How to Improve Customer Experience (CX): 10 Tips from Our Experts

Think that the customer experience (CX) offered by your business doesn’t matter? Think again: “Seven in 10 U.S. consumers say they’ve spent more money to do business with a company that delivers great service,” according to American Express’ Raymond Joabar.

The fact is, any business that takes its future seriously should always focus on how to improve its customer experience. Because your CX represents the primary touchpoint between you and the people you’re trying to reach—you know, the folks who actually buy your products and services, and keep you in business. The CX you offer them can make all the difference between short-lived success and true market longevity.

And even if you think you already have a solid customer experience in place—along with an elite customer satisfaction score to prove it—there’s always room for improvement. After all, what works today might not cut it tomorrow, whether because your customers’ expectations have risen, your competitors have stepped up their game, or the marketplace has made another unpredictable swing.

“Seven in 10 U.S. consumers say they’ve spent more money to do business with a company that delivers great service.” Click To Tweet

At Working Solutions, we take pride in offering our clients not just superior, on-demand customer care, but also the chance to make their customer experiences the best it can possibly be. And that’s no idle boast: Our leaders are regularly consulted by local and national media to share their expertise on customer care.

With that in mind, we’re offering a rundown of our experts’ top tips on how to improve CX in ways that can actually boost sales and drive real growth. Call them tips, but they’re really necessities. If you haven’t already applied these 10 essential CX tactics across your organization, you’re missing out on some key opportunities to ensure customer loyalty today, tomorrow and in the years to come.

10 Tips on How to Improve Customer Experience (CX)

1. Get Mobile-friendly — STAT. There’s no getting around the fact that pretty much any customer experience has to be mobile-friendly to get results. At this point pretty much everybody in the U.S., across all generations, uses a smartphone or tablet on a regular basis. If you’ve already got a mobile-friendly website, great—but don’t rest on your laurels. It’s essential to review its performance and optimize accordingly, at least once a year (and preferably more).
 

 
Read more about How to Engage Mobile Customers
 

2. Appreciate the Need for Speed. According to McKinsey, three-fourths of customers expect service within just five minutes of contacting your business online. And they expect this immediacy for all types of businesses, too, no matter how traditional your service or product may be. If you don’t have the bandwidth or agent roster to offer an almost-instant response, it’s time to upgrade.
 

 
Improve your capacity for speed with 5 Tips to Make Your Call Centers More Efficient
 

3. Always Include a Self-service Option. We live in an era when almost everyone has a phone, but few people actually use them to speak. So it should come as little surprise that the vast majority of consumers prefer to interact with an automated service (a chatbot, intuitive shopping cart or detailed FAQ sheet) in simple inquiries or transactions that don’t require speaking with a live agent.

 

Find more statistics at Statista

 
Read more about Why Customer Self-service Is Essential to a Successful CX Strategy
 

4. Offer a Sense of Security. From high-powered, B2B executives to the most casual online shoppers, almost everyone will hesitate to do business with a company that isn’t careful with the info it handles. And with good reason: We live in an era of serious, highly publicized hacks and data breaches. Offering a great CX means implementing the latest data protection features—and then making sure your customers know it’s there.

 
Get more details with our Call Center Security Tips
 

5. Focus on Consistency. A key factor in improving CX is making sure that customers receive the same quality of service across every communications channel they use to interact with you, be it a phone call, tweet or eBay purchase. Convenience also comes into play here: If you make people repeat their question several times to multiple agents across different channels, they may not stick around long enough to get the answer.
 

 
Get more details with our Call Center Security Tips
 

6. Don’t Sweat the Generation Gap. According to PwC, CX trends tend to apply across all generations more often than they do for just a single segment. So instead of worrying over whether Baby Boomers or Millennials are more likely to respond to your latest pitch, focus on offering what everyone appreciates—convenience, speedy responses and access to friendly and knowledgeable agents.

 
Dive deeper with 4 Key Metrics to Finding Your CX Sweet Spot
 

7. Be Proactive, Not Reactive. For most contact centers, the lion’s share of activity involves fielding calls and inquiries. Yet the most successful businesses also have a clear plan for regularly (and unobtrusively) reaching out to customers to eliminate problems or misunderstandings at the earliest stages. According to customer strategy expert Esteban Kolsky, taking this kind of proactive approach could cut your customer churn rate by 11%.

Customer experience is defined as the sum total of conscious events, as as a coordinated series of interactions between a customer and a brand to accomplish anything. Above all words – a customer experience is defined by the customer, for the customer, at each touch-point, each time. — Esteban Kolsky

 
Dive deeper with these 5 Steps to Proactive Customer Delight
 

8. Make Sure Your Staffing Plan Includes Virtual Agents. The days of old-fashioned call centers filled with 9-to-5 agents are an outdated business model. Seizing the opportunities offered by today’s sophisticated communications channels means using that same technology to staff your contact center with virtual, at-home agents. Doing so gives you the scalability and flexibility to ensure that your customers’ needs are being met 24/7 (without breaking the bank in the process).

 
Read more about How to Improve Customer Experience with Virtual Agents
 

9. Diversify Your Language Base. Even if you’re not actively reaching out to customers in other countries, chances are good that U.S.-based, multilingual shoppers are going to come your way. Why deny them service—and why deny yourself the chance to broaden your customer base? Make sure your agent roster includes multilingual representatives—and remember to look beyond English and Spanish to the dozens of other languages spoken across North America.

 
Get more insight into the Importance of Staffing Multilingual Call Center Agents
 

10. Solicit Feedback. Asking customers how they feel about their transactions with you seems obvious, but it’s still too rarely carried out. Perhaps for good reason: Ask too often and you risk alienating an otherwise-satisfied customer. Ask the wrong questions and you risk drawing the wrong conclusions, resulting in, at best, a wasted effort, and, at worst, a strategy that works against your best interests. So, while soliciting feedback is essential for improving CX, it requires a skilled hand to actually get it done.
 

 
Get info on How to Implement Automated Customer Feedback Options
 

The Best Way to Improve Your CX: Call in the Experts

We understand that some of these tips may be beyond the abilities of a humble, onsite call center to achieve. They may even surpass the logistical capabilities of a larger company’s communications team. And that’s why more and more businesses are choosing to entrust this important task to experienced, on-demand contact center solutions providers.

If you need help with any of these methods for improving CX, it’s time to call in the experts. Contact us today to schedule your complimentary consultation with a Working Solutions expert.