How to Calculate CX: Hypothesize, Test, Measure and Adjust

Investing to improve your business’s customer experience (CX) can determine its success or failure. When companies take time to plan their CX, it pays. In fact, according to Forrester Research, there was $1.3 billion in additional revenue for companies that improved CX. The ROI that comes from improved CX is related to increased customer loyalty – each customer buys more, fewer customers are lost, and customers are willing to spread good news about your business.

The benefits that come from improved CX depends on your ability to measure your investments in CX, otherwise you won’t know which are working. Measuring CX will cause your investments produce a return because they generate new business, larger sales and even save money. When you start to measure CX, you need to take a step back from traditional product-centric measures of performance and focus on the basic functions of your business.

Image via blog.vitria.com

Everage Insights shares four steps you need to take if you want to be able to measure your CX.

Step 1 - Get into Your Customer’s Brain

First, get to know  your customer. This helps you set aside your beliefs about your product and move towards understanding their perspective. I’m sure you already know your customers - you have demographic information on what they like to read. But many businesses still fail to understand them.

Ask questions including:

• Since I know what they read, why do they choose to read those blog posts or ebooks?
• What problems are my customers trying to solve?
• What questions do they need answered?
• What kind of information did they need, but were unable to find?
• Are my customers and their behaviors changing?

Step 2 - Identify Points of Contact

Measuring CX depends on identifying each point of contact your customer has with your business. A touchpoint can occur virtually or in the real world. Each contact your customers make with your product will determine how long someone sticks around.

Touchpoint metrics are specific to CX - they are developed to measure the attributes of each point of contact someone makes with your brand and how they relate to your businesses goals. By monitoring how well you meet customers’ expectations and how effectively you are achieving business goals at each touchpoint, you will know if and how you are impressing customers.

Step 3 - Develop Solutions

Now it’s time to develop solutions that can address these problem areas. If you measure touchpoint metrics for customer or technical support, you can theorize potential solutions to those problems. Until you measure these ideas, they are only theories -possible solutions to the problems plaguing your CX.              

                                                    

Step 4 - Measure Metrics

Solution metrics, qualitative and quantitative metrics that measure the effectiveness of your solutions complement touchpoint metrics. Solution metrics can narrow your focus to the problem areas identified with touchpoint metrics. I ask myself one question: Are the problem areas improving or worsening after I implemented my solution?

Using solution metrics, you can test your ideas to see which effectively address the problems you identified and which fail to do so. Once you know which solutions are effective, you’ll know where to focus your business’s resources so you can see the biggest improvement in customer experience.  

Related articles

• Building a Customer Experience Strategy
• Retailers That Emotionally Connect With Customers Win Big
• What is Customer Experience (CX)?

How to Recover from a Bad Customer Experience

Every business would like for every one of its customers to have consistently great experiences, but that’s not always the case. Even the best businesses have customers who have a less-than-positive experience. Luckily, ReadLocal has seven tips for how to recover when a customer has a bad experience.

1) Quickly Take Action

A customer may complain at the time of service or wait to contact the business. However a customer contacts you about a negative customer experience, it’s important to resolve their issue as quickly as possible. You want the customer to know you care about their business , so quickly resolving their problems helps them feel more positive about your company.  

2) Identify the Cause

When a customer complains about a bad experience, they may mention many issues when they speak with you. It’s important to listen to what they have to say, paying attention to the specifics they mention pertaining to your business. There are potential issues that can arise, but it’s important to identify the root of the problem so you can respond to their specific issue.

3) Offer an Immediate Resolution

If a customer is unhappy with your products, solve their problem as soon as you hear about it. The longer it takes for their issue to be resolved, the more upset they are likely to become. To make sure you can consistently offer immediate resolutions to customer complaints, create a system, procedure, or policy for each of the bad customer experiences your business has faced so that you’ll have a way to handle issues as they arise.

