The Ultimate Guide for Self-Storage Operators - REVISED!
Allen Quay
I provide white-label reputation management software that's AI-driven, empowering agencies and entrepreneurs to boost profits, reduce client churn, and broaden their range of services.
Tenants nowadays are highly connected and can quickly find self-storage facilities that meet their requirements within seconds or minutes. Therefore, if your facilities do not meet their expectations, they can easily switch to another option.
In such a scenario, top 100 operators like Extra Space Storage that have multiple locations and succeed use growth marketing to provide exceptional customer experiences right from the initial interaction.
This guide will address the common questions that every self-storage enterprise has regarding the customer experience (CX) and provide practical measures that can be implemented swiftly to improve CX, irrespective of whether you have 10 or 10,000 locations.
Chapter 1: Understanding Customer Experience
For self-storage operators, understanding the customer experience is crucial to the success of their business. CX refers to the overall experience that customers have with a storage facility at every touchpoint, from initial discovery to move-outs.
Customer experience management is the process of designing this experience to exceed customer expectations consistently, leading to higher levels of customer loyalty over time.
Customer Experience vs.?Customer Service
While customer experience and customer service are related, they are not the same thing. Customer service refers to specific interactions where customers require assistance from the storage facility.
In contrast, customer experience encompasses all aspects of the customer journey, including automation features such as entry control systems. Good customer service is just one component of a great CX, and prioritizing CX can lead to higher customer retention and revenue.
How Customer Experience Drives Business Growth
Creating a great customer experience leads to higher levels of customer retention, which drives business growth. With digital transformation becoming increasingly important in every industry, including self-storage, digitizing processes can lead to more efficiency and a smoother customer journey.
The benefits of CX can be quite impressive as shown in the chart below.
Furthermore, case studies of successful self-storage enterprises using our platforms, such as National Storage Affiliates ?and Superior Storage , demonstrate the importance of prioritizing customer experience for business success.
Creating a Winning CX Strategy for Self-Storage Operators
Developing a customer experience strategy is crucial to delivering a consistent and scalable experience across every customer touchpoint.
This strategy should aim to deliver value for customers at every touchpoint and prioritize customer communication and data insights.
Importance of CX for Loyalty Programs for Self-Storage Operators
Loyalty programs can be a valuable marketing strategy for self-storage operators, encouraging customers to continue storing their items at their facilities.
However, the success of these programs is heavily dependent on the customer experience. Positive experiences can lead to increased customer loyalty, while negative experiences can damage the success of loyalty programs.
Chapter 2: How Self-Storage Operators Can Develop a CX Strategy
Self-storage operators of all sizes can benefit from improving their CX. By focusing on creating a positive customer experience, self-storage operators can reduce churn and increase revenue.
This chapter will outline 9 steps for developing a CX strategy that can help self-storage operators achieve these goals. We’ll also cover how to put it all together with a CX Flywheel.
Step 1: Develop a Customer Experience Strategy
To begin, self-storage operators should create a customer experience intent statement that describes their goals for interacting with customers. This statement should be 1-2 paragraphs and outline the intended outcome of each interaction with a customer.
Step 2: Collect Data on Touchpoints
Self-storage operators should collect data on each touchpoint of the customer journey by using customer surveys. Analyzing this data can help operators identify weak points and areas where they are excelling, which can be used to improve the overall customer experience.
Step 3: Research Competitor Self-Storage Operators
Researching competitors using competitive benchmarking is a critical step in creating a successful customer experience strategy. By reviewing online reviews of competitors, self-storage operators can gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses and use this information to improve their own strategy.
Step 4: Map the Customer Journey
To create a successful customer experience strategy, self-storage operators should map the customer journey. The journey should include all stages of the customer lifecycle, from awareness to advocacy.
Step 5: Define the Stages of the Customer Journey
Operators should define the different stages of the customer journey, from when prospects are just becoming aware of their problem to when they are ready to become a customer.
This will provide a better understanding of how to keep customers moving forward in the journey.
Step 6: Determine Customer Motivations at Each Stage
Understanding what customers are looking for at each stage is critical to guiding them through the customer journey. Operators can collect feedback to better understand customer expectations and motivations.
Step 7: Plot Touchpoints
Operators should plot all the touchpoints where customers interact with the self-storage facility. This includes physical locations, online channels, and customer service interactions. Understanding how customers are moving from one touchpoint to another is critical to providing a seamless customer experience.
Step 8: Evaluate the Customer Journey
Operators should evaluate the customer journey to see if it is working as intended. This involves looking at the actions customers are taking and identifying any places where they may be leaving the journey. It’s important to determine if all touchpoints are meeting the needs of customers.
Step 9: Make Improvements
Finally, self-storage operators should make improvements to the touchpoints that are obstructing the customer journey. For example, if customers are trying to text the operator on a landline that is not set up for texting, the operator should make the landline text-friendly to remove the roadblock.
How Self-Storage Operators Can Create a CX Flywheel
To stand out in the competitive self-storage industry, smart self-storage operators are focusing on creating a successful CX flywheel . Unlike the outdated funnels that shuffle customers from marketing to sales to customer service, the CX flywheel is designed to include every team in the company to attract, engage, attain, and delight customers.
The CX flywheel concept is straightforward: the more customer touchpoints you create, the more data you acquire, and more data leads to more significant insights, personalization, and return on investment (ROI). By blending physical and digital touchpoints, the CX flywheel removes friction and fuels momentum for businesses to propel growth.
For self-storage operators, touchpoints like listings management, review management, and a?referral program can attract prospects, while webchat and payment processing can engage and convert them into customers. Customer surveys, support ticketing, and business insights are used to delight customers and enhance their overall experience.
Each touchpoint of the flywheel is responsible for enriching the overall customer journey, powering and spinning the CX flywheel. This leads to an increase in customer engagement and loyalty, which ultimately translates into revenue.
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So, if you’re a self-storage operator looking to enhance your customer experience, focus on creating a CX flywheel that includes every team in your company to attract, engage, attain, and delight your customers.
Developing a CX strategy is critical for self-storage operators who want to reduce churn and increase revenue. By following these 9 steps and building a CX Flywheel, operators can create a successful customer experience strategy that meets the needs of their customers and drives business growth.
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Discover More
Read my newly revised 2023 article?"The Ultimate Guide for Self-Storage Operators" (link to full article in the comments). This guide is written for the self-storage industry, but the strategies and tips it contains can be applied to any industry.
Additionally, you can subscribe to my?Top CX Strategies Newsletter ?and follow the?#DingoCX ?hashtag for all the latest content on customer experience.
I provide white-label reputation management software that's AI-driven, empowering agencies and entrepreneurs to boost profits, reduce client churn, and broaden their range of services.
1 年Learn how Review Dingo can grow your business: https://www.reviewdingo.com Check out On The Move's quarterly publications: https://onthemovetrucks.com/about-us/otm-press