8 Customer Experience Mistakes Brands Make

Businesses today invest heavily in sales and marketing initiatives and enjoy great success. However, such an approach inevitably falls short of adding long-lasting value. They neglect an essential factor for sustainable business growth – Customer Experience.?

A good customer experience (CX) will not just create new revenue sources and customer base but also increase recurring income through repeat orders leading to a business model that is more profitable. To help marketers avoid repeating their errors, here are the top 8 customer experience mistakes that brands make.?

Not Listening to your Customer -?Customer feedback and reviews present marketers with golden opportunities to improve their brand offering and build a loyal community. However, many brands fail to collect, analyze and act on such valuable insights directly from their customers. Customers of any business model – B2B, B2C, and D2C – undertake thorough research before purchasing a product or service.?

Not Being Available Where Your Customers Are -?Earlier, businesses allowed communication only through phone calls or emails. Now, things have changed massively. It is important for brands to provide a seamless omnichannel experience. This means being accessible across social media platforms, email, chat services, etc. A multichannel approach is an ideal way to keep in touch with your customers.

Not Focusing on Your Design Choices -?There is no bigger turn-off for a customer than a bad design. Your social media post, marketing collateral, or even the website play your brand’s ambassadors. If they don’t present the best design or appeal to your customers, your brand marketing approach will fall flat. Having a strong design policy is critical when building your website or an app.?

Not Utilizing Customer Data for Better Service -?Brands accumulate volumes of customer data that can transform business offerings along with customer experience. Many businesses, though fail or lack the expertise to effectively utilize data. All the information or customer data you collect needs to go through a thorough analytical pipeline to draw actionable insights from it. One major benefit you can get out of real-time data is personalization.

Not Using an Extroverted Communication Approach -?Brands should be extroverts. The easiest way to do that is to be available on social media 24/7 and post regularly to show your active participation in the customer’s daily feed. Promoting your brand can be done in multiple ways and not just have one-way communication. Add interactive posts, surveys, and polls to your social media strategy, along with creating informative and relevant content.?

Not Understanding Who Your Customers Are -?Though this mistake can be clubbed into the real-time data management challenge, it needs to be addressed separately. Any brand starts its product/service journey by creating an ideal customer profile. This works great, but only till a certain point. Even if you can bucket your customers into traditional demographics, there will be preferences that they all differ on.?

Not Treating Your Employees Like Your Customers -?Everything, from social listening to data management, is taken care of by employees. If you neglect their well-being, it will certainly affect your customer experience. It works like a chain reaction – the value you show your employees is extended to your customers. Your employees are the customer-facing brand ambassadors and need to be treated as priority stakeholders.

Not Unifying Your Brand and Product -?Most companies define a clear distinction between their offerings and their brand. This is a terrible approach. Every time a customer interacts with your product, you have the opportunity to link your brand story with it and vice versa. Customers don’t just buy a product. They purchase the idea and experience around that product. Example: Apple. Integrating your brand messaging into your product is a great way to attract customers to your brand vision.

Conclusion

An average of 32 percent of customers give up on a favorite brand after just one bad experience, so personalization is crucial to your business’s strategy. Ensure that the customer experience each individual receives is tailored to their needs. And even though it may be difficult to consistently create excellent experiences, knowing where to start and which mistakes to avoid can enable your company to thrive over the long term.