Category: Blogs

What do your customers want? This question has been asked more than any other question in today’s competitive business world. Undoubtedly, this era belongs to customer experience, and every company is striving to provide the best possible experience to its customers.

While it is crucial to understand your customers, it is equally important to explore the fundamentals of customer interaction. Every great business works on the rule of thumb of seeing the world through the customer’s eyes. After all, it is only then that you realize and redesign your business functions to create value in a customer-centric way.

Remember,

“Walt Disney once said, “Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.”

You may wonder how some of the most successful organizations are able to deliver a seamless customer experience? Here we share some really valuable customer experience lessons from the best in the business.

1. Apple Customer Experience – Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty

Apple is one of the world’s most valuable companies. Also, Apple’s customer support is exceptional and highly visible, which helps build trust and improves customer experience.

What Can You Learn From Apple?

• The Custom Model

Apple follows a custom model that is based on the letters A- P- P- L- E. Employees are trained to walk a customer through the following five steps –

A- Approaching customers with a personalized touch

P- Probing into customer queries to understand their needs

P- Presenting a viable solution to the customer

L- Listening to and resolving the customer’s concerns as quickly as possible

E- Ending the conversation on an optimistic note and inviting them to follow up whenever necessary

• The Power of Personal, Engaging Conversations

Customers return to your business when they feel attached to you. Apple believes in having engaging and active conversations with the customers, in person and online via Apple website or social media platforms.

• The “Town Square” Customer Experience

Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior Vice President, Retail, said that the company’s new stores focus more on enriching customers’ lives rather than just selling them things. She says that “We are reinventing the role our stores and employees play in the community. We want to be more like a town square, where the best of Apple comes together, and everyone is welcome”. The Apple store is now the most prominent product from the company with new features like the latest iPads, iPhones, Watches, Macbooks, and Apple TV.

What’s interesting about these stores is that they are not just meant for the entrepreneurs to discuss their ideas but also for kids to learn to code. Apple stores organize ‘Hour of Code” workshops for school kids to teach them the Swift programming language.

• The Importance of Employee Training and Onboarding

Apple’s training manuals focus on communication skills, and it ranges from non-verbal communication interpretation to an empathetic attitude. According to a report by Biddle, Apple employees are trained to utilize a technique called “The Three Fs: Feel, Felt, Found.”

2. Disney Customer Experience – Creating Magical Moments For Customers

Disney is linked with the idea of creating incredible and memorable experiences. In this increasingly competitive global economy, Disney emerges as the king of customer experience. With a business vision to create the most magical resorts to the most memorable characters, Disney has made these fantasies come alive.

What Can You Learn From Disney?

• Create Personalized Experiences

Disney has mastered the art of taking an experience meant for millions and personalizing it for the individuals. Disney, through their smartphone app and MagicBand, creates a customized experience for their guests. When the guests come to pick their tickets up, they can get a button that gives them the reason for celebrating at Disney, whether it is a marriage, a birthday, a first-time visit, and so on.

• Take Constant Feedback

The only way to improve customer experience is to know what customers actually feel about you. It is essential to understand the customer’s pain points and take steps towards eliminating them.

Disney has implemented listening posts where they can directly learn about customer feedback.

It has survey teams in the theme parks that capture customer feedback at the entrance and the exit points. They also have the provision of in-app feedback and welcome suggestions on email from all their guests.

3. Tesla Customer Experience – Quicker Feedback Loops, Creating Better Products

The electric-car pioneer Tesla has paved the way for a new customer experience model in the automotive industry. The engineers at Tesla are involved in a continuous process of achieving customer feedback loops.

That is, customer feedback is essential to Tesla, especially when it comes to creating better products, building customer loyalty, and exploring new business ideas.

What Can You Learn From Tesla?

• Good Experience Creates Loyal Customers

According to CleanTechnica, Tesla’s customers have an overall satisfaction rating of 80%. A staggering 80% of customers buy or lease another Tesla for their next car. From the beginning of the car buying experience, Tesla makes sure that the customers have a hassle-free experience.

The employees communicate the business model and their energy mission effectively to the buyers. Customers have the option to purchase cars either from Tesla’s stores or through their website. The vehicle is customizable, and there is a dedicated team that guides the customers through payment, document signing, and delivery.

• Fast Feedback is Everything

According to Harvard Business Review, the company makes about 20 engineering changes every week in its Model S vehicle, most of which are based on the data derived from customers’ driving experiences. According to the company, “These automobile changes include new battery packs, updated safety, and autopilot hardware”

Tesla incorporates the concept of “Fast Feedback,” that is, the faster the feedback can be gathered, the better. It helps the company to understand what customers are particularly looking for, in terms of features and functionalities.

• Use Social Platforms To Interact With Users

Tesla is an excellent example of how social media platforms can be put to use in improving overall customer experience. No one uses Twitter as skillfully as Elon Musk.

• Be Bigger Than Your Product

Tesla has a mission that is bigger than just cars. Its mission is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Every Tesla employee is committed to this purpose and educates the customers about the concept of clean energy.

Every great business is built on a vision, a vision to create something that makes the lives of people easier. It demands the implementation of logical frameworks into executable ideas that can then be turned into actionable steps and help the business evolve and grow.

Product customization is the key to serving your customer base successfully. Not all of your customers want the same thing or use your product the same way. Product customization is essential for delivering a personalized customer experience to each segment of users, and can drive customer loyalty and increase customer satisfaction.

Not All Your Customers are the Same

Regardless of whether you sell a physical product or online software, your customer base has different wants and needs. Remembering that all of your customers are different, is critical to create a product that is attractive to as many people as possible. As the old saying goes – if you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no one. Instead of being just generally suitable for your clientele, you can customize your product to be specifically perfect to every different segment of users.

Millennials are particularly attracted to the idea of customization. In the book Custom Nation, Anthony Flynn and Emily Flynn Vencat explain that, “millennials (13 to 31-year-olds) have grown up with customization, and naturally expect it in every aspect of their lives.” Brands have been developed around the idea of hyper-personalization, which makes it possible for everyone to get exactly what they want at the press of a button.

Customers love things made just for them

Customization is a great business strategy because it makes customers happier; and happy customers are repeat customers! In retail, Deloitte found that 1 out of every 5 customers is willing to pay 20% more for a personalized or exclusive product. Similarly a 2012 study on customization found, “customization increases perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and ultimately customer loyalty toward a service provider.”

Why? For the very simple value that customization brings to the customer. Customers who can customize their experience find value either through exclusivity, in the form of a personalized, unique product, or specificity in the form of a feature that works in a way that they would like.

