How to capture what your customers really want

All businesses want to have satisfied customers. A good way to ensure your customers are satisfied is to give them what they want, when they want it, and how they want it.

In reality that can be difficult to do as firstly you have to know what they want. Too many companies just assume they know better than their customers. Being able to correctly read your customers and deliver the products and services they want requires active listening, and a willingness to adapt to changing consumer behaviours.

Here are some of the most effective ways how to know what your customers want and deliver the customer experience they demand.

Listen & act on feedback

Being a good listener has many advantages, not least for your quest to understand what customers really want. Many customers bemoan the fact they do not feel listened to or taken seriously, and for businesses confronted with this, there’s a simple answer – start listening! As basic as that may seem, it is the key to really understanding your target market and being able to make the changes necessary to help them. Your brand’s reputation depends on being a good listener and anyone that has worked in customer service knows that not listening will only lead to further issues. With 68% of customers feeling businesses need to improve the training of their customer service agents, active listening is right up there to ensure customers are being heard.

Training for in-house teams is important to iron out any issues related to this, and quality assurance teams should regularly listen to calls and give feedback to agents who require assistance. Reviewing these interactions with customers is one way to gather feedback and understand how they are feeling, but a more effective option is to actively request customer feedback. There are various ways to do so, including CSAT surveys after key interactions to gather their immediate feelings, or following up by email or messaging to ask directly for feedback. Whilst not every customer will do so, many will take the time to provide valuable feedback that will help shape further training opportunities and make changes to your CX output.

Understand your brand reputation online

Gauging the opinion of your customers is much easier to do in the modern digital world, with social media being a hub for those looking to interact with brands and other consumers. It can be an ideal setting to see what people are saying about your brand and their experiences. You can be sure that if someone has a bad experience, they’ll be ready to share this online, but you’ll also find positive ones too that will be just as helpful.

You may discover that more than one customer shares the same gripe with a particular aspect of the customer experience your brand provides, or has expressed a change they’d like to see to help improve service. These could be customers who may not fill out surveys or feedback forms, instead choosing to go public on forums and social sites.

As many as 36% of customers will share good or bad experiences, with half of these choosing social media to do so. 39% of these will post on Facebook, whilst 13-15% will choose Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Whilst it’s not the majority of your customers, that can still equate to a large number of people giving valuable feedback that is otherwise being missed. They could also affect the decision of other customers to shop with your brand. The other 64% of consumers, whilst not sharing on social sites, will also have opinions on your service, so it’s important to reach out following customer interactions.

Fortunately, there are tools that can help brands analyse what’s being said online about them, making it much easier for social media managers to collate this data. Sentiment analysis tools can automatically find relevant social posts and bring them to your inbox, helping you to oversee your brand reputation online.

Conduct surveys or focus groups

If you were able to gather a few of your customers in a room, what do you think they would say? If you ask them the correct questions around CX, you should be able to get the answers you want the most. A focus group has always been an effective method to gather feedback, but modern solutions mean you don’t have to bring customers together physically to do this. Online focus groups can be conducted through video platforms and will work in the same way. You can also design surveys that ask specific questions about the customer experience and will help you learn what customers want to see improved.

NPS surveys are an effective tool to harvest your customers’ opinions and provide a platform for them to deliver feedback knowing that they will be heard. Actively seeking feedback in this way can be as simple as asking “how was your experience?”, and can then lead to questions about parts of your CX you really want their feedback on. NPS surveys are effective in understanding how likely customers are to use your service again and whether they would recommend it to others, using a simple scale of 1 to 10. You can then share the feedback with your teams about whether you have promoters or detractors (hopefully more promoters).

Any detractors present an opportunity to understand why they feel this way and what can be done to improve CX to improve their opinion. The value of changing detractors into promoters shouldn’t be ignored, with promoters having a customer lifetime value (LTV) that’s 600% - 1400% higher than a detractor.

Improve the customer experience around them

If it was easy to know what customers really want, brands wouldn’t struggle to improve NPS, their brand reputation, or deliver the perfect product or service. All companies can do is get better at knowing how to find out what their customers want and put into action a strategy that will help their customers feel listened to and cared for. The pandemic has changed customer expectations, with 61% saying they now expect higher than ever customer service standards. It’s getting tougher out there for brands with sub-standard CX, and the impact can be felt on brand loyalty and LTV.

A customer who has a 5-star experience is 3.6x more likely to recommend, 3.3x more likely to trust, and 2.6x more likely to purchase more from your brand when compared to those with a 1 or 2-star experience. So how can you deliver a 5-star customer experience?

Here at Ventrica, as customer experience specialists, we have helped global brands address this very same question and assisted them in improving their CX with our consultancy and outsourced solutions. If you would like to discuss your current challenges and understand more about what we do as BPO providers, why not speak to us today? Contact us and find solutions to know what your customers really want.