What holds together the relationship between a brand and its customer is the experience they share. This bond is built on trust, transparency, and, most of all, consistency. The customer experience that forges this bond is so essential that it can make or break a business. Customer experience is so influential to a company’s long-term success that “good enough” just won’t do. When a customer moves beyond being just a prospect, and for them to remain a customer, their experience with your brand must be memorable, so personal that it transcends the transactional. When a customer and a brand have a strong connection, it leads to brand loyalty and a level of commitment to experience and consistency that few businesses genuinely grasp.
Of the 5.5 million businesses established in the United Kingdom, Fundsquire reports that 20% will fail in year one, and more than half will dissolve by year three. According to CBInsights, 29% of businesses fail because they ran out of funds, 23% because they hired the wrong team, 19% were outcompeted, and 14% due to poor marketing efforts or simply ignoring customers. These stats tell two stories: one is about the difficulty of business ownership, and the other is about the significance of having a high-quality customer experience and brand.
What measures can businesses take to avoid falling prey to these issues and survive and thrive well beyond year three? Here are five ways to ensure your company has an enriched customer experience and brand.
Evaluate Your Strengths and Weaknesses
No matter what product or service you’re selling, there are parts of owning a business that some companies will do well (or not so well). It’s a matter of knowing your strengths and weaknesses and improving on them immediately and consistently. Identifying your pain points is critical to remaining above the fray and maintaining a healthy relationship with your customers and brand image.
Empower Your Team
Empowering your sales team goes beyond training. Considering your team is the liaison to your customer, they should feel like they matter. In turn, your customers will feel like they matter as well. Delegate tasks, get to know your team personally, mentor them and help develop their strengths – this also helps their career goals in the long run. Allow your team to ask questions and make suggestions. Valuing your team adds value to your business.
Care
It doesn’t cost much to care, but it’s expensive when companies don’t. Caring in business looks like personalized attention, active listening, sincere product demonstrations, not overselling, carefully considering the customer’s needs and feedback, implementing feedback, and maintaining communication even without sales.
Partner With Technology
Technology plays an important role in the customer experience. It’s one of the keys to enhancing and enriching the sales process. When businesses integrate technology into the way they do business and support their customer service, it aids in building stronger relationships with their customers and sales teams. When companies make it easier for their teams to perform well, the byproduct is a more effortless, cohesive shopping experience for customers.
In today’s hyper-digital world, it’s only possible to avoid technology if you go off the grid – and who’s doing business off the grid these days? Investing in the best technology to enrich your customer’s shopping experience will pay off in the long run with your brand and your brand’s legacy.
Outsource Your Sales Team
Outsourcing sales staff is more common than you might think. There are two scenarios where new or established businesses may decide to outsource their sales staff. Firstly, outsourcing is the solution if you want to grow and scale but need more sales talent and resources. Secondly, if your business needs more expertise to handle certain sales functions within your sales team, then outsourcing is the solution. Sales outsourcing involves delegating a portion of your sales process to a third-party agency. It can be a short-term or long-term arrangement that benefits both the brand and customers.
Businesses and customers need each other. Customers need what companies are selling, and businesses need customers to want to purchase what they are selling, tell their friends and family about what they bought, and buy it again and again. However, this purchasing cycle is not automatic. It requires businesses to be attentive to the evolving shopping trends and demands of their customers.
If your business could use some help enhancing and enriching its customer experience and brand, Credico UK is here to help. We have more than three decades of simplifying and generating sales and improving brand awareness.