A great customer experience can enhance the value and length of the consumer and merchant relationship. Each product in a marketplace has to be a better or more affordable substitute, tying commercial success to service. Businesses that roll out sophisticated customer experience tactics to add value to their offerings with giveaways, enhanced services, loyalty-based bonuses, live chat, and up- or cross-selling are quickly becoming leaders in the customer service industry.
Defining Customer Service
Customer service is the interaction between organization and customers. While there are many different definitions, there isn’t a right or a wrong interpretation because what makes customer service good depends heavily on what meets consumer expectations.
Customer Experience Ideologists
Top industry experts drive innovative strategies for enhancing the customer experience. They create client-centered philosophies for businesses to leverage the emotional aspects of the experience. Some of the top influential people and their service-oriented industry tactics include:
- Shep Hyken – Supports developing a culture and loyalty mindset to enable clients to share experiences and promote your products on social networks
- Colin Shaw – Predicts trends for reducing shopping cart abandonment
- Ken Varga – Believes aligning relevant advertising efforts prompts customers to buy what they’re researching
- Donna Fluss – Offers free, valuable advice for integrating customer relationship management software in support centers for quality assurance to optimize customer experiences
- Hank Brigman – Communicating offerings through newsletters, advertising, and word of mouth achieves the goal of being omnipresent
A successful customer-centered corporate culture utilizes the services of a dedicated customer experience manager to focus on the emotional aspects of interactions to communicate relevant information.
Influencers and the Wow Effect Formula
The difference between influencers and ideologists is fuzzy. It may seem that influencers concentrate more on enhancing whatever fun there is to have and less on revenue. In the long run, they influence customer expectations and drive companies to introduce innovative customer-centered mechanisms into action. These people flourish in the social media environment, taking advantages of various platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and social video channels including YouTube to share their thoughts on the customer experience.
Influence as a Marketing Tool
Not all influencers are published authors or professionals. Anyone who creates ideas and concepts and strategizes on leveraging the customer experience to drive revenue and satisfaction is considered an influencer. For instance, Joseph Michelli, a keynote speaker, focuses on the Wow effect, which is a descriptive designation for a large customer experience goal. He found that 70 percent of customers indicate five main touchpoints for recommending products to others:
Engagement: Genuine acknowledgment and care of consumer needs
- Executional Excellence: Outstanding quality and product knowledge
- Brand Experience: Ensuring customers believe they’re getting a deal
- Expediting: Proactively caring about the consumer during the shopping process
- Problem Recovery: Assurance of satisfaction and compensation
Interestingly, engagement and brand experience are the only two touchpoints significantly impacting loyalty. Should a company decide to increase these key performance indicators, it can use techniques such as gamification, an online marketing technique to encourage engagement, or customer support empowerment to feed its culture into the community.