4) Take Responsibility

Is every customer complaint your fault? Not necessarily, but it is important to take responsibility for the contribution you have had in the issue. Don’t blame the customer, because that is only going to make them more upset. Identify the parts of the issue that your business played a part in, and let the customer know you are aware of your responsibility. 

5) Apologize

Make sure to apologize for the customer’s bad experience. Be sincere in your response. Let the customer know you appreciate their business and are sorry for any inconvenience. Don’t be frustrated in your conversation with the customer. Instead, put yourself in their shoes and let them know you care.

6) Provide a Tangible Solution

In most cases, an apology alone is not enough to recover from a bad customer experience. In order to resolve the issue with the customer, offer a resolution. For example, many businesses offer a discount, refund, or complimentary service package, depending on the severity of the issue.

7) Empower Your Team

“May I speak with a manager?” This is one of the questions that a customer has a complaint about your business. But, authority and approvals to get customer complaints resolved can make the process take more time and make the customer feel frustrated. So, empower your team to be a part of the resolution process so that issues are handled at the front line. 

Related articles

• What A Customer Experience Management Professional Does
• "Customer Intelligence: A Data Driven Approach to the Customer Experience"
• 4 Easy Steps to Dealing Customer Complaints in the Heat of the Moment
• The New Rules Of Customer Complaints Management
• 15 Tips for Successfully Handling Customer Complaints

The Top 6 Ways to Guarantee a Successful Enterprise Software Pilot

Software pilots are tricky endeavors.  They are a crucial first step in the process of deploying an enterprise software technology solution.  You don’t want to commit full tilt until you’ve tested a technology.  Successful deployments have significant impacts upon companies, people and careers.  You want to get it right.

Whether you call it a pilot or a Proof of Concept (POC for short), Pilots may be “tricky” but there are 6 crucial steps to take to optimize your chances for success  

• Your software vendor partner can be your best friend.  Software vendors love pilots.  This is because they believe that once the software is in, it isn’t coming back out again.  Plus the vendor will have their people on site for the term of the pilot, ideally lobbying on behalf of flipping the pilot into an ongoing license.  The upside of this is that most software companies are not in the pilot business….they’re in the annual license business.  This means they’ll be working hard to help you make the pilot a success. 

This might be your first pilot of software of this type, but your software partner has gone through many pilots.  They have accumulated a number of best practices they can share.  They have the benefit of hindsight where they have seen the pitfalls where other clients have mis-stepped.  They can monitor the progress of your pilot and provide ongoing practical guidance to keep your pilot on track.  Of course everyone needs to agree on what that course is, hence the fact you should have a measurable goal for the pilot.

• The most important attribute of a successful pilot is to have a measurable goal.  That might seem obvious but so many neglect to attach one to the event.  I have heard of lots of pilots of enterprise social networks where there is no defined goal.  

You can’t just throw it out there, see who uses it and hope for the best.  Because if you do, you’ll get some early adopter types (those who enjoy using new technologies) to embrace it and no one else.  And even those early users will stop using it after a while if they don’t see others jumping in or if they don’t see results.  And senior team members won’t touch the software at all.  They’re afraid of it to begin with; are not anxious to learn something new, or for that matter to share anything, anyway.

When you do define the goals of the project, consider asking everyone on the team for input.  Establish the success criteria for the pilot, with input from all stakeholders.   Your chances for success are increased if not only do you achieve your goals with the pilot, but that everyone who participated in the process agrees those goals were meaningful and important.

A measurable goal lets you monitor the progress of the pilot and if you’re not hitting the mark, adjust your strategies to get on track.  It might be something as simple as measuring Adoption Rates(how many people are using it) or Engagement (the number of Contributions).  You can measure both activity and results.  Here are some examples of measurable results:

• How many customer interactions,
• How many client problems were solved
• How many new products were put into the pipeline
• How many tweaks to the customer engagement process were implemented as a result of customer feedback
• How much web page alteration occurs
• How many sales result from each communication  

But measure something. Because when the pilot is over you want to be able to answer the question: “Was the pilot successful?” with statistical results.  

