Taking stock of your business at the end of the year is always a good idea. You can take forward what has been good from one year to the next and leave behind the not so good. This year is no different to all the other years, despite all the upheaval of the pandemic. The single most important thing is to be realistic about where you are now and not harking back to 12 months ago. Establishing a starting point is the only way to feel motivated and generate the energy needed to build and grow the business for 2021.
So, with that in mind here are our insight6 top tips to grow your business through a focused plan on customer experience for 2021.
1. Know your customers and their current needs
Getting to know who your customers are and what they want from you is vital for any business. The impact of the pandemic has affected us all in different ways. From being made redundant to being extremely fearful of going out. There are some customers that have saved money from not travelling and going out or customers who are enormously busy with booming online retail businesses. Whatever the impact you need to understand how the pandemic has affected your customers and the relationship that they have with you!
Understanding your customers and having clarity on what they need right now is fundamental for you to grow your business.
2. Align the customer experience programme with your business strategy
When you have decided on your business strategy the next step is to tie in your processes to make sure your plans can be achieved. A good plan involves implementing measurement tools that will assess how and what you are doing. For example, if your business strategy is moving from high street retail to online - the existing customer experience programme will need to change. In a nutshell if you are trying to grow your business by selling more online, then make sure you have created a programme that identifies and measures each stage of the online buying journey and do not confine yourself to feedback on your website.
3. Find out what is stopping your customers buying from you
Do you have the answers to why someone that looks exactly like your perfect customer is not shopping with you or buying your service? Do you know why customers who have always bought from you are now buying from your competitors? There is always rich insight to be gained by asking the question why, to both lapsed customers (have not come back) or those that have never been a customer in the past. It is straight-forward to recruit people that meet the profile of your ideal customer or contact your lapsed customers to find out why they have not been a recent customer. You just need to find the time, write the questions and do it!
4. Calculate your conversion rates from the initial enquiry to a sale and identify why and where they are dropping out of the customer journey
There are so many moments along the customer journey before the customer decides to purchase. Each moment leads to three options. Yes, no or I can’t decide. In most businesses we can measure how many customers start the process and how many say yes and ‘convert’. For example, if you have a shop you may have counters at the door that measure how many people enter the shop. At the end of the day, you can read the till transactions to work out your conversion rate. Equally, if you are a law firm, you can collect all the new enquiries on your CRM system and monitor how many convert to clients. Measuring conversion is so incredibly helpful for all businesses because it provides you with the opportunity to grow your business NOT by finding lots of new customers, but successfully converting the ones that have found you.
5. Make sure you have the right tools to do the measurement
There are varied methods to measure customer experience from focus groups to online surveys. By understanding who your customers are and what data you need is the first step in identifying the best approach. If you want quantitative data, then investing in a survey platform that will gather all the data you need is fundamental, but do you need to do cross tabulations or have an automatic reporting system? If your customers are Generation Z then a postal survey would not work, but if your customer base is a generation that are not digital natives then this might be appropriate. Using the right tool to fit the job will always save time, energy and money.
6. Get objective analysis
It is always tempting to diagnose business problems or issues on your own to save time and money. Two precious commodities! However, we probably all know only too well that seeking advice from a third party is actually hugely beneficial. Not only does it provide fresh insights, but you are gathering really useful and actionable ideas and solutions from a third party expert.
If we can help with any of the above or you would like to discuss how you implement the six steps into your CX strategy for 2021 we would love to hear from you.
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Merry Christmas from us all at insight6