Customization as a Feature

There’s no denying that customization is an expensive affair. It takes time and money to offer multiple versions of the same product. Your development team needs to dedicate resources to building out new customization options. There’s also a higher risk factor, since more customization means more complexity. In retail, this might look like you are shipping the wrong customized product. In software, you might see bugs pop up as there are more and more different ways to use your product, that you may not have even thought of testing yet.

All this means that you need to treat customization like any other feature in your product. Decide whether it’s worth it to add more complexity to the product. Are users asking for what you’re thinking of building? How much time will it take to build and support this feature? What else will be impacted by this customization? Will the additional customization support or devalue your existing brand?

The most important questions to ask when considering customization is “who are my customers?” and “what do they really want?” The answers to this question will help you identify places where customization can really help boost customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Finding Places to Customize

Instead of trying to make everything customizable, it’s important to be methodical about offering options to your users. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a product that’s overly confusing and complicated. Remember when Homer Simpson tried to make a car that did everything? Try being Simpson and you’ll just have a useless, albeit humorous, product on hand.

Instead of aiming to customize everything, look at who your users are, and what they want to be able to do. This will help identify the most important opportunities for customization.

User Personas

The first step to identifying potential customization opportunities is by understanding the different people who use your product. Creating user personas can help illustrate the different segments of your user base. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, user personas are:

“Fictional characters that designers use, to reflect user types by pinpointing who they are and what they do with products in relevant contexts. Designers create personas from user data, to understand user characteristics, needs, and goals, and gain valuable insights into user journeys, and later, test prototypes.”

There’s a lot of helpful information contained within a user persona! In particular, understanding needs, goals and user journeys will help showcase where your customers could be getting more value from your product, if it was slightly customized to their needs. That might be something as simple as the language they use for work, the jobs that need to get done, or their style preferences. For example, Netflix creates user personas to identify what each type of viewer wants out of their Netflix experience. This helps them pare down their enormous catalog of content to create a custom experience for every type of user.

User personas can be especially handy for products that cater to a variety of stakeholders. If the people purchasing the product, the people who use it everyday, and the ones generating monthly reports, are all different people, user personas can show you what each type of stakeholder needs. If you don’t allocate individual value to all three types of users, it leads to customers churning, because the person paying the bills or making the decisions may not realize how helpful the product is to the frontline teams.

Feature requests

The second way to find opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction through customization, is to look at what customers are already asking to do.

Customization doesn’t add an entirely new workflow, it usually only modifies an existing feature. For example, if customers want to add a date range to an existing report, or would like to update a dashboard in a particular way, those are customization requests.

To understand what customers are asking for, look closely at your customer support tickets and feedback forum. Tagging incoming customer conversations with “feature-request” or “customization” can make it easier for product teams to pull reports based on what customers want.

Customization Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Allowing your customers to customize their experience is a clever way to stand apart from the competition. After all, who knows what they need, better than the customer themselves?

Look for ways to offer a unique and personalized experience to customers at each stage of their journey. When you understand the different types of customers that purchase from you, it becomes clear how each of their needs differ. By catering to these needs specifically, you can boost customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

With the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, work-life has slowed to a crawl in most parts of the world, and remote work is the new normal. For startups and small enterprises, there are some important decisions to be made to ensure business survival in the short term. To aid that decision, here are a few tips that could prove useful:

1. Focus on existing customers

With the chances of new sales diminishing, this should take the highest priority on your to-do list because your existing customers are your lifeline. Making sure your customers are satisfied with your product or service, and will continue to rely on them, guarantees you a steady revenue stream. It’s universally established that it costs more to acquire a new customer than retaining one. In these uncertain economic conditions, you’d have to spend a lot more on marketing and sales to acquire a customer. With that in mind here are some steps you can take to retain current customers:

• Understand how their business is affected and look to solve the issues where your product or service can contribute.
• Offer free value-added services or additional features discounts on new purchases or build a loyalty program to keep your existing customers satisfied and relieve some of the financial strain they might be facing because of the current situation.
• Constantly stay in touch with them to be on top of any requirements or roadblocks they might be facing

2. Keep employees motivated

While you might be tempted to take a peek at your human resources from a cost perspective, right now, your employees could be your most valuable assets. When motivated, their ideas and dedication can lead to unique solutions that might not have occurred to you before. But more importantly, if you keep your employees assured and happy, they’ll do a better job of keeping your customers happy.

When you are a small business owner, it’s common that everyone on the team should be prepared to take care of customer support. Especially during times of uncertainty such as this, employee-customer relationships can play a big role in business survival Here are some ways you can do that:

Make sure that your employees are safe and well settled into their new situations because their physical and mental well being is important, and it’s the responsibility of a company to ensure that.

See to it that all your employees have what they need to comfortably work from home (whether that’s cloud-based technology, collaboration tools, or hardware they will need access to) while also keeping an eye on resources they might need to make this a smooth transition.

Engage with them regularly because social interactions and communication can help boost morale.

3. Be empathetic to customers

Many customers are going through the same scenarios you are. So while you might be in a tough spot, some of your customers are also focusing on business survival. As a company who can understand these difficulties, being empathetic towards them during this time will earn you their trust. Here’s where customer service plays a vital role.

Train your agents and other employees – from your product development teams to your marketing and sales teams – to be understanding of customer concerns knowing that they also have tough decisions to make. Doing that proves that you are a company that takes customer experience and satisfaction seriously. Here are a few action items to tick off for your customer service in these times:

Prepare agents for tough questions and how to be as understanding as possible, while keeping an open mind when finding solutions.

Proactively reach out to customers whenever there is any issue or update that needs to be conveyed, whether that’s product/service-related or policy-related.

Try to fulfill the requests they have quickly. While there are financial restrictions for both customers and you, keep negotiations and problem resolution times as short as possible.

4. Find other ways to add value

Helping customers in this difficult time is not limited to engagement and problem-solving. You can also add value with useful resources that can help them get through this difficult time. A few videos, guides, or tips in the form of easily accessible assets can be beneficial for companies trying to stay on point and keeping things simple. Here are some examples:

We have built a dedicated resource page on remote support with a lot of useful information ranging from interviews with industry leaders to guides on managing work remotely. A similar dedicated set of assets relevant to your product or service can help your customers navigate the new normal.

Stripe has built a great resource page with essential information companies can use, such as sources of financial aid, government policies, etc. during the current crisis.

E-learning portal Educause created a page for educational institutions to navigate their academic calendar and deal with the disruption to normal classes and schedules.