• You should get the right crowd involved in your pilot.  I think we all can identify those “usual suspects” when we think about who would embrace new technologies.  There are always “early adopters” you can rely on to try out the software.  If you’re clever you can make certain these early adopters are spread throughout the organization into various geographies, departments and disciplines.  They can act as ambassadors to other users.  If the early adopters are advocates, you can exponentially grow your user community.     

Advocates or ambassadors can serve as support, trainers and cheerleaders. Equally they can provide feedback from the troops back to those responsible for managing the process.

Plus the users during the pilot can be your biggest supporters during roll out.

You should probably not limit your pilot to just a small number of users in one department (the usual inclination).  You want to optimize your chance for success.  This is a situation where rewards outweigh risks. Frequently champions for software want to limit the exposure of the pilot to their own department so if the pilot fails, the exposure will be minimal. But this can be a case of when a preconceived notion of failure might better be supplanted by a manifest destiny approach for success.  You want a positive outcome; why not take every measure you can to ensure success.

• You should constantly market to end users and management.  This means training, newsletters, email updates (with call to action links taking users into the system).  Management and users should hear good news and about successes. 

You should not only collect usage data, as well as the output of the software, but also the feedback from the user community about how to improve the software for eventual roll out.  Simple items like “I wish this link or item was on this screen” or “It would be easier to use if…” can inform the success of the actual and eventual roll out.  

• The time frame is critical.  You should keep it short, perhaps thirty to sixty days.  People will operate more effectively with a deadline.  Six months is way too long, long enough to have user interest ebb without the payoff of additional data accumulated.  Plus this helps subscribe to the notion of “fail fast”.  If the pilot is a mis step, then get it over quickly so you spend the minimum amount of money on it.  Similarly don’t allow “scope creep”.  You’ll get lots of suggestions from the user community which you absolutely should collect for consideration before roll out, but don’t let it slow down the pilot effort nor more importantly steer you away from achieving those measurable goals. 

Along with timeline and goals you should also add other rules. Think about what you want to achieve with the pilot and keep everyone within those parameters.  

• The next most important attribute of a successful pilot is senior management support. Of course you need a champion.  This is someone on your team who is a “believer”, who understand that using this software will improve your organization. This might be you! But if that champion is not senior enough, then you need a “higher-up” to buy in.

How important is this step?  Let’s put it this way, the very best pilot kick off speech I ever heard was when a Vice President at a Fortune 100 company got all the potential users in a room (some of the virtually) and merely said, “OK, thanks for coming.  I want you all to use this new software.  Dependent on the success of this project, my job is on the line, and that means yours is too.  Login, ask for help, start using the software and make this a success.”  Everyone got the message, there was a flurry of activity immediately and the project was a huge success.

Conclusion: 

1. Make sure you have your user community, your management and your software vendor involved in the project so they feel and act like partners.  
2. Solicit and gain consensus so you have a well publicized, measurable goal.   
3. Carry out the pilot within a short, defined time frame.   
4. Keep the lines of communication open to receive user feedback, to encourage adoption, and to publicize successes.

Ron Shulkin blogs researches and writes about enterprise technology focused on social media, innovation, customer experience management, voice of the customer, marketing automation and enterprise feedback management.  Ron Shulkin is Vice President of the Americas for CogniStreamer®, an innovation ecosystem.  CogniStreamer serves as a Knowledge Management System, Idea Management System and Social Network for Innovation.  You can learn more about CogniStreamer here http://bit.ly/ac3x60 .  Ron manages The Idea Management Group on LinkedIn (Join Here). You can follow him Twitter. You can follow his blogs at this Facebook group.  You can connect with Ron on LinkedIn.

8 Ways to Create a Competitive Customer Experience

In today’s connected world, customers have more choices than ever before. So, they have fewer reasons than to do business with brands that don’t provide exceptional experiences. After all, customer experience is the total of all interactions that customers have with a brand, and their perception is the end result.

