South Wales-based customer care experts Customer Start have unveiled a five-point plan to help businesses retain and win more clients in the current economic climate where more and more customers are re-assessing their spend.
Miles Courtney-Thomas, Co-Founder of Customer Start, explains:
“The natural behaviour for companies during a downturn is to start cutting budgets across the board. This however may cause much longer-term damage to the organisation than taking a more proactive approach to concerning times ahead.
“Building resilience needs to be based on a multi-faceted approach; cutting back on areas that do not provide value or ROI, whilst at the same time doubling-down the key aspects of Customer Experience.”
The company has a five-point plan for businesses to immediately implement:
1. Mindset, Culture and Strategy
Ensure that everyone in your business is focused on a customer-centric approach, which will help build a greater understanding of customers and ensure they feel valued in their relationship with your company.
2. Understanding what ‘Customer Value’ is
Understand and articulate the value that you provide customers while being mindful that customer needs do change and evolve over time.
3. Build Customer Understanding
Customer insight will come from many sources, such as your CRM, surveys, reviews and social media. It’s vital to use this insight to prioritise where to focus your investment and improvement initiatives.
4. Build Trusted Relationships
Retention is based on relationships and how your customers feel. Building a clear route of communication with your customers is important to ensure they feel valued and that their needs are being met. This will result in a trusted relationship that will thrive for years to come.
5. Amazing Customer Service
For many customers, most of their interactions with you take place via your customer service team, as they make contact when they need help. The way that assistance is provided will either reinforce your company values and build advocacy or ruin the relationship. A clear focus on ensuring your service team are performing at their peak can go a long way and have significant impact.
Miles continues:
“The experience of each customer comes down to three key areas: success, effort and emotion. Businesses need to ensure their products and services enable customer success, in an easy way, that results in a positive experience.”
Customer Start provides expert advisory services to allow their clients to gain a greater understanding of how customers feel, help them develop a Customer Experience Strategy and accelerate both current and newly formulated initiatives to ensure exceptional experiences.