5. Inspiring business survival stories from the previous financial crisis

It’s not yet certain how long this situation will last, neither is it clear how much of an impact it will have on the economy. But if there’s anything we can learn about business survival, it is from companies who have been through similar situations and found ways to add value to their customers’ lives. These companies rode out the storm that was the financial crisis of 2008 and came out the other side stronger, so here’s a little inspiration:

Groupon

The story of Groupon is a magnificent one. During a time when companies were shutting down, and governments had their hands full dealing with the aftermath, Groupon launched their business. They built an e-commerce platform on the idea that groups of people want to buy the same product for a discounted price. Their first offer was a ‘2 slices of Pizza for the cost of one’ deal.

It quickly became a hit amongst customers! By being a company that helped consumers cut expenses and save every last penny on every item possible, they were able to solve a customer problem and, therefore, quickly grew in revenue.

Learning:

Even if you are going through a period of great economic difficulty, identifying customer pain points, and creating products that speak to a market need – you can still find ways to add value to customers.

Netflix

Netflix takes up more than 1/3rd of the USA’s bandwidth capacity! It’s safe to say they have been thriving, especially in times of uncertainty. It’s only fitting that their now-famous video-on-demand streaming service business model was conceptualized in the 08’ financial crisis.

They managed to turn around their failing video rental business quickly by providing attractive plans and offers such as an unlimited number of shows or movies streamable every month as well as providing exceptional customer service.

Learning:

What Netflix saw in the chaos was an opportunity to capitalize on the need for convenience and choice at lower price points. Being agile and swiftly rethinking parts of your business model based on the current situation can open up new avenues that can help you navigate the current situation.

Conclusion

There is no question that this is a very confusing and challenging time from both a personal and professional standpoint. Most companies are having to re-work their strategy in 2020 and create new ones that focus on business survival. But normalcy will resume soon, and we hope that we can look forward to seeing the resumption of business as usual.

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.

Happy customers are key to a successful business. They are also your biggest marketing strategy and greatest promoter. But at the same time, if a dissatisfied customer vents about your company to other people, it will have a huge negative impact on your business.

With customer support constantly evolving, choosing the right type of customer service for your business might seem challenging. In this blog, you can find the answers to all your questions on how to choose the right type of customer service for your business.

Understanding your customer’s needs

Before diving into the different types of customer service, you should first understand the needs of your customers.

Customer needs can be categorized into product needs and service needs. Whether your customer is looking for a product or a service, there are certain criteria they consider.

Product Needs

The product must be a convenient solution to the customer’s functional needs.
The product should fit the unique budget and pricing needs of the customer.
The product should be compatible with the other products they use.
The design of the product should be intuitive and easy to use.
The product should be as reliable as advertised to be.

Service Needs

Customers are always on the lookout for information right from searching the product to months after purchase.
Your customer support and customer success teams should be easily accessible to the customer.
Understanding the customer’s issue and empathizing with them can increase customer satisfaction.
Customers love different options being offered to them in terms of purchase, payment, subscriptions, etc.
Customers love it when there is transparency in the company they are associating with.

What are the different types of customer service?

This is not going to be just another list of all the different types of customer service options available. Along with the common types of customer service, we have also added a bunch of newer options that you might not be familiar with.

Functional Support

All the basic and traditional support options which most businesses incorporate in their customer service strategies can be clubbed under the umbrella of functional support. Let’s dive into the details of each type of customer service that falls under functional support.

1. “Hello, How can I help you today?” – Phone Support

Phone support is still one of the popular support options that are available right now. What still makes phone support the most versatile option is that everyone knows how to use it and everyone has access to a phone. So, customers find it convenient to get their issues sorted via telephonic conversation.

The advantage of offering assistance over the phone is that you get to hear your customer’s voice and tone, and this helps you understand your customer’s emotions better and lets you assess the problem accordingly. Plus, it saves you the time spent on typing out the solution, unlike email or chat.

You can have a dedicated call center or hire a few customer service representatives for call support. We recommend a cloud-based phone support software that can be accessed from anywhere and also be set up with ease. All your conversations are backed up, which helps in streamlining your support workflow. You can also implement an Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and gather more information about the customer’s issue beforehand by asking the customers to enter a series of numbers and route the call to the right agent or team. These AI-powered IVRs are also capable of addressing common queries like order status, refund status, and more.

Industry experts also agree that cloud support options are the future especially for call centers or contact centers. Phone support is here to stay and cloud-based phone support is your ticket to the future of phone support.

2. “Thank you for reaching out to us” – Email Support

With over 269 billion emails being exchanged every day, email is still one of the most reliable modes of customer service. With email support, the customer can also reach out to you even after business hours and you can respond accordingly in your business hours. But always remember that you should send out a reply within 24 hours.

A good email reply creates a lasting impression. While it is important to maintain professionalism when it comes to sending customer emails, it is okay to occasionally sprinkle your message with some humor or wit as long as it is related to the issue at hand. But never fall into 62% of the companies which ignore or never bother responding to customer service emails.

3. “Please check your DM” – Social Media Support

Everybody is on social media and if you aren’t then it is about time that your business marks its presence on it. Anything that is extremely good or bad with customer support ends up on social media. If it is good, you might see an increase in your customer base. But what if it is bad? Your business is at the risk of losing one or more potential customers. Handling social media doesn’t mean just one channel but keeping track of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin accounts. Having a dedicated social media support team will help you handle all your social media interactions and tickets.

With the popularity of social media, many businesses are rising out of social media channels. One such popular medium is Instagram. If you are a small business, having an active Instagram handle and two or three agents for Instagram support will help you acquire more customers. Tiffany & Co, GoPro, Glossier are a few examples of brands that grew out of social media.

4. “Greetings. We’ll get that solved right away” – Live Chat

Did you know that 41% of the customers choose live chat over other support channels? And that the satisfaction rate achieved through live chat is a whopping 92%?

The reason why live chat is now evolving to be an important customer support channel is that it offers immediate support to customers. Embedding a chat widget on your website or mobile app can help your customers reach out to you easily.

With live chat, you can also proactively reach out to customers. You can set up a popup and send a warm greeting to your customers whenever they enter your website. You can also set up triggers that offer assistance with a simple message saying “Hi, I am [name]. If you are having trouble finding a product, I’ll be happy to help” when your customers are displaying signs of frustration such as rage-clicks or dead-clicks.

