How Small Businesses Can Improve the Customer Experience?

Small businesses come in all shapes, sizes, and markets, but they all play a vital role in our economy. One of the keys to the success of all businesses, but particularly small businesses, is a deep understanding of their customers.  Analyzing all aspects of customers’ behavior and interaction with a brand can help a small business gain valuable insights into their customers’ wants and needs, thus providing a business with worthwhile information on which to base future decisions about improving the customer experience.  In this blog post, we will discuss different types of data that you can use and how you can use it to benefit your customers.  This will drive revenue and growth for your business and create trust, loyalty, longevity, and advocacy.  

We tend to think that the customer experience is wrapped up in customer service. 

While it is one part, the customer experience is much more.  It is the sum total of all of a customer’s interactions with a business.  It is the feeling a customer gets from your business and it involves before, during, and after the buying process. 

Some types of customer interactions that enter customer experience include:  

• using your app or website 
• discussing products or services with members of the sales team 
• interacting with and commenting on your social media platforms 
• visiting your store, online or in person 
• sampling a product or signing up for a trial 
• using your product or service 
• sharing their experience 
• contacting customer service to discuss an issue with the product or service 

There are a lot of interactions a customer may have with your brand. Your goal is to build a deep relationship with your customer around wants and needs and put forth the effort to get to know your customers so they will trust the company and its products/services, keep coming back again and again, and shout from the rafters how good your products or services are! 

After all, the customer is where the rubber meets the road.  No matter how good your products and services are, you have no business without a strong customer base. Therefore, a positive customer experience must be a high priority! 

Customers expect more than just good products or services.  Customers expect you to give them a unique experience that centers around their needs and preferences. To meet these expectations, you must understand them at a deep level so all members of your team, from the top down, deliver with consistency.  

There are many sources of data you can use to help you discover customer needs and preferences. Some sources of data include: 

• Sales/Purchase data: This includes information about what customers are buying, how often they are buying, and how much they are spending. This includes information such as revenue, units sold, and customer lifetime value. Tracking this type of data can help you identify trends and patterns in customer behavior to select your most popular products or the most attractive times of the day, month, or year for active buying.  

• Demographic data: Information about the age, gender, income, and education level of customers fall under the demographic umbrella.  This type of data can help sort your customers into different categories based on these markers and help understand how different groups behave, noting similarities and differences in their buying behavior.  This can help make informed decisions on targets for marketing efforts and priorities. 

• Behavioral data: How customers interact with a business, such as how long they spend on the website, which pages they visit, and which products they view are all components of customer behavior.  Analysis of this type of data can help a business identify areas for improvement. Website browsing histories, purchase histories, engagement with email campaigns, website analytics, and in-app tracking can be quite enlightening for understanding patterns in customer interactions. 

• Feedback data: This includes analysis of chat logs, support ticket data, customer interviews, focus groups, customer reviews, and customer satisfaction scores.  This data provides valuable insights into how well your products, customer service, and overall experiences are and if they breed positive impressions and feelings about your brand. It can also point to areas for improvement. 

• Social media data: This includes information such as customer engagement, mentions, and shares on social media platforms. Social media “listening” and following the comments, tweets, and posts about a business can drive an understanding of brand perception. It may also illuminate the impact of various social media marketing, content interactions, and areas for improvement in your social media channels 

Having a deep understanding of your customers and their experience is critical for driving data-informed strategic planning and business decision-making.  The data can help you: 

• personalize experiences for different groups of customers, including targeted promotions, recommendations, and custom content for each group.  

• optimize your website, social media, and other digital channels by adjusting layouts, improving navigation, and tailoring content on these channels to improve and make the customer experience easier and more user-friendly. 

• improve your service and products using their feedback about likes and dislikes, fostering trust, loyalty, longevity, and advocacy. 

Analysis of customer data and the insights gleaned provide small businesses with a more comprehensive understanding of customer behavior, preferences, and needs, building stronger customer relationships.  It also allows for better decisions and more informed strategic planning, driving more traffic, sales, and profitability, making your business better in the long term! 

How are you getting to know your customers on a deep level?  What data are you analyzing?  Share in the comments below.   

Reach out to your Solutions Advisor at Klik Solutions if you want to use your data analytics to drive your business decisions. Your data can take you places.  What’s your destination?