In our blog a few weeks ago we looked at what customer experience is and how it is key in helping you to differentiate your brand from your competitors, create a loyal customer base and build a strong brand that customers will trust.
In an EY survey to over 32,000 retail bank customers globally they found that the key to winning, growing and retaining customers in an increasingly competitive banking environment was a great customer experience. The way customers are treated is the second most important reason for trusting their bank, states EY. It needs to not only fulfil basic expectations, but also provide value to the customer.
Here are our four tips on how you can help ensure a great customer experience
1. Understand your customers
Take time to really understand your customers and define who your target market is. It’s something that we all learned in marketing 101, but segment, segment, segment. I can’t stress enough how important it is to segment your customers. The same message is not relevant to all customers so it’s important to send the right message to the right people. One way that really helps you to clarify your segmentation is to create personas for your target market. Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might use a site, brand, or product. These help you to create and send the right message to your customers by having an idea of who they are already in your head.
2. Listen and Deliver
Along with understanding your customer base it’s important for you to listen to their needs and to deliver upon those needs. There is no point in continuing to deliver a product or a service that your consumers don’t want. Customer surveys and customer feedback are great ways to gauge what your customers think of your product and service. Along with listening to your consumers it’s crucial that you also listen to your staff. If your staff are unhappy or feel like upper management doesn’t listen to them it will be difficult for them to deliver a good customer experience to your end users. It’s key to listen and act! Having DAM software helps with the distribution of the relevant content.
3. Make things simple
In the digital era that we operate in, it’s crucial that things are simple and users are able to figure out digital systems whether they are online, apps or in branch without needing support. Part of a good customer experience includes a good user experience. Work with your digital team to make sure interfaces are simple and easy to use and operate and importantly make sure in branch staff has an understanding of how to use the interface so that they can help customers in branch quickly. Nothing is more frustrating than going into a shop for help and the in-store staff having no idea what head office has promised. Or being told that you need to phone customer service to get your answer.
4. Do the simple things
Say thank you. This is probably the easiest thing for you to do. Customers have a lot of choice when it comes to choosing a bank. Make sure your customers know that you are grateful for their custom. They didn’t have to choose you, but they did. Take time to retain customers rather than gain new ones. It’s more expensive to gain new customers than it is to retain current ones. Have staff in branch thank customers, send an email to say thanks or even post them a card to say thanks for choosing us. Llyods Bank has recently started to randomly