5. FAQs for the win – Customer Self Service

Having different self-service options will be beneficial for your agents and also your customers. Customers can easily find answers to the common queries without having to reach out to customer support every single time (67% of the customers prefer self-service than having to interact with a customer service agent). This, in turn, reduces the number of incoming support tickets. If there is a reduction in the number of common queries you receive, it means your knowledge base is doing a good job.

An exhaustive knowledge base also helps agents get the information they need from a single place rather than having to search everywhere for it. This will better inform the agents and help them deliver quality customer support.

Another way to provide self-service support is through community forums using which customers can easily search for an issue, find solutions based on the previous conversations, and interact with one another.

When you think of companies that offer great customer service, the best examples are not one-off moments of companies going out of the way to delight a customer. Instead, the best customer service examples are those that have carved a name for themselves by caring genuinely for their customers and consistently putting their customers first.

Sales and marketing efforts can help your company onboard customers. Still, to convert them into customers-for-life, you need a foolproof service culture that prioritizes your customers over every business metric.

1. Listen to customer feedback… REALLY listen to customer feedback!

– Starbucks mends its Pumpkin Spice Latte after hearing from customers
The Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL) by Starbucks is one of the most popular F&B products with huge seasonal demand. PSL was a massive hit with Starbucks loyalists, thanks to the clever positioning of the drink as the harbinger of autumn vibes and seasonal flavors.

But in 2015, the pumpkin spice latte hit a roadblock when customers felt it stopped symbolizing the USA’s seasonal joy, as its ingredients were largely artificial. Questions were also raised about it being a poor indicator of the unhealthy food choices of Americans. Starbucks took this feedback seriously and relaunched PSL with actual pumpkins in the puree and more natural ingredients in the spiced foam topping. That’s how America’s favorite limited-edition drink got back on track, built more patronage, and remained as endearing as ever.

2. Connect with customers at an emotional level

– Trader Joe’s helps calm a toddler who was throwing a tantrum
While the world has embraced online retail with open arms, Trader Joe’s in-store experience still remains relevant owing to its unparalleled customer service. Its employees are known for memorable customer service examples that reflect their cheerful, friendly, and empathetic nature towards customers.

In one such story, a mom was having a tough time with her toddler in the Trader Joe’s outlet at Winter Park, Florida. The employees took it upon themselves to pacify the toddler by breaking into an impromptu song and dance performance. The video was shared by the mom on Facebook, which shows the toddler visibly starstruck by the gig.

3. Transform customer pain points into good customer service examples

– Virgin Atlantic turns negative feedback into a customer success story
Richard Branson’s England-based international airliner, Virgin Atlantic, is renowned for its exceptional customer service. It is one of the brands that epitomizes going above and beyond to delight customers and prioritize their satisfaction over business outcomes.

A frequent flyer of Virgin Atlantic wrote a tongue-in-cheek email to Richard Branson, complaining about the Indian food served (the famous curry story) on his flight to Heathrow from Mumbai. A templated “damage control” response would have only escalated a bad customer service example. But Branson actually sought the help of the passenger to improve the Virgin Atlantic’s food menu!

4. Ensure that customer support is technically competent

– Freshworks employee resolves a technical issue faced by a newly onboarded customer
One of Freshworks’ new clients faced multiple roadblocks before they could completely transition their customers onto the Freshdesk customer service software. The client company wanted to ensure that expectations were met in terms of customizing the helpdesk for their use-cases.

Utkarsh, then an Account Manager for Freshdesk, helped the customer by ensuring a seamless migration. Not only did Utkarsh help the client adapt to the new software, but he also went the extra mile to personalize the onboarding process in keeping with their specific and intricate requirements. This resulted in heartfelt appreciation from the client for the sense of shared urgency and technical acumen displayed by the Account Manager.

5. Make loyal customers feel special

– Taco Bell turns a hoax into customer delight
In 2012, the little-known city of Bethel, Alaska was primed to get its first Taco Bell. The people of Bethel were excited as they previously had to make the 300-mile trek to Anchorage – the nearest city with a Taco Bell outlet. However, it was later revealed to be part of a big hoax, and Taco Bell never had plans to add Bethel to their fast-food chain.

But instead of letting the rumor mills die down, Taco Bell decided to keep the buzz alive by planning a surprise for its loyal customers. They flew into Bethel on a helicopter, carrying a truck full of taco ingredients, fit to make about 10,000 tacos. This effort from Taco Bell was dubbed “operation Alaska” and was a huge sensation in the media.

6. Build a customer-first service culture from the grassroots

– Zappos’ inimitable culture of delighting customers at every turn
Zappos is a brand known as much for its customer service stories as its actual shoe business.

As a testament to their exceptional customer service, there have been many occasions where customers called Zappos for issues not concerning their products. On one such call, a customer requested a Zappos service rep to get directions to a retail store in Florida. Despite knowing that this was a call with no intent to shop Zappos product, the service rep helped the customer reach his destination–literally at every “turn”.

Among other significant customer service stories, Zappos is also known for the world-record 10+ hours call with a customer. This marathon customer service call was eventually bettered by another support agent from Zappos. No wonder the Zappos support team is christened the “Customer Loyalty Team”.

With its service culture, Zappos has built a customer experience that has created a loyal customer base. Zappos’ unending list of customer service examples only shows us that it will always remain a dizzying benchmark of greatest customer service stories.

7. Create policies around customer expectations

– Amazon’s hassle-free return and refund policy & Slack’s fair billing policy
Customers drown in pain points brought about by the fine-print at the pretext of brand policies. This greatly affects their perception about the brand, and worse, they start losing trust. Policies could be a dealbreaker right from hidden charges on products to post-sale support. But Amazon and Slack beg to differ.

Amazon ensures that customers have a wholesome experience even after their purchase by giving 30 days to return or replace their product. During the 30-day time window after purchase, customers can play around the products to return them if they dislike it or get it replaced if it’s faulty. An Amazon delivery executive collects within a week of the product getting listed for a refund or replacement. The refund for returns is also seamless as Amazon takes only 3 days for the refund process to unfold as soon as it receives the product back.

Social media is overflowing with more content than anyone can ever consume, and if you want people to pay attention to your content, you have to remember that it’s all about the engagement. Social feeds are less of a megaphone to drive traffic to your site and more about the one-on-one connections and trust that you build with your audience. To grab a customer’s attention and increase revenue from that customer, engagement is vital. Your social customer care strategy must include plans for building brand awareness, loyalty, and connection to increase engagement over time. By doing so, you’re sure to see increased revenue due to your social media efforts.

Social media algorithms prioritize engagement, conversation, and content drive engagement. Posts with few comments and interactions are assumed to be uninteresting or irrelevant and will be displayed to fewer people over time. However, social posts with higher engagement will be shown to more people, resulting in multiplied engagement.

Beyond resulting in more views, engagement is important to customers individually as well. When consumers feel listened to and appreciated, they’re more likely to recommend a brand or endorse it on social media. Superior customer experience also makes it more likely that they try additional products or services from your organization.

As you develop your social customer care strategy, consider these five key areas for increasing engagement and, therefore, increasing revenue.

Provide Excellent Support

High-quality customer support is essential for success, and it’s even more of a necessity when you’re providing that support via social media. The public nature of social customer care means everyone will see when you’re doing it right, and also when something goes wrong. A lousy interaction or using the wrong tone can impact your entire brand. Customer service agents who understand best practices for providing support on social media are a must-have. Beyond that, all your agents must know what they’re talking about regarding your product or service. Around 46% of consumers will give up on a brand if the employees aren’t knowledgeable. Support on social means providing the wrong answer won’t only be evident to one person. It’ll jump out at anyone following your feeds.

According to PwC’s Future of CX report, 32% of all customers will stop doing business with a brand they love after one bad experience. But what if that experience is shared in public view on social media where other people can see it too? It increases the chances of people indirectly being influenced by that negative experience. And what about customers who won’t ever reach out even when they have a problem? Lee Resources found that for every one customer who complains, another 26 leave quietly without saying anything at all. By providing excellent customer care on social media, your organization has a chance to help those asking, plus anyone who checks out your feed on their own time too.

Furthermore, organizations with top-notch social support see customers spending 20-40% more each year. Considering those numbers, it’s worth the effort to make sure your support stands out among your competitors.

Share Valuable Content on Your Social Feeds

To increase the chances of people paying attention to your social posts, remember to provide value. Your Twitter feed or Facebook page shouldn’t be full of teasing headlines with a link to click to find the good stuff. Instead, aim to provide value right on your feeds. Did you recently roll-out a new feature for your product? Share the details on social. Look for ways to post your top tips for the feature, along with examples of the various ways of using it. This will not only catch more eyes than a basic announcement linking to details elsewhere, but will also serve as a tiny support document for anyone following your feeds.

The key is to create social content that is useful, entertaining, and unique. Then, you just have to stick around to provide customer support to anyone who replies to your social posts with a question. Don’t just stop by, drop the information, and leave. Watch your replies and extend the value of the details you’re sharing by helping people figure things out. To determine what kind of content would provide the most value, check out the most common questions you receive on your social accounts. If you receive queries on the same topics over and over, be proactive and create social content to help people find their answers before they even ask. This will not only serve those who would ask, but can also help the people who would otherwise go on silently with the problem and never reach out for help.

Be Responsive

People who don’t hear back from you once they post a message of any kind, are less likely to spend their money on your product or service. The fact is, feeling ignored doesn’t inspire confidence, and no one wants to spend their hard earned money with a company that seems flaky and lazy. In fact, lack of response or slow response times leads to an increase in customer churn by 15%.

Furthermore, social messaging such as one-on-one conversations through Twitter direct messages, Facebook messenger, Instagram messages etc, is on the rise. People aren’t only interested in your public feed anymore, but are also more likely to reach out privately to your social channels as well. It’s important these messages don’t go unassisted. Provide the attention and help customers in need through DMs for increased happiness, customer loyalty, engagement, and finally – revenue!

Considering how vital customer engagement is on social media, it’s essential to look for ways to encourage responses and interaction on your social feeds. According to Sprout Social, “30% of people will go to a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond.” Be sure your social strategy encourages customers to reach out with questions and thoughts on your product anytime—whether on the public feed or in the private messages—and make sure to follow through by actively engaging with them.

Show Your Human Side

Social media is a space for human interactions, and customers still prefer a human over a bot when given a choice. In fact, 71% of Americans would rather interact with a human than go through an automated process. Knowing this and considering how people use social media, it’s essential to keep your social media interactions and customer care human. While you should find ways to streamline how you manage the support load on social media, be sure not to automate the human touch out of it. Creating a stockpile of prewritten responses to common queries will speed things up, but make sure you customize them enough to avoid sounding like a robot pasting the same message over and over.

Being human and friendly on social media when providing customer care lets people see how you treat customers. Timely responses with helpful information and a welcoming tone will inspire new people to become customers. With each new customer you earn by drawing them in with your skilled social media support, more revenue will follow.

Monitor Mentions of Your Brand

Watch for mentions of your brand or product on social media where your company’s username isn’t included. This will help you find the people who post questions randomly, without directing it at your organization’s account. By spotting these, you can reply and help them out even when they’re not expecting it. However, don’t reach out to them if it’s to argue about their thoughts on your product. The surprise assistance will delight the customer, as long as it’s done kindly. Beyond helping the customer solve the problem, according to Sprout Social, people are 70% more likely to use a brand’s product when that brand reaches out to them on social, and 25% less likely to post negatively about the brand.

Drive Increased Revenue with Top-Notch Social Customer Care

Customers prefer speed, convenience, helpful employees, and friendly service from their customer support interactions. Since social media also benefits from speed and convenience, it’s the perfect place to provide welcoming, high-quality customer care to your customers too. As you develop your strategy for social customer care with an aim to increase revenue, be sure to prioritize friendly and skilled support agents, timely interactions, ideas for increasing engagement, and providing value for your customers. The more you engage your customers, the more success you’ll see in sales too.

Customer service and marketing don’t typically get matched up. Different departments, different duties, right?

At least, that’s the old school way of slotting this unique relationship.

But as more brands continue sprucing up their digital presence, customer service and marketing are now more entwined than ever before.

When done correctly, pairing the two can help solve tough issues, and boost customer satisfaction and profitability in the long run.

So in this article, I want to share at least six different ways that customer service can help improve your marketing efforts.

With these methods in mind, you’ll be one step ahead of your competition when it comes to both, your marketing and your customer service.

6 ways your customer service will help your marketing

Marketing and customer service should always be working in tandem to make your brand better. Here are six ways to make that happen.

1. Customer Service Can Inform Your Content Creation

Just ask any marketer how difficult it can be to generate ideas for good content on a regular basis. Even in ideal situations, it can be hard to know what will truly resonate with your audience.

This ideation phase of content development is critical. It’s what directs your initial efforts, and ultimately decides the outcome and success of your marketing efforts.

Creating good content isn’t enough anymore1, so the idea creation phase is more critical than ever.

