The SmallBizLady Buzz - Issue 26

How much do you focus on your customer experience?

Enhancing customer experience is the most exciting opportunity for businesses in the next year. Why? Because companies that focus on customer experience increase repeat business and increase revenues which leads to higher profit, and after the year we are all having who doesn’t need that.

Customer Experience or (CX) is defined by the interactions and experiences your customer has with your business throughout the entire customer journey, so if you want loyal customers you should invest in their customer experience.

Here are seven ways to create a great customer experience strategy.

1. Create a customer experience vision

The first step in your customer experience strategy is to have a clear customer-focused vision that you can communicate with your team. The easiest way to define this vision is to create a set of guiding principles. Once these principles are in place, they should be embedded into all areas of training and development. Every member of your team should know these principles by heart and use them to guide their behavior.

2. Develop Customer Personas

If your organization is going to really understand customer needs and wants, then they need to be able to connect and empathize with the situations that your customers face. Create customer personas. Try to give each persona a name and personality, so your support team can recognize who they are and serve them better.

3. Create an emotional connection with your customers

The best customer experiences are achieved when a member of your team creates an emotional connection with a customer. Emotions shape the attitudes. Customers become loyal because they are emotionally attached and they remember how they feel when they use a product or service. A business that optimizes for an emotional connection outperforms competitors by 85% in sales growth.

4. Capture Customer Feedback Quickly

How can you tell if you are delivering an amazing customer experience? Use quick two question surveys or live chat tools to have real time conversations and when done. Within 48 hours of delivery, send a follow up email to every customer using post-interaction surveys. You can also make calls to customers in order to gain more insightful feedback.

5. Conduct Ongoing Training of your team

You company should offer ongoing customer service training. Once you now know what customers think about the quality of your service identify the training needs for your team. You can assess the quality of phone and email communication and utilize coaching, eLearning and group training to improve the skills of your team.

6. Pay Attention to Employee Feedback

Voice of the Employee (VOE) is one the most under utilized resources in businesses. Survey your team reguarly to capture feedback on how well they think they deliver exceptional customer service. One of your employees could have an incredible idea, that builds better customer loyalty. You can also learn how your staff feels about your business.

7. Measure the ROI

How will you know if all this investment in your customer experience, process and technology are working and paying off? The money question is to your customer "Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?"

For even more tools to look at CX in your business check out this week’s feature article: 13 Best Online Customer Satisfaction Tools to Help You Get Repeat Business.

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13 Best Online Customer Satisfaction Tools to Help You Get Repeat Business

Online customer satisfaction tools have been on the rise over the past few years. When you don’t know how your customers feel about your brand, you can’t know if they plan to buy from you again. In fact, 91% of your unhappy customers won’t even tell you they’re disgruntled—you’ll just never see them again. But what if you could understand more about how your customers feel and ensure that your customers were more satisfied and more likely to buy from you again? Continue reading....

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Get Customer & User Feedback

Shopping cart abandonment is a huge issue for online sellers. Qualaroo software allows you to survey visitors on your website or app. You can look at your analytics to see which pages people are exiting your site from, and understand why they’re leaving.

Qualaroo helps you create surveys and feedback forms that help you understand why visitors abandon shopping carts and whether they would refer you to a friend, as well as other valuable feedback to tweak your website and checkout process.

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Mastering Money Mindset with Vanessa A. Lindley

Check out this week’s Podcast: Mastering Money Mindset with Vanessa A. Lindley

Vanessa A. Lindley is a consultant, speaker, coach, and the CEO of The Lindley Consulting Group, LLC., a personal and professional development consultancy. Throughout her career, Vanessa has worked with brands including Citi, Chase, National Urban League, and the Children’s Aid Society. Vanessa is also a guest lecturer at Columbia University, the author of Achieve Financial Victory: 7 Ways to Win With Your Money, and contributes her financial expertise to Women of More Magazine.

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Will you join us on the road to your dream business?

If you’re the kind of person who says, “I don’t want to wait 12 months to start living my dreams!”, as I’ve heard from so many of my readers, then my 30 Day Fast Start Program is for you.

For just $97, you’ll receive a day-by-day step-by-step 30 day plan, along with my coaching and guidance, via daily emails, taking you straight to starting up in thirty days.

Get started now. Dreams have a way of fading if you don’t feed them.

You need to make this happen – before life gets in the way.

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Today is the day that we're live on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube at 8pm ET!

Tonight, we'll do #SmallBizChat LIVE with three guests! You can see it live on my SmallBizLady Facebook Page, Twitter, or Youtube at 8pm ET sharp. We'll discuss How to Pivot in the Pandemic with Dawn Fitch, @Pookalita, How to Double Down in Business with Anthony Michael Russo, @anthonymichaelrusso, and How to Create More Profits in Your Small Business with Susie Carder, @SusieCarder.

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Melinda F. Emerson, “SmallBizLady” is America’s #1 Small Business Expert. She is an internationally renowned keynote speaker on small business development, marketing and social selling. Melinda is also the president of the Quintessence Group, an award-winning marketing consulting firm based in Philadelphia, PA, serving Fortune 500 brands who target small business market. LinkedIn named her a Top Voice for 2019 in Small Business and Entrepreneurship. In addition to being a former NY Times columnist, she is frequently quoted by media organizations including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, MSNBC, CNBC and Fox News. She is the host of #Smallbizchat LIVE and The SmallBizChat Podcast. A prolific writer, Melinda has published more than 5000 articles on her blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com. Her small business advice is widely read reaching more than 3 million entrepreneurs each week online. She is the bestselling author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, 2nd Edition. Her latest book is Fix Your Business, a 90 Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Reduce Chaos in Your Business.