The Sunday Mail
Cresencia Marjorie Chiremba
“Ease your customers’ pain” – Hazel Edwards
Pain points hinder customers from enjoying a positive customer experience; instead, they damage the relationship that a business may have with its customers.
However, it is easy to build a successful relationship with your customers if you can overcome the problems they face at various touch points in their customer journey.
Organisations must put an effort in identifying and understanding the problems that their customers are facing while patronising their business. A better understanding of these pain points will certainly help the organisation to position its service provision so that it aligns with its goal of exceeding customer expectations to delight them.
Here are some ways that can be used to fix the pain points:
Solutions must be tailor made
The selling era is long gone, when business used to persuade customers to buy what is already made. This era requires organisations to have a great understanding of their customer needs. Businesses that are poised for success know that it is pivotal to know and understand the needs of their customers even if you market to either other organisations or to individual buyers.
Companies that know exactly what their customers are looking for can easily persuade them to buy because they are able to provide solutions that are effective. Effective and faster support is possible when you can identify your customer needs.
Customers are most happy when the company that they are doing business with have very minimal support issues. For instance, I have heard about a local refrigerator manufacturing company that have had so many complaints about their products. A couple of people that I know had to call for support services for more than two times and in one instance they had to replace the product while the second instance they had to take the refrigerator back to the factory. Such issues make customers lose confidence in the quality of the company’s products and services and it reduces customer satisfaction.
First Contact Resolution
When customers contact your company representatives, their expectations are that they are experts who have all the knowledge of products and services. They will be confident that they will get updated brand information, hence they can achieve first contact resolution. If the representatives fail to meet that expectation customers will be frustrated.
Imagine you want to buy a vehicle and the vehicle sales consultant does not even understand the vehicle that they are selling,, would you trust them? You will lose trust and confidence. As customers we feel let down because we sincerely trust that they are the only ones that can give us reliable information and proper guidance before we make buying decisions.
To manoeuvre this pain point, organisations should regularly embark on product trainings and make sure that their representatives are up to date with the current industry trends and have enough information on new product features if there are any.
Hiring of experienced personnel is also another option that can be used. Staff with domain expertise tend to add value to the service being offered to the customer.
Quality of products and service
This is the most common pain point where organisations offer products or services that are of poor quality. Most small businesses are guilty of this sin and as marketers it is very difficult to turn a blind eye on quality because of its direct impact in boosting return on investment, building brand loyalty and trust as well as customer retention.
Research has shown that there seem to be an increase in sales when goods or services being offered are of great quality. Quality products make customers build trust and credibility such that they become loyal and spread positive recommendations. They make customers happy, come back for repeat purchases and literally become the company’s moving billboards through their free word of mouth marketing. A company is guaranteed of reaching new audiences if it does not compromise on the quality of its products or services. For instance, a couple of days ago I visited YANAYA Restaurant at Joina City and was impressed by the quality of their fresh food and how the manager solved my pain point. Their service made me want to do a repeat trip again.
Omnichannel Customer Experience
Organisations that offer inconsistent experiences across channels fuel distrust because customers expect consistent support no matter which channel they use. Omnichannel experience is the new norm and companies must avoid frustrating their customers when building and evolving their customer experience practices. There is great need to understand and be always aware of the consumer buying landscape shifts. This helps to design the right approaches in developing long lasting customer relationships.
It is therefore important to know that the key driver to any business is the customer needs, hence they must be kept at the centre of any customer experience strategy. More so, organisations must have a customer experience mission that must be known by heart by every employee as this is the guide which must be used to deliver top quality customer experience.
Slow Support Response
When customers seek assistance, they are not willing to be put on hold for long neither do they want to wait in long queues. Delayed response creates negative customer experiences. Companies must aim to deliver their sales and support assistance in real time. The use of live chat, video chat to attend to queries, identify issues and offer effective solutions immediately boosts customer satisfaction.
*Cresencia Marjorie Chiremba is a marketing enthusiast with a strong passion for customer service. For comments, suggestions, and training, she can be reached on [email protected] or on 0712 979 461, 0719 978 335
