Just two! ✌️
That’s the total number of chances a customer gives a brand before leaving them if they don’t find their experience satisfactory, according to research done by Emplifi.
Therefore, understanding customers is crucial and that’s where customer experience tools come into play. In a recent whitepaper that we (Customerization) produced, we worked on decoding precisely this – the customer experience (CX) – from the small business perspective.
For obvious reasons, larger businesses are able to provide a better customer experience as compared to small businesses, owing to the stark contrast in the number of resources and funds.
So how can small businesses bridge this gap? Which customer experience solutions and platforms will work best for them? Keep reading to find out!
Let’s start from the start.
What is a customer experience platform?
It refers to a solution or software that’s developed to help businesses streamline and enhance the numerous interactions that take place between a brand and its customers.
It acts as a one-stop shop for all customer-related data (coming in from various marketing channels) and also provides the tools needed to analyze and optimize all customer interactions.
What does the ideal customer experience look like in these fast-changing times?
According to Adam Toporek (Customer Service Expert, Speaker, and Author)
The future of customer experience will involve finding ways to use technology to create and maintain positive emotional connections with customers. Despite the human brain’s remarkable inability to distinguish the artificial from the real, organizations will still need to find the magic balance between technology-faced and human-faced experiences.
Another expert, Ricky Thakrar (Director of Enterprise Account Management), dedicated an entire PPT to explain how Zoho is one of the best customer experience software for small businesses and enterprise companies.
He believes that these days, it’s less about attracting or retaining customers and more about the experience you can offer them. Further, he defines experiences as each individual interaction that a customer has with the company – calling it a “touchpoint”.
Touchpoints together form a journey and aren’t restricted to Sales and/or Marketing alone but include all departments.
What’s the role of technology in improving customer experience?
Technology helps businesses burrow down and get to the root cause of issues faced by customers that are keeping them from further interacting with them.
Basically, the best customer experience management platforms help businesses offer a much more personalized and seamless experience. Plus, they do so with minimal labor.
So which exact CX components should you look for in technology or CX tools to deliver a world-class experience to your customers? Maybe this will help –
What features to look for in a customer experience management platform?
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Data Analysis:
The most crucial part of any CX project is the optimal use of data. It can help businesses understand the current trends, pain points, and the different ways in which they can improve the journey of customers. Technology helps them streamline this process. -
Personalization:
With the help of this data, you can go one step further and personalize customer journeys as per their likes and dislikes. As AI algorithms swiftly advance, the best customer experience softwares utilize different features, such as predictive preferences, and then incorporate that information to provide tailored recommendations or messages to customers. -
Automation:
One of the best ways to error-proof routine tasks is to automate them. Technology helps in doing so and improving the efficiency of the CX. One simple example is the automation of emails that are periodically sent out to nurture leads and keep them invested in your brand. Another example is using chatbots and virtual assistants to take care of customer inquiries and support requests. -
Omnichannel Engagement:
It enables small businesses to interact with customers across different marketing channels such as social media, text and automated voice messages, emails, etc. This allows you to engage with your customer on their preferred channel, and therefore, increases overall engagement. -
Customer Journey Mapping:
This helps in making the overall interaction of a customer or their journey with the brand better. The software will work on gathering the different marketing channels, touchpoints, and all the interactions that happen between the customer and your business. Once you understand their journey better, you will learn where changes need to be made to enhance their experience. You’ll learn the precise points that cause them distress, what works for them, and what they want from your business. -
Easy to Navigate:
Before you do anything for your customers, or go looking for the best customer experience solutions, you’ll first need to ensure that the platform you choose is easy to use. This will help your employees navigate it better, learn it faster, and expedite your implementation process. Confusing or hard-to-use CRMs will only lead to mistakes that can cost you dearly. -
Security:
Customer experience management software, or any other software for a fact, needs to meet the industry as well as the regional security and privacy standards. This is because data is always a target and the platform that you choose needs to be certified to fortify such information to ensure that it doesn’t get leaked.
How can Zoho help you provide the best customer experience solutions and employee experience?
Here’s how Zoho will help you upgrade the experience of your customers and employees:- Provides insights based on data analysis.
- Lets you build journeys that are available in multiple applications.
- Has an easy-to-use interface and includes tools such as ‘Canvas’ to make your CRM look more aesthetically pleasing and ‘Wizards’ that makes data entry easy and smooth for your employees.
- Offers AI-based software such as predictions, product recommendations, and email sentiment analysis.
Get closer to our team, we are always open to working together!