Interactions offer opportunities for companies to learn more about the customer’s needs and to strengthen the relationship. In fact, customer experience is one of the few remaining sources of competitive advantage. If you want a competitive advantage, follow these eight steps to great customer experience from a new book, “Attack of the Customers,” by Greg Gianforte, founder of RightNow Technologies, Inc. and Paul Gillin.

1. Establish a Knowledge Foundation

The first step in delivering an exceptional customer experience is establishing a knowledge foundation that should contain knowledge about your products and company and your customers. Employees can rely on the knowledge foundation to enhance customer interactions, while customers can use it for self-service. Gianforte suggest that once it’s running, determine where the knowledge gaps are by capturing customer questions and business responses. Then, organize the information in the knowledge base for easy access and provide a way for customers to use it to answer their questions.

2. Empower Customers with Self-Service

Provide customers access to the knowledge foundation created in step one so they can find the information they need whenever they want it. According to Gianforte, self-service options benefit both customers and your company - providing speed, round-the-clock service, and effectiveness, load-balancing and first-contact resolution.

3. Empower Frontline Staff

When creating a great customer experience, you also have to empower front line staff who interact with customers to exceed expectations. By giving frontline employees the means to go beyond the basics of customer support, you can create raving fans. You can start by making sure that frontline employees have all the information they need about customer’s previous interactions so that employees can personalize the conversation.

4. Offer Multichannel Support

Multi-channel options aren’t a choice for organizations, they’re a requirement for business, according to Gianforte. To deliver consistently excellent customer experiences while offering customers a choice of channels, all customer interactions must be unified. Everyone interacting with customers should be able to see all relevant previous exchanges, regardless of the channels. A knowledge foundation  not only helps enable this, it also makes reporting a lot easier. If customers have trouble finding what they need via one channel, they should be able to quickly switch to another, otherwise they may become disinclined to use self-service again.

5. Listen to Your Customers

Delivering an excellent customer experience is impossible if you don’t have a systematic way to listen. Effective listening sharpens focus and enables you to correct problems before they escalate. Start by have a person who understands social networks listen for your products trademarks, as well as those of your competitors, market categories, and related issues of interest. In addition, instead of waiting months for the results of a formal customer survey, ask customers for feedback at the time of interaction.

6. Design Seamless Experiences

In many organizations, multiple teams interact with customers, yet they don’t work with one another. To break down walls, consider your organization from the customer’s perspective. Evaluate cross-departmental processes and how they might be automated with software to provide a seamless customer experience. According to Gianforte , Build rich customer profiles that show front line employees all the customer attributes they need; use customer information to drive specialized attention; make workflow rules flexible and give managers the ability to implement workflow rules without technical staff; move support online; give nontechnical staff tools that allow them to post Web content; and automate certain customer communications.

7. Engage Proactively with Customers

“Many companies take the ‘emergency room’ approach to dealing with customers. They wait until the ‘patient’ is brought in on a stretcher and then practice triage,” explained Gianforte. Little consideration is given to what caused the problem. Instead, organizations should be focused on addressing the factors that erode customer satisfaction. By understanding your customers and their history, you can move your customer experience from the emergency room to the fitness center.

8. Measure and Improve Continually

Keep in mind that success is a process, not an event, said Gianforte. Even if you do the first seven steps perfectly, you need to continually measure your performance and foster a culture that drives improvement. One way to do this is by paying attention to competitors that are recognized for service. It’s also helpful to network with peers, via conferences, or sponsored events. Keep measuring performance, via metrics like customer satisfaction, and conversion rates.

The above steps provide a starting place for organizations to transform customer experience. While it makes most sense to implement them in the order described, you can apply them differently depending on your situation. Gianforte  notes that what is most important is that they help you make customer experience the top priority.

Related articles

• Re-create the in-store customer experience online - Utalkmarketing
• The new digital customer journey: Cross-channel, mobile, social, self-service, and engaged
• How can you transform your brand's customer experience and make it more personal!
• Now that is what I call Customer Experience Wow!

