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Creating a Compelling Customer Experience

@manuela-barcenas-rbf
Technology - Feb. 15, 2018

Creating a Compelling Customer Experience

Defining, designing, and improving your UX and CX to keep your clients coming back is essential for a company’s success

 

 

One of the keys to success for retail startups is not material or product-based. It’s customer experience (CX): making people feel they are buying from the right place. Technology plays a big role in this. Customers cultivate relationships with their favourite brands online and engage with those offering the most enjoyable shopping experiences.

Needls is a Toronto-based startup using marketing automation to keep its customers happy and engaged.

According to CEO Justin Hartzman, Needls creates an exceptional customer experience by developing close relationships and making all decisions—from website-building to policy creation—with customers in mind:

“Excellent customer service. It’s as simple as that,” says Hartzman. “If you have an exceptional experience and develop a relationship with a brand, you’re likely to think of them first when you need to make a similar purchase.”

In-store CX

Most people walking into a coffee shop, clothing store or other small business expect guest WiFi. Offering wireless connectivity can help you create compelling experiences for today’s connected customers.

Enabling customers to connect to WiFi offers a world of possibilities including mobile pay, push notifications and personalized discounts. For example, Apple introduced mobile pay in 2014; now, most businesses allow shoppers to use smartphones and other forms of mobile payment.

According to a Deloitte survey, over ninety percent of consumers use their smartphones while shopping inside a store. By providing customers with wireless connectivity, you make it easy for them to find information about your products, compare prices and check user reviews.

Having a strong WiFi network also means sales associates can use iPads to help shoppers by checking prices and looking for sizes in-store or at other locations; shoppers can also check out on their own using iPads. Both these features can help customers avoid long, frustrating checkout lines.

In-store push notifications can also improve CX. As location apps become more accurate, more businesses are sending notifications, personalized discounts and ads based on customers’ real-time positions.

Social media and mobile CTAs

Companies are incentivizing shoppers to become brand advocates through social media and mobile calls to action (CTAs). These create closer customer-brand relationships, which often result in more rewarding CXs.

Social media advocacy involves using customers and third parties to promote your business through their social media channels. Engaging with customers on social media allows brands to connect on a more personal level, and can build both long-term loyalty and immediate customer satisfaction. You can start by following back your followers, engaging with their content and creating social media contests to thank them for promoting your brand.

According to social media experts, the best online ads encourage readers to go one step further to connect with your brand. Ad CTAs may invite customers to complete satisfaction surveys, give feedback on your products and/or receive special deals and rewards.

“By delivering the right ads to the right people at the right time, you can catch that oh-so-crucial sweet spot that gets people buying,” says Hartzman.

A company without customers is just an idea. For this reason, successful startups like Needls make customer satisfaction central to their brand.

“Our User Success team is built on the same principles that we built our platform on. We care about our users’ success,” says Hartzman. “Even though we’re a self-serve automated platform, our team is on live chat and takes phone calls with business owners to help them develop an effective marketing strategy. Like we always say, your success is our success.”