What is client experience? It is the consumer’s subjective attitude, his opinion of the brand after his/her interaction with it. It starts shaping itself as soon as it comes to the selection of goods or services and is constantly changing with the use of these goods and company services.
According to the latest research, a sense of novelty is a primary factor in the formation of an opinion when it comes to the quality of goods and services. Our client has to be surrounded by excellent client service throughout the way. Since we live in the digital era, the most important thing for good user experience is the effective use of various digital channels. For a certain group of customers, this is the factor which creates a sense of novelty. For others, it is something they got used to a long time ago and for them, this is familiar.
Mobile devices and the Internet have become helpful in the choice of goods and services. The task of marketers is to use them to achieve their marketing goals. It is essential not only to define the goals of for each particular company and develop criteria for its achievement but also to understand its clients. Marketers have to know who these people are, what guides them when they make a decision and what makes them buy certain goods and services.
If you try to look at things from the client’s perspective, you will realize that successful interaction with a brand is always the result of satisfying customer’s needs. However, from the retail company’s perspective, things are slightly different. The goal of any business is to generate profit. Thus, successful experience for a company means a sale, as this is the way business receives income. Every company hopes that this transaction will be very profitable and the customer will come back again, inviting his family and friends to join.
Consumer Experience and Sales Growth
Success and its criteria are defined by each particular company and depend on the main features of the market and type of company’s activity. As a rule, these success criteria include good client service and sales growth, the rise in brand awareness, reduction of costs and improvement of the target audience’s loyalty.
If the increase in sales is one of the success criteria, then how can one achieve that? One can achieve the increase in sales with the help of one of the digital channels, such as an online store or social media, for example. Besides, one can encourage buyers to come to ordinary stores or other points of the company’s presence and purchase items there or make the purchase over the digital channels.
Nowadays, people spending more and more time online. They visit a huge number of different pages and follow numerous links. However, as marketing people know well, this does not always lead to an increase in the number of Internet transactions. Tweets or posts in social media attract many customers and users, but they don’t always go to a shop right after it or make online purchases. Looking is different from doing. To make people buy your goods, you have to analyze their motives. In this case, success is more than likely to come.
Success is a complex issue, and it should be treated accordingly. Most characteristically, before visiting a retail store, client visits company’s page on the Internet for better consumer knowledge. A website a client visit is his/her first impression about the company’s goods and services. It is the website that helps him/her decide whether this person will come to the shop or not. Hoverer the final decision can be made in the physical store. Therefore, it is not enough to take care of the website exclusively. It is evenly important to invest in your retail store as well. For this reason, it is highly important and recommended to pay attention to both.
Modern consumers spend quite a lot of time and efforts to find information about something they’d like to buy. They need to make sure that their consumer experience will be really good. They compare prices, look through reviews and try to find social proof. Clients analyze and collect information on the Internet for perfect client experience. They do it with the help of a smartphone or a tablet, looking for the right product at the best possible price. To help a consumer, it might be a good idea to place several information stalls in the sales area or any other digital devices with Internet access like a bar code with all necessary information. It will ensure better client experience and is an effective marketing tool.
Practical Ideas on Consumer Experience and Marketing Tools
You might offer your clients to use an iPad with video instructions on the use of your products right at the place where they are sold, giving them a chance to watch expert reviews or even register for participation in different loyalty programs. Customers get what they want, while the company has an excellent opportunity to collect unique data on clients for future marketing. The company can later use this information to give consumers personal recommendations and to sell associated products.
Here is another good example of great client experience. One of the companies working in the area of auto service decided to improve its consumer service. They conducted research with a survey and questionnaires and interviewed both the company’s clients, shop staff and service centers. They studied people’s behavior and came to a conclusion that clients typically take the following three steps before choosing an auto service.
First, people analyze the event that has caused a problem. Secondly, they conduct self-diagnosis and try to independently deal with the problem. Only after that, they choose an auto service. As soon as they choose a certain type of the service, they start looking for the nearest service station. When the developers of an online application took into account these three stages to secure good client experience, the results were great. Conversion grew by more than by half, and the sales service sales rate increased by 200%.
How to Achieve Sales Growth and Perfect Consumer Experience?
The growth of profit from online sales often results from good client experience and can be achieved in two main means: you can either increase the conversion rate of visitors or aim to achieve an average increase of the volume of the orders. You can sell the most expensive goods instead of their equivalents and use personalized buyer’s offers and recommendations to ensure better client experience.
Let us have a look at the client’s motives in more detail. Two key components of such analysis that secure perfect client experience involves an understanding of customers and building relationship.
How to analyze the client’s behavior to find out his/her motives? The first thing that might help you is the observation in the context that is a comprehensive study of the target audience’s behavior and motives, the audience’s passions and needs.
Secondly, it is essential to take care of information architecture: design, graphics, texts, animations, and videos. Thirdly, it is vital to perform testing. Checking the convenience and ease of your web site use. Do not forget about competitive analysis and analysis of pages or links your visitors click on.
Finally, think about web optimization. Ask yourself the following questions: Which version of a web page converts best? Which UX elements are the most effective ones?
Conclusion on Client Experience and its importance as the Marketing Tools
It is not enough to simply understand your client. It is important to create such content and design it in such a way that a random visitor decides to buy something from you. Your landing pages play a key role in this. Please, note that even if you are dealing with non-commercial organizations, you still have to use marketing strategies. If you want them to donate money for some cause, it is necessary to make them sympathize with it. This can be achieved with the choice of the right content and particular design of a page.
Other important marketing tools that ensure good client experience include a sense of novelty, usage of digital channels, satisfying customer’s needs and offering certain solutions of their problems. Ensuring good consumer’s experience is vital as it ultimately results in the company’s profit.
See more under the courses on customer experience provided by Atton Institute Dubai.