Combining Digital Data with Traditional CRM to Enhance Customer Experience

Putting the customer at the heart of your business strategy has been the key to success. It seems obvious, however, data & CRM specialists agree it is still an aspiration for many. CRM systems that combined digital, mobile and social data alongside traditional touch-points are outstripping those that don’t.  In fact, brands like Domino’s Pizza and Starbucks have cracked the customer service game thanks to their combined approach.

“The art of CRM doesn’t change, but the channel has. It’s all about talking to customer in relevant way, at the right time, on the right channel and adding value to the customer’s life. Combining the digital alongside offline data has enabled companies such as Pizza Hut and Domino’s, to identify individuals rather than just households,” said Celerity’s Managing Director Jason Lark.

According to Econsultancy.com, the benefits of joining up digital, mobile, social and offline CRM data include:

No Duplication

Businesses that have integrated all touch points into a single view CRM system are outperforming those that aren’t because they don’t duplicate messages.

1-2-1 Conversations

Data drawn from Facebook, email and other social media channels means large multinationals have an opportunity to have a 1-2-1 conversation with customers.

Real-time Relevance

Using mobile as a channel to collect and harness data has allowed companies to create targeted, personalized offerings.

Agile Customer Service

Companies that have embraced social media, now respond to conversations with customers instantly, demonstrating agile customer service.

Personalization

By tracking offline and online activity organizations can personalize content to reward to the customer.

Tracking Former Customers  

Data created from the digital wallet allows you to track the consumer once they’ve left your site. 

Related articles

• Presenting Social CRM Data For Customer Service
• Is Big Data Going To Be The Secret Weapon For CRM?
• Shameful Ways Your CRM Software is Wasting Your Time

The Customer Experience Goes Digital

Check out this cool infographic from Kentico Software about customer experience in the digital age!The research behind the infographic was an eight-question survey of 200 Internet users via SurveyMonkey in February 2013, and the survey was open to both consumer and B2B brand interactions.

Related articles

• CX Strategies More Successful With...
• The digital future of retail - Retail Customer Experience
• The Secrets To Amazon's Wall St.-Defying Customer Experience Strategy
• Customer Experience is the Only Competitive Advantage Left
• Customer Experience: Delighting Your Customers in the Digital Age

The 5 Must Haves for a Successful Customer Experience Strategy

Today, businesses want customers to be loyal, try new products, and become advocates who spread good news about the business. In order to accomplish this, businesses need a strong customer experience strategy that encompasses digital channels, while still remaining efficient without losing sight of metrics.

How does this get accomplished? Well, for instance, after hours spent in the boardroom, say a company’s customer experience strategy is designed and deployed. Months pass and the contact center productivity measures are solid, employee engagement has dropped a little, but the customer satisfaction metrics haven’t moved.

The CEO might say, “Why isn’t this working? Do the advisors simply not care about our customers?!” That is where most customer experience strategies fail. For a customer experience strategy to be successful, it has to be built into the DNA of the business and not just be "A Project.”

That being said, Dougie Cameron, founder of Addzest Consulting, told Customer Think the top five things that foster a positive environment for customer experience to thrive:

Co-create the strategy with advisors and customers.

They are the ones that know what needs to be fixed. If you involve them, they become part of the cultural transformation.

The cultural transformation can’t be kept in silos.

It must be embedded everywhere from product development through to marketing – no-one should be immune.

Customer experience isn’t about apps.

Bolting a fancy Web solution onto a bad process doesn’t fool a customer.

Old metrics don’t work.

Focusing on productivity measures in customer operations means that there is no for advisors to just “do the right thing” for the customer. Operational empowerment is what separates the great customer focused companies from the wannabes. 

Trust the front line.

Trust pays dividends and customers can feel it in their conversations. Train what “the right thing” looks like and leave out the rule book. 

Related articles

• Now that is what I call Customer Experience Wow!
• Self-Service Customer Service Experience [Infographic]

Give Your Customers the Experience They Want Online

Remember the days when adding someone’s first name to your email marketing was the height of personalization? Those days are over.

