Article by: Vicky Law, Contributor Freelance Writer | Content Marketer | Social Media Junkie – 09/16/2017
The customer isn’t only king, sometimes he is right too. This goes to show the importance of customers in running a successful business. Regardless of the size of your business, how you handle customer service can make or break your business.
Without loyal customers, you’d be out of business in no time. Building a strong business isn’t all about making one-off sales. It’s also about creating a conducive business atmosphere that will foster continuous patronage.
Appreciating your customers is essential to sustaining your business. Doing this may seem like a hard nut to crack due to the diversity and disparity of the customer base. However technology has simplified the customer engagement process.
Here are three ways technology creates a more satisfying customer experience.
- Offer personalized services
Market research is often conducted with a large sample of the consumer population and there are so many ways to do it. While some of these results give insights into consumer behavior, they may not particularly capture the characteristics of individual consumers. This is often because of disparity in the demographics and psychographics of the consumer base. Generalizing these findings may limit your ability to personalize your offerings.
Technology has taken off the blindfold in dealing with many customers. With a range of tools, you can have access to their individual data such as contact information, interests, browsing and buying behavior among others. Collected data can be studied to build on your knowledge of your customers.
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It allows for you to filter the pool of marketing communication to arrive at those that are relevant and favorable to specific customers. This helps to prevent the one thing customers dread – invasion of their privacy with unsolicited and irrelevant messages.
- Enhance communication
Effective communication is a two-way street. The traditional one-sided communication technique where sellers have a monopoly of power to disseminate information to buyers on their own terms and at their convenience isn’t so effective in the technology-driven society of today.
The 21st century customer seeks information regarding products and services that are of interest to them with ease. They want to participate in the marketing communication process as it concerns them. Mobile technology makes communication possible on the go. You can interact with your customers at any time of the day, regardless of their physical location.
Feedback about customers’ opinion on your products and/or services can be received at the snap of the fingers, enabling you to proffer timely solutions. Customers’ agitations can also be resolved in the shortest time possible, without causing more damage to the detriment of the business.
- Create optimized self-service
While customers enjoy the treat of being attended to by their product or service providers, sometimes, they’d rather do things by themselves. Getting hands on is important especially in desperate times when waiting on service providers for just another second may seem like eternity. And when needed support isn’t provided, the customer is left frustrated and disappointed.
Tech entrepreneur Ivan Teh of Fusionex International explains that “new technologies empower customers to do things on their own without being totally dependent on sellers and service providers.”
With the right self-service devices and applications, the customer has access to the services and can “serve” themselves. These technologies are built with simplicity for people who aren’t tech savvy to able to find their way around without difficulty. Self-service helps to build customer confidence and trust in the organization, and gives customers a sense of belonging.
Over the years, businesses have increased productivity with the use of new technologies; operations are simpler and easier. At the end of the day, the customer wants a stress-free experience in their transactions, and technology does nothing short of that.
