Looking to enhance your bottom line while increasing lifetime value, decreasing churn, and client engagement? Consider the last time you had a truly wonderful customer experience, and keep in mind how it made you feel. Do the same thing for the previous time you had a bad client encounter.
A happy customer is more likely to become a loyal one that can help you increase income; therefore a pleasant customer experience is essential to the success of your business. And if you want to enhance the customer experience, start by determining whether the digital experience is fragmented. As a SaaS provider or B2B business, “digital” may be the only medium through which a customer contacts you. You’re not providing an optimal experience if all they encounter are disjointed, annoying processes that require them to log in more than once and visit multiple systems to find the solution to their problem. You can solve many of these problems by developing a strong customer community.
Centralizing the customer experience around a customer community is one way to solve the issue.
According to Aberdeen Research, firms with online communities:
- Enjoy a 5.4x greater annual increase in customer satisfaction rates
- Achieve 41% greater average customer profit margin
- Are 2x more likely to have a formal strategy to encourage loyal customers to become brand advocates
- Improve (decrease) support costs by 32.9% year-over-year
- Grow customer retention rates by 15% year-over-year
Looking to build your product? want to re-engage your customers? Scared about the marketing budget?
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HERE ARE A FEW WAYS YOU CAN USE A COMMUNITY TO IMPROVE THE DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE::
91% of clients who participate in the community, user group, or advocacy programs think their providers value them more as a result of those initiatives. These Customers have higher satisfaction and tend to buy more than those who do not.
1. Communities give businesses a way to interact with clients and steer the conversation in an advantageous direction.
A fantastic strategy to develop client loyalty and trust is to interact with them through a customer community. Communities provide a convenient and welcoming setting for current customers to share their perspectives, challenges, and inquiries. They give businesses the chance to keep an eye on these communities and respond to problems quickly, assuring consumer happiness. Businesses can interact, engage, and have meaningful conversations with customers regardless of where they are in the sales cycle. These are great formats for customer experience.
2. Communities facilitate interactions between customers
People form connections with other people, not with businesses. Customers might establish connections through an online community that aids in their achievement & improve customer experience. Here are a few motives why people might go to your neighborhood:
- When a customer requests information on best practices for a particular use case
- If a customer wants to submit a suggestion for a product improvement
- If a customer wants to speak with someone who has used a product or service from you that they haven’t yet
3. Create brand evangelists
Loud marketing and promotional messages no longer have the power to influence consumers. However, current clients are a great way to enhance your reputation and foster innate trust in the eyes of potential clients. Communities are a fantastic method to demonstrate how much you care for current and potential clients. By keeping consumers interested throughout the whole customer lifecycle, you may convert them into brand evangelists who will actively promote your company and increase loyalty. Communities give you a method to keep an eye on what people are saying about your business on social media and utilize that data to create better goods and deliver better services.
4. A location where clients may speak with your staff
Staff members may become accessible to your customer base. A prime example of this is The Community Q&A Show. Staff members are now friendly, approachable individuals when they were once just a voice on the other end of the line or a name in your customer’s inbox. You can make your business and community seem like a welcoming, authentic place for customers to form beneficial networking connections and succeed with your product by giving your staff the chance to connect personally with customers.
5. Provide interesting answers to your consumers’ concerns so they will return – Suggestions
Customers in a community TALK. And this chatter is a great source of new product ideas and innovations. You can make your community a place for innovative discussions and new product ideas. One of the first rules of marketing is to focus on the consumer’s needs. This way you get all the needs directly from your customers and you spend zero on market research!
HOW A CUSTOMER COMMUNITY CAN BE A RESOURCE ACROSS ALL STAGES OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY
The final factor that makes the community a valuable tool for enhancing the digital customer journey is that it is essential to all customer journey phases. We’ll clarify:
Stage 1: Prospect | Discovery: The streamlined digital experience begins with the prospect stage, which occurs before your clients become customers. Prospects can locate your community in search results if it is open or partially open. When they come across your community thread through search, they locate a solution to an issue they’re having. They could even set up a login and begin taking part.
Stage 2: Onboarding/Implementation for New Customers: Once they become customers, the community becomes the destination for all of your customer’s inquiries. They can meet other consumers there, ask for advice on best practices, and look for product education. They can check out the product manual, consult other customers, and visit your knowledge base, all of which promote full product adoption.
Stage 3: Existing Consumer | Steady State: At this point, your customer still relies on your community. They might start offering their recommendations as they progress within your organization. Even if they don’t, it’s a crucial tool for product adoption and self-service.
Stage 4: Growing Customer | Advocate: Your customer community is a place where consumers may go as they develop and become brand evangelists to leave product reviews and support other customers’ (and prospects’) growth with your business. It serves as their central location for submitting support issues, making product suggestions, advising other customers, and exchanging thought leadership and best practices.
STILL, WONDERING IF CUSTOMER COMMUNITY IS GOOD FOR YOUR CX?
HERE ARE 6 SITUATIONS WHERE CUSTOMER COMMUNITIES CAN HELP WITH CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
- IF A CUSTOMER IS UNHAPPY WITH YOUR GOODS OR SERVICES
Customers can utilize the search engine to look for product answers in the blogs, knowledge base, and discussion forums of your online customer community.
- WHEN YOU REQUIRE A REFERENCE
Your customer reference program’s bookends are online communities, which give you the ability to find and hire powerful customer advocates as well as engage with potential clients.
- WHEN YOUR’ PRODUCT TEAM NEEDS TO ESTABLISH PRIORITIES OR VALIDATE AN IDEA
Online customer communities provide constant product feedback to product management teams, enabling them to test concepts, validate the roadmap, and order the product backlog.
- FOR RENEWALS, UPSELLS, OR ADD-ONS
Renewal or growth of a customer’s relationship with your company is obvious when they use your products and rely on your community for advice.
- IN THE CASE WHERE A CUSTOMER IS SEEKING STRATEGIC ADVICE
Make your online customer community the go-to place for guidance and thought leadership.
- IF YOUR BUSINESS MAKES A MISTAKE
You can use your online community to establish a solid connection that will withstand any future slip-ups.
IMPROVE THE DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH A CUSTOMER COMMUNITY TODAY!
Creating a community as a hub will help you streamline a disjointed digital customer experience. Do you want to know more about what a customer community could look like for your business? Contact us today!
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