Because of technology innovation, the tools exist to provide individual, customized customer experiences on the Web. For over a decade, a personalized online customer experience has been the Holy Grail of marketing. Consider the lengths marketers go to in order to collect data about their website visitors, not to mention the time spent on studying it to predict what they want, and how to best give it to them. This wealth of knowledge about customer preferences, behaviors, needs, wants, habits, etc. is the foundation of personalization.

As of late, customers have become skilled at comparison-shopping, or comparison-anything. While searching for the best deal once required serious effort — driving from store to store, comparing catalogs, calling up several businesses for a price quote. Now, with just a few clicks, they can quickly find the best service or price available. As a result, cultivating customer loyalty is a huge challenge for marketers – one that can be addressed by personalization.

When it comes to technology, we tend to under-utilizing the available tools. And, we don’t always realize that the only thing standing between us and much better results are simple changes. Personalization is the most under-utilized component known as Customer Experience Optimization (CXO), the act of tailoring online visitors’ experiences to their individual needs. In other words, it is the means by which marketers will offer their customers’ experiences so customized it will seem as though they’ve arrived at their own personal sites. By personalizing the online experience, companies give customers the opportunity to engage on an individualized level. The Internet has become an integral part of the consumer's day-to-day life, whether it's used for business or pleasure, nearly everyone uses the Web to interact with friends, family, colleagues, and favorite brands. But, while we connect with others on a personal level, many brands have yet to master personalized online experiences.

According to Econsultancy's "The Realities of Online Personalization" report, most marketers see personalization as a vital component for business success, but many fail to comprehend the processes behind integrating these engagement tools. This study examines the issues behind personalization, the tactics and types of data being used to shape online customer experiences as well as the obstacles blocking success. The survey polled 1,107 digital professionals working for brands to explore how they perceive personalization and its impact on the digital customer experience.

The study found that 94 percent of respondents believe that personalizing their Web experience is critical to current and future success. Those companies that have personalized their Web experience have measured 19 percent boost in sales. In addition, 66 percent of all client-side respondents cited improved business performance and customer experience as the primary drivers behind personalization.

While the majority of respondents recognize the benefits of personalization, 56 percent haven't personalized their Web experiences because 72 percent still don't know where to start. Also, when adopting or improving personalization, IT roadblocks (47 percent) and legacy technology (46 percent) present the biggest obstacles overall, with 32 percent of companies citing this lack of technology as the primary barrier against real-time personalized experiences.

For client-side respondents, lack of budget and staff act as primary barriers (44 percent). For supply-side respondents, lack of knowledge (54 percent) and the inability to translate data into action (51 percent) are obstacles. Though 43 percent of those polled deliver personalized desktop experiences, with 40 percent planning to implement such experiences in the next year, few in-house marketers offer personalized experiences via tablets (14 percent) and mobile phones (13 percent). 

The Web has made a mark on how companies do business, but online strategies continue to leave marketers perplexed as technology evolves. So, companies must look beyond the mere act of data collection by analyzing consumer information in ways that allow both parties to engage with each other effectively. By doing so, companies can establish constant connectivity with their client base, while determining a method for continued reevaluation of personalized experience.

Related articles

• The Secrets To Amazon's Wall St.-Defying Customer Experience Strategy
• Shopify 2 Improves the Customer Buying Experience on Babystations.com
• An entirely digital customer experience

