Facing with ever-increasing competition, companies realize the importance of working on customer satisfaction and developing customer relations for customer retention. Achieving customer loyalty is the ultimate goal of working with a customer which any business tends to. What is customer satisfaction and how to achieve it?
According to the generally accepted customer experience definition, this is a set of impressions that a customer receives when interacting with a company which provides a service or supplies a product. It is not so easy to build a long-term competitive advantage on the unique characteristics of a product, price or branding in the modern world, so customer focus comes first.
In pursuance of increasing customer loyalty, companies in the UAE, and in Dubai particularly, develop CRM strategies, implement loyalty programs and monitor the quality of all contacts, focusing on improving their interaction with customers and responding to complaints.
According to the concept of customer experience management, you have to see yourself and your product through the eyes of customers; understand what is really important to them; and how a company can meet their expectations. Creating a customer journey map and a holistic vision includes all the stages of contact that a client goes through how customers choose a product and who they consult with; how, in what situations, for what and with what they use it; what impressions do they have as a result.
What is customer satisfaction and how to achieve it?
Customer experience is a subjective general impression of a client, resulting from the selection, purchase, and use of the company's products. This impression greatly affects customer satisfaction and accordingly customer loyalty. Thus, customer experience directly determines the possibility that a customer will use the product or service of a company. Also, customer satisfaction results in the fact that a client talks about the company or forgets about it; and what exactly this person tells good or bad things.
In order to understand what a client feels when contacting the company, you have to find the answers to the questions:
- Is it easy to find contacts on a website, shop or office in the city?
- Is an advertisement personalized?
- Is it pleasant to communicate with employees?
- Is it easy to find the right product and place an order?
- Is an order processed quickly?
- What emotions appear when contacting a company on the site, on social networks, in an offline store?
Effective customer retention is possible only when you have created an excellent customer experience. This is a highroad to genuine customer loyalty, which leads to repeated purchases, an increase in the average purchase amount and a willingness to recommend a company to friends.
It is very important that the company understands its customers. The perception of the product by a client may completely differ from how the representatives of this company perceive it. Spending most of their time at work on a product, company employees perceive their product as very significant and important, often make a product, focusing on their own vision and ignoring customer values.
In order to obtain an objective understanding of customers, it is necessary to work more closely with them, to observe them during the process of selecting and using a product, ask what they feel, note their emotional state at each step of the customer journey map.
For successful customer retention, it is enough just to meet the real expectations of customers. If your customers decide that everything suits them in the chosen product or service, they do not change anything – that is, continue to use the same (your) brand/service/product.
Creating an excellent customer experience requires a company to work systematically in this direction. Customer experience analysis allows companies to understand which operational changes will significantly improve customer experience and focus on them.
By eliminating problems, saving time and efforts of customers, thinking about what else can be done to satisfy their needs or cause excitement, companies not only build their own long-term competitive advantage and achieve outstanding business results, they make their customers and employees happy. A satisfied customer is a key to a successful business.
Customer Experience Trends
Here are some of the current trends in creating an excellent customer experience which are necessary to achieve customer loyalty in Dubai, UAE.
- Multichannel communication. Multichannel (combining all communication channels along with a single story of customer calls and purchases) is not implemented in every company. As a result, they do not have a single portrait of a client, which means that there is no opportunity to provide the same experience everywhere. It is important not only to use all the channels but to apply those that are convenient for the target client.
- Attention to the life cycle of the client. There should be a certain order of customer relation stages with a company. There is a customer journey inside each stage. Journey at the stage of studying the company differs from the one at the stage of finding an answer to a question after two years of the use of the product. Elaboration of each journey and the “arrival” of a client to the point of meeting his/her needs and even exceeding expectations – all this is needed for good customer experience.
- Overcoming a gap between marketing and service. Customers are attracted by marketers, and then they come to the customer service department. At this transition, they should like a company even more, and in no case be disappointed. To ensure continued customer satisfaction, marketing, sales, and service departments must be connected with each other, have common goals and access to information.
- Targeting digital channels. Nowadays it is difficult to imagine a company that is not using online opportunities, even self-employed specialists, for example, plumbers are trying to present themselves on online exchanges and in social networks. For business, this means that one has to use all online possibilities in a conscious way – to make a digital presence strategy and keep up with trends.
In the modern world of high competition, all means in the fight for customers are good. Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty – in order to reach them, you are required to apply marketing methods, psychology methods, creative approach, and creative thinking. And therefore, in no case, you should lose sight of the importance of an integrated approach in achieving success, as well as the need for continuous training of specialists responsible for interaction with customers.