Customer service is a key factor by which many customers judge a brand. It also drives consumer loyalty and determines whether they spend their money on your brand.
What do customers expect?
A study found that 40% of buyers want brands to focus on taking care of their needs swiftly. You get a competitive edge by delivering quick, convenient, and personalized customer service in their preferred channel of choice.
Another study found that 95% of shoppers cited customer service as vital in their selection of and loyalty to a brand.
So how do you offer more personalized customer support and gain a loyal following? In this article, we will be looking into five sure-shot strategies that your business can apply:
1. Use CRM software
CRM software tools are used to perform optimal customer relationship management and work by collecting, segmenting, and storing data. The data can then be used to analyze customer behavior.
What’s more, CRM can offer suggestions to improve the customer experience and allow your business to gain a competitive edge.
Not only that, CRM can auto-generate repetitive tasks like sending emails to your customers and taking actions when the leads become inactive. Since customers want quick responses from brands, using an omnichannel customer relations tool works to their benefit.
Also, when you create a bond with the existing customers, you don’t have to spend time trying to get them again like new traffic.
For instance, here is a post-sale email from Zulily confirming the order of a buyer:
The email contains shipping information so as to make it easy for buyers to track their packages within their email. Zulily has done a great job with their clear ‘track my package’ call to action button here.
Making your customers feel welcome even after they completed their purchase is a great way to gain their loyalty. And satisfied customers will happily advocate your brand to their friends and families.
CRM users can also easily integrate the tool with social media channels, email marketing, messaging services, Live chat, and telephony software.
2. Implement chatbots
Chatbots are being widely used to offer personalized customer support. They are computer programs designed to simulate human conversation via voice or text commands or both.
If you are an e-commerce brand, you can use chatbots to find out and respond to customer intent. Doing this will help you to recommend products or other actions in real-time. You can do so by analyzing the conversations you have with customers in messenger apps on websites, social channels, and ads.
While trying to personalize the chatbot experience, the crucial thing to consider is what will truly be of value to your buyers.
Here, fitness brand Verve Health Co’s chatbot serves as a personal trainer by offering workouts and fitness advice to its users.
New users have to answer questions related to any injuries or health issues. And when users request a workout, it cautions them about exercises they will have to avoid because of their injury. This kind of personalization can boost user experience.
The whole point is to make the user feel more understood and solve their pain point.
Here’s another example where Amazon offers personalized product recommendations on their website:
When you know what will be of value to your customers, you can work out what info you need from the users. You can either directly get the information from users, such as location, goals, age, needs, etc., and use it to personalize the experience or collect info passively from their behaviors and actions.
3. Abandon the one-size-fits-all approach
Not every customer has the same needs, pain points, goals, and budget. And you want to make your customers feel special. The best way is to approach each buyer as an individual rather than just another consumer. Grouping them all can lead to customers losing trust in your brand as it shows inauthenticity.
To avoid that, for instance, while messaging your clients, you can treat a repeat buyer of your product differently than a first-time buyer. Try to craft a message to be as relevant as possible to that specific buyer.
4. Be proactive on social channels
More than 53% of the world’s population are using social media these days. And they use it not only to engage with friends and families but with businesses as well. More statistics suggest that 76% of buyers are willing to have a social media conversation with brands.
However, having a social media account is not enough. You have to engage with your followers and solve their problems proactively.
A recent survey revealed that 40% of users expect a response from a brand within the first hour of connecting, while 80% of users expect it within the first 24 hours. Using social handles to engage with customers proactively is a great way to offer an optimized and personalized customer experience.
Many customers try to research a brand online before they purchase from them as previous buyers usually leave product reviews. Apart from increasing brand awareness through social media, you can also meet your customers where they are and work on building a strong bond.
5. Offer a personalized loyalty program
Do you have repeat buyers? If yes, then why not recognize and reward them for their customer loyalty? It will motivate them further to do the excellent work they are doing for your brand.
Starbucks offers a loyalty program to their customers that bring them closer to free drinks and food with each purchase they make. Customers have to order or pay via a special app in order to earn Starbucks loyalty stars.
Using an app not only eases the order process, but you can also gather data on customer behavior and preferences that you can use to deliver a more personalized customer experience.
Offering several ways to earn points and enquiring customers what they would prefer to receive for joining your loyalty program are other ways to personalize loyalty programs.
In a survey, 83% of consumers said loyalty programs make them more likely to become loyal customers of a brand.
These stats below will help you out while creating your loyalty program:
- For 50% of consumers, the main reason for joining a loyalty program is to gain rewards on daily purchases.
- 87% of consumers don’t mind brands monitoring details of their activity as long as they get more personalized rewards.
- 46% of customers look for gifts and swag in loyalty programs.
Final Thoughts
Personalization is key to businesses trying to retain customers and gain a loyal following.
And personalizing your customer support will go a long way in increasing the number of repeated buyers and gaining a loyal following who in turn will willingly become your brand’s ambassadors.
Follow all the five powerful strategies in this article to make customer support more personal.
