Business Chat.
Often, customers will use more than one channel to get in touch with a company, and customers expect a consistent experience across all of them.
4. Maintain low response times and resolution times
Responding to and resolving customer queries quickly is one of the cornerstones of good customer service.
Delayed resolutions and long wait times can lead to unhappy customers. In fact, 75% of customers state that fast response time is the most important attribute of customer experience, while 88% of consumers now expect a response from companies within 60 minutes of raising an inquiry.
5. Offer proactive customer service
Proactive customer support involves identifying and resolving customer problems before they occur, which helps to improve customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and improves customer retention rates.
Proactive customer engagement shows your customers that you have their best interests at heart, and that you’re willing to go the extra mile to be proactive and deal with any issues that could affect their experience.
Some of the most common and implementable forms of proactive customer service include:
Creating self-service materials such as knowledge base articles, instructional videos, and FAQs that customers can access to solve their queries.
Letting customers know of any service or product maintenance in advance.
Acting on customer feedback and recommendations when appropriate.
Keeping customers up to date with any product or service issues and letting them know when they can expect the issue in question to be resolved.
Launching a help widget or a live chat widget that pops up and offers help when customers are showing visible signs of frustration.
6. Build a rewards or loyalty program
Rewards and loyalty programs have been proven to improve customer retention, increase rates of customer satisfaction, and boost company revenue. Companies with strong loyalty programs tend to grow their revenue 2.5 times faster than their competitors.
There are a lot of different rewards/loyalty programs and initiatives that work well. The specific type of program that’s right for you will depend on your goals and your industry.
Here are some examples of proven customer rewards/loyalty offerings:
- Offer discounts, special offers, or free products/upgrades to repeat and loyal customers.
- Offer redeemable points toward a purchase.
- Offer exclusive access to new products or beta versions of a product or service.
7. Invest in agent training
Poor, inconsistent customer service can hurt a business bottom line and lead to customers looking elsewhere.
62% of customers share their bad experiences with others. While 95% of consumers say that customer service is an important factor in their loyalty to a brand.
8. Keep your employees happy
Keeping employees happy, satisfied, and productive in their roles is a proven method of improving customer satisfaction.
Employee happiness is proving even more important, considering the increased level of customer support requests agents have been experiencing.
Over the past 12 months, 83% of customer service leaders in the US have noted an increase in requests, while 33% reported operating with a reduced staff.
With increased demands, businesses and customer service leaders need to do everything they can to keep support agents happy and provide them with adequate tools.