Social Media Creates a Connected Customer Experience

If you think your business is not “doing” social media, you’re wrong. Your company may not be active, but I guarantee your fans and your non-supporters are there. It is the brand's responsibility to create a social media experience that can turn a dissatisfied customer into a fan. These days, social media has become the equalizer between companies and customers, but utilizing social channels to their full potential can be complex if social media is not incorporated into a customer engagement strategy. In fact, this year social CRM could witness a significant shift away from the use of social media as pure marketing, and instead collaborating for customer support interactions, according to Jenny Sussin, principal research analyst at Gartner . By 2015, the development of social media teams will accelerate, and by 2017, social media could achieve enterprise-wide clout. It is estimated that three percent of social media interactions that companies have with customers today may grow to 20 percent by 2016. More and more businesses are experiencing the value of social media as a tool to improve the customer experience. It is being used as more than a communications platform, and is actually transforming into a means to ensure product quality and services. Positive social media interactions can contribute to customer satisfaction as well, but companies need to consider accessibility to ensure customers have the same experience whenever they interact with a brand on social media. According to Sussin, developing a social media plan to improve the customer experience begins with assessing the organization’s social media maturity. Executives should then identify one aspect of customer engagement that would be improved through social media. After engaging stakeholders to bring social media into the customer engagement strategy, the values for success should be agreed upon. Lastly, a company should deploy a test and then iterate the strategy across the business.

That being said, here are seven ways for your company to create a memorable customer experience on social media:

Give Your Customers a Place to Talk

Companies are afraid to set up Facebook pages because they allow customers to comment, which means someone might write something negative. You should actually want customers to complain on your company's Facebook page - when customers complain on your brand's Facebook page, you can resolve their issues. And if you do it right, unhappy customers will turn their opinions around and recommend you to friends.

Integrate Social Media into Your Customer Service

Neglecting your social media properties when they're full of customer complaints is brand suicide. Don't open up the floor for complaints without a plan to handle them. Predict the complaints you may get and construct policies for replying to them. You should also plan on responding to fans who compliment you.

Activate Your Customer Base

Most brands have more customers than they do Facebook fans and Twitter followers. So, start building your social media fan base by reaching out to your current customers. Think about how you contact your customer base and how you can use those channels to draw customers to your social media properties.

Be Proactive

Don't just wait for someone to post on your wall or tweet your account. Set your brand apart by proactively interacting with customers who are talking about your brand, whether you're thanking them for a compliment or helping them solve a problem.

Reward Influencers

Find the social media influencers for your audience and give them extras. This could be as simple as giving them advance notice of a special promotion, or complex as giving them a free tour of your facilities. Reward your brand ambassadors when they least expect it and you’ll see great results.

Create Compelling Content

Give your fans something of value on your social media pages. Every brand can create quality content. Social media can be a channel to make customers or followers feel special, like they’re in an exclusive club with your brand because they follow you.

Stand Out From the Crowd

Some of the most memorable social media experiences are created by going beyond text. The more interactive and engaging your social media presence, the better.  By giving your fans a voice on social media, or encouraging participation through photos and videos, you humanize the experience.

Related articles

• The 10 Commandments of a Social Media Strategy
• Social CRM Transformation And The Path Ahead
• Can Social Media Save Lives?

8 Simple Rules for Great Customer Service

Today, good customer service is the heart of any business in virtually any industry. Businesses can offer promotions to bring in as many new customers in as they want, but unless they can get those customers to come back, they won’t remain profitable for long. Good customer service is about bringing customers back and sending them away happy enough to pass positive feedback along to others.

If you're a good salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once, but your customer service approach determines whether you’ll be able to sell that person anything else. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers. So, how exactly do you go about forming such a relationship? Here are eight tips for having good customer service in your business.

Answer the phone

Make sure that someone is picking up the phone when someone calls your business.

Don't make promises you can’t keep

Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception.

Listen to your customers

Let your customer talk and show him that you are listening by making the appropriate responses, such as suggesting how to solve the problem.

Deal with complaints

If you give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time - and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service.

Be helpful

If you go out of your way to help your customers, they will be loyal in return.

Train your staff to be knowledgeable

Give every member of your staff enough information to make those small customer-pleasing decisions.

Take the extra step

Whatever the extra step may be, if you want to provide good customer service, take it.

Throw in something extra

Whether it's a coupon for a future discount, additional information on how to use the product, people love to get more than they thought they were getting.

The irony of good customer service is that over time it will bring in more new customers than promotions ever did!

Related articles

• The good, the bad, and the ugly: the impact of customer service
• Treat Your Customers Like They Deserve and Expect