The solution is to try to base your content ideas on customer needs; and who knows that better than your support reps?

By working with marketing, your customer support team can help direct marketing and content to meet various needs across your sales funnel.

It also allows you to generate a robust library of support and help articles that will keep your customers happy after they complete their purchase.

But without these ideas, your marketing team will continue to struggle in their quest to find good ideas. It’s a simple and elegant solution to pair up with your customer service.

2. They Can Flesh out Your Buyer Personas

Understanding the thought process of your ideal customer is vital when you’re trying to convince them. In marketing, you usually accomplish this step by creating a buyer persona.

You base these personas on details about your ideal customers. Aspects like their age, income, and hobbies help create a clear picture as to where and how your marketing efforts should be directed.

But of course, these personas are subject to constant change and evolution, as your product and target audiences keep evolving.

Your marketing team needs to identify and understand the pulse of this change, which is where customer service again plays a crucial role.

Dedicated customer support teams will have worked more closely with your customers as their needs evolve. After all, they’re the ones who answer phone calls, send emails, and staff your live chat team.

That means they’ve heard direct feedback about the product from the customer. With that type of experience, they’re the most qualified group to help pose new solutions and flesh out your buyer personas.

3. They Will Help Establish Realistic Customer Expectations

These days, customer expectations are at an all-time high.

There’s no way to truly know what a customer really thinks when they buy. It’s one of the constant challenges faced by marketing teams across the globe.

And when issues arise, it’s often due to discrepancies between expectation and reality. That means your marketing team has made a promise that your product can’t keep.

But such complaints don’t go to marketing, they are sent to customer service.

In such a case if there’s a disconnect between your marketing team and your customer service team, then you’ll be in a constant feedback loop.

So by pairing up your customer service and marketing, you can control the expectations of your customers and monitor them better. Communicating these discrepancies will create honest marketing, that speaks directly to the customer.

With controlled expectations, you’ll get fewer complaints, less churn, and happier customers. That’s a powerful impact from an easy change.

4. Customer Service Unifies the Brand Message

On a similar note, miscommunication between customer service and marketing can lead to some rather embarrassing scenarios for your brand – like one department being unaware of what the other is doing.

According to a study3, more than half of your company is most likely missing out on that kind of vital information.

Just imagine a scenario where your customer service doesn’t know about a deal, a promotion, or a promise that marketing made to a customer.

How will they handle the initial calls or emails that will come in, if something goes wrong since they aren’t in the loop?

The only solution is to create better lines of communication between marketing and customer service. This unifies the message that your brand sends, and creates a much more positive experience in the event of any issues cropping up.

It’s simple math. By unifying your brand message, your marketing and your customer service will be much more effective.

5. Customer Service Finds the Best Customer Stories

Most marketing is about storytelling. Your audience wants to hear stories about your product, brand, and satisfied customers.

Studies have shown that as many as 92% of people4 focus primarily on storytelling when vetting a brand. That’s across all genres of marketing, too.

Great struggles produce great stories.

Consider this recent story shared by the Huffington Post, about a blanket named Joshie5. While on vacation at a Ritz-Carlton hotel, a young boy accidentally left his favorite blanket behind.

The family contacted the hotel, and instead of brushing them off, the customer service team stepped up to the challenge.

They found the blanket, and then decided to help the distressed child feel better by showing him that his blanket was just taking an extra long vacation before heading home:

The next time that family goes on vacation, you can bet they’ll be staying at a Ritz-Carlton.

And it’s all because the customer service went above and beyond when a customer ran into an issue. It generated a heartwarming story and prompted the family to share the experience with everyone they could.

6. Shared goals = shared successes

Sustainable growth is always purposeful, and marketing is usually a huge part of that effort. It’s one of the many reasons why marketing is so analytics-based.

According to one study, marketers who create goals are four times more likely to be successful than those that don’t.

But what makes for a good marketing goal? There are plenty of targets that you can aim for, but merely aiming is no guarantee of success.

You need to set the right goals, and customer service can help you do that.

Just think about it. When marketing and customer service share the goal of resolving issues before they arise, that’s better for your brand and your customer.

With happier customers, you’ll have all of the benefits listed above, plus a clear direction forward.

And when done well, it will improve revenue, help your overall customer experience, and cement your future as a customer-centric brand.

The entire reason you created a business in the first place was probably to help a customer meet a need or solve a problem.

Chances are, you designed your products and services for the same reason.

You should operate in the same way. But most brands have lost sight of what’s truly important: the customer.

If you don’t put your customer’s needs and issues above all else, you’ll have to deal with the consequences. And they’re not so sweet.

Gartner research shows1 that by 2020, poor customer experiences will ruin a whopping 30% of digital business projects.

Your company could be one of them. Unless you decide to become customer-centric.

But what exactly does it mean to be a customer-centric company? And why is it important?

Why is it Important to be Customer-centric?

A recent study asked what characteristics were important for companies to have when trying to develop a truly “digital native” culture.

The results of the research proved that 58% of respondents think that it’s most important to be customer-centric.

But becoming customer-centric doesn’t just happen instantly.

You have to understand what customer centricity truly is and build a solid strategy to transform your brand in a meaningful way.

Customer centricity isn’t just about offering excellent customer service.

It means offering a top-notch experience at every stage of the buying process, from awareness to purchase and even into post-purchase.

At its core, it means putting customers first above all else. To do this, you must first understand and offer a quality customer value.

What can customers gain from your product? Why should they care? And how much effort do they have to put so as to use or buy your products and services?

You can gain insight into these questions by collecting data (which you can later use to make improvements to the customer journey and overall customer experience).

By setting your focus on customer service values, the customer journey, and customer experience, you will naturally develop a customer-centric brand.

One of the quickest and effective ways to gather this data is through collecting customer feedback.

Do You Collect Customer Feedback?

To truly be a customer-centric company, you have to communicate with your customers often (and well).

The good news? There are tons of different platforms that you can use to collect feedback in today’s digital world.

You can even use some of the touchpoints you already have in place to communicate with customers to ask them their opinion about your industry and brand, such as:

– Phone calls
– Live chat
– Email
– In-app messaging
– SMS messaging
– Facebook messenger
– Community message boards on your website

Use these channels of communication to learn about your customers, their likes, and their dislikes. The value of the insight and data you can collect is huge.

You can even do qualitative research by collecting customer satisfaction (CSAT) ratings2 that can help you understand how your customers truly feel about your brand and the support you offer.

Collect these ratings by sending customers surveys after their agent-customer interactions have ended. These CSAT survey questions usually look something like this:

This feature is built into Freshdesk’s platform and can be sent out after each support ticket.

This data can help you keep track of your agent’s performance, the quality of your service, and what your customers think you need to improve on.

It also shows customers that you value their opinion and want their voices to be heard.

In Freshdesk, you can even customize the point scales and questions that you want to use when asking CSAT survey questions.

For example, you might want a seven-point scale survey instead of a five-point scale survey. Or maybe you want to ask additional custom questions at the end of the survey.

This is all possible in Freshdesk. One single account can create as many as ten different CSAT surveys. Only one survey can remain activated at a time.

Do You Give Your Team the Tools They Need to Provide Helpful Support?

Making sure that your customers have a positive experience is crucial to your success

Studies show that it takes as many as 12 positive customer experiences to make up for just one unresolved negative experience.

That’s why you have to take care of customers experiencing a negative issue as soon as possible.

This all boils down to fully understanding your customers and knowing the best ways to support them.

The best way to make sure that this happens is to empower your support team with the knowledge and tools they need to turn any negative experience around quickly.

That way, they can provide quick and comprehensive support that your customers want and need.

Helpdesk is the best way to empower your agents and put your customers at the center of your business.

A customer-centric helpdesk tries to reduce the agent effort that is required to satisfy each customer. That way, agents can help more customers without burnout.

Automated features in Freshdesk help agents to automatically handle tasks based on time and event-based triggers.

You can even create your own customized workflows so that each ticket ends up in the hands of the best available agent.

If you don’t keep track of your metrics, you’ll never know if your agents are truly working as effectively as possible.

Reporting and analytics features can help you and your team track whether you are truly performing and making customers happy.

Do You Share Customer Success Stories?

When you display customer success stories on your site, visitors browsing around will be able to see how much you truly care about buyers.

And when you collect customer success stories after a purchase, you’ll show clients that your relationship with them doesn’t end with a purchase.

This action can result into more trusting customers since 68% of consumers3 say that positive online reviews make them more likely to buy from a business.

When you’re concerned about the value you deliver to customers after they’ve already handed over their money, you can be sure that every customer is truly happy with your brand.

If they aren’t, you can immediately assign your support team to fix the issue.

If they are, you can celebrate your customer success by asking them if you can share their positive experience with others.

When you collect customer feedback, as we discussed earlier, share the stories of satisfied customers on your website or social media pages and celebrate each one of them.

Do You Measure the Effectiveness of Customer Centricity?

Every business will have different customers metrics that they use to measure customer centricity.

But there are two customer-centric metrics that every company should monitor:

– Churn rate
– Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Let’s go over churn rate first.

Churn rate is important because acquiring new customers is more difficult than ever before. It costs up to seven times more5 to gain one new customer than it does to retain one.

That’s why so many companies are focused on keeping current customers instead of finding new buyers.

Keeping track of your churn rate can help you understand how many customers are leaving and how many are loyal.

If your churn rates are high, you should implement some customer-centric strategies and monitor churn rates to see if it decreases. If it does, you’re onto something.

To calculate your churn rate, take the total number of your customers who left in the last year and divide it by your average number of total customers within the same 12 month period.

Customer lifetime value, also known as CLV, refers to the profits that your company makes from any given customer.

Calculating CLV helps you understand how much each customer is spending before moving on from your company.

Conclusion

Your products and services were created to help customers meet a need or solve a problem. Your entire brand should operate in the same manner, with the customer at the center of it all.

You can do this by being a customer-centric company and offering an excellent customer experience at every stage of the buying process.

Customer-centric companies collect customer feedback at every chance they get.

They value customer opinions and use the information to make improvements to their strategy and operations.

With Freshdesk, you can collect customer satisfaction ratings via customizable surveys. These surveys are sent out after each support ticket is closed.

Customer needs and expectations are ever changing. Identifying, analyzing, and meeting customer needs is the key to providing better customer service and growing your business.

In this blog, we cover the A-Z of customer needs to help you create a product or service that is in line with everything that your customers need.

What are customer needs?

Simply put, a customer need is a driving factor that pushes consumers to look for and purchase a product or service. These needs might solve a challenge they are facing, they might pertain to a service they require in order to accomplish a task, they might be solutions that make their lives easier or more comfortable – broadly, it is anything that pushes them towards a purchase decision. Unsurprisingly, most businesses are created to offer solutions for customer needs.

For instance, there’s a section of customers who do not have the time to go out and pick up groceries. To cater to the needs of these customers, online, on-demand grocery stores such as Walmart Grocery and Grofers were launched.

Customers can now get their daily, weekly, and monthly supplies delivered right from home. The fact that customers were looking for a more convenient solution can be easily derived here.

But is convenience the only reason why customer needs arise? Not really.

In addition to convenience, there are two other factors that drive customer needs. Let’s explore the three factors in detail.

Where do customer needs stem from?

Analyzing customer needs gives you the reason why customers purchase your product or service.

In a business context, customer needs stem from the desire to:

– Increase convenience: 97% of consumers say they have backed out of making a purchase because of inconvenience.1 In the previous example, by shopping for groceries online customers are optimizing for convenience. In fact, the more convenience a solution offers, the more likely are customers to purchase.

– Improve efficiency: Customers are constantly looking for better ways of doing something. For instance, creating to-do lists is a good way to be efficient. However, most people don’t stop with to-do lists alone. They also set up reminders that help them complete their task on time, and thereby further improve their efficiency. It’s this need that was served with the launch of apps such as Evernote.

– Reduce costs: In addition to increasing convenience and efficiency, customers need solutions that help them reduce costs. For instance, lean customer service teams turn to self-service and chatbots to cut down spending on other resources, such as a bigger workforce, on-premise teams, and round-the-clock staffing

Most businesses only take stock of customer needs at the time of the inception of the business. However, that might not be the wisest thing to do. Here’s why.

Why are customer needs important?

As a business, understanding the reason why your customers purchase from you, and staying on top of changing customer expectations helps you stay purpose-driven. This helps you:
– Create clear business goals and KPIs for employees
– Improve your product and service
– Keep your customers happy and increase customer loyalty
– Grow your business

Now that we’ve covered all the basics, let’s take a look at the different types of customer needs.

15 types of customer needs you should know about

Product
1. Intuitive design
When it comes to technology, usability is an extremely important customer need.

A well-designed user interface could raise your website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.2 This goes to show that customers want products that offer seamless user experiences.

In addition to good UI and UX, products also need to have good accessibility to cater to the needs of the specially-abled customers.

2. User-centered
Customers want products that are centered around their solving for their needs. To put this in perspective, the functionalities of your product should address and adapt to the user’s environment, tasks, goals, and in time, incorporate customer feedback into the product to make sure you’re delivering the most useful, impactful product.

Evernote, a note-taking app, increased user retention by 15% after launching intuitive, helpful features.3 This increase was the result of changes that were incorporated after listening to users narrate their experiences and monitoring how users interacted with the product.

3. Affordable
Cost tends to be a key factor while making a purchase. You need to come up with a pricing plan that is cognizant of this customer need in order to keep your business successful.

Especially with the advent of the pandemic, affordability has become all the more important. Globally, 54% of consumers say price is a more important purchasing criterion than it was just a month ago.4

4. Reliable
No matter how elegant the product looks, customers would still abandon the product if it fails to perform well.

While minor bugs are inevitable, the product should not crash often and hinder customers.

5. Compatible
When it comes to purchasing software, customers are increasingly basing their purchase decisions on how much effort is required in adding your solution to their existing tech stack. That’s why your product needs to be compatible with the other tools that they are using. This basic yet critical necessity enables customers to plan their workflows around their existing tech stack.

Customer Service

6. Omnichannel
9 out of 10 consumers want an omnichannel experience with seamless service between communication methods.5

Omnichannel customer service allows you to keep track of customer conversations across all channels from a single view and provide a uniform customer experience.

Omnichannel support removes the need for customers to repeat their issues and 57% of baby boomers and 45% of millennials get irritated at having to repeat themselves.6 This forces brands to offer an omnichannel service experience.

7. Transparency
Customers need brands to be transparent and share information upfront. So, it’s important to make it easy for customers to access the right information throughout the customer journey. This will help them make the right buying decision and also build trust in your brand.

8. Speed
When customers run into an issue with your product or service, the sooner they get a solution, the faster they can get back to their routine lives.

According to recent research, 42% of customers consider 1-3 minutes to be the acceptable wait time to speak to a customer service representative. Only 31% of customers are willing to wait no longer than 5 minutes to speak to someone.7

So, as a business, you need to offer fast and effective solutions.

9. 24/7 support
51% of customers today want businesses to be available 24/7.8 If your business is spread across different geographies, then it’s absolutely necessary that you provide 24/7 support.

Additionally, if your business is a part of the travel, healthcare, or finance industry, then it’s imperative for you to support your customers around the clock. Customers in these industries often tend to have critical and time-sensitive issues that need to be tended to immediately

10. Personalization
Customers today want experiences that are tailored to them. In fact, 63% of consumers expect personalization as a standard of service.9

Customers need to see tailored responses and solutions that address even the minor details of the issue reported. This helps them believe that the conversation was unique and personal.

Emotional

11. Validation
Costumes feel the need to be validated while using your product. For instance, while using a customer service software, agents look at response and resolution times or leaderboards for reassurance, while managers might look at reports and analytics.

12. Control
Customers like to be in control of things and your product or service should empower them to feel that way.

For instance, if you offer a B2B product, you need to enable your customers to easily customize your product, upgrade or downgrade plans, and generate thorough reports on their own.

If you offer a B2C product, then you need to give your customers multiple payment options and allow them to track and monitor delivery.

13. Empathy
When your customers come to you with a problem, they want to feel heard and understood.

Customers look for that human element when they interact with brands. They don’t want to be met with to-the-point or curt responses.

14. Trust
For customers to be able to trust you, they need to be treated like a friend, and not as a transaction.

For instance, at Freshworks, we treat each of our customers as friends and build relationships that are based on trust, and transparency.

15. Fairness
All customers expect to be treated equally. While you can offer perks for loyal customers, when it comes to customer service, all requests should be treated with the same importance and urgency.

In the words of Shep Hyken,

“All customers should all be treated with dignity, respect, and the attention any human deserves. They should all be treated in a way that is consistent with your brand promise and the reputation you wish to be known for.”

The 15 types of customer needs that have been listed here can be seen across all businesses. Let’s take a look at how you can identify customer needs that are unique to your business.

How to identify customer needs?

Conducting market research (a thorough study of your target markets and customers) helps you gather information about your customers and narrow down on their needs.

In this section, we’ll discuss different ways in which you can conduct market research.

Regardless of which method you choose, by the end of your research, you need to find answers to the following questions:

– What is the definition of your ideal customer? [average age, qualification, characteristics]

– What do they do? [what is their job and how is their environment]

– What were they trying to achieve by purchasing your product? [the reason why they bought your product]

– Is your solution meeting this goal? [reality check]

– Are they facing any pain-points? If yes, what are they? [your weakness]

– Do they have any product or feature requests?

– Is it their first time buying a solution in your space?

– If yes, which solution did they use before this?

– Why did they decide to look for another solution? [your strong points]

– Are they happy with your customer service?

How to meet customer needs?

Once you’ve analyzed your customer needs, you need to take the appropriate steps to solve them. Although your customer’s needs will be unique to your business, here are three key tips to increase customer happiness on the whole:

1. Develop a user-driven product
One way to get your customers’ needs solved is to keep them at the center of your design and development process. Here are a few tips that can help you create a user-driven product:
– Design for usability (don’t let aesthetics blind you)
– Offer an intuitive or self-service onboarding module
– Have a convenient pricing model
– Get feedback from customers on a continuous basis
– Incorporate valid feedback in your next cycle of product development
– Make it easy for customers to troubleshoot and report issues or bugs
– Educate your users by adding help guides/videos, or embedding FAQs or a chatbot

2. Offer better customer service
A good product alone is not enough to meet your customer’s needs. Customers are bound to run into bugs and other inconveniences with your product. Complementing your product with the best customer service possible is necessary to improve customer satisfaction.

3. Create a customer-focused culture
In a customer-centric or a customer-focused culture, every employee in your organization understands and prioritizes your customer’s needs first. So this mindset encourages each employee to do what’s best for the customer.

Customer-facing teams are the ones that benefit the most from thriving in a culture that puts the customer first. This empowers sales and support teams to engage in meaningful conversations and create memorable experiences that keep customers glued to your brand.

Parting words: Be proactive when it comes to customer needs

Once you’ve got the foundation of your business set, you need to start anticipating customer needs and look for creative ways to solve them in advance.

A customer service software like Freshdesk, you can meet and exceed customer needs and delight your customers by:
– offering omnichannel service
– collaborating with context
– collecting customer feedback with customized forms
– categorizing feedback and keeping relevant teams in the loop
– improving agent productivity
– increasing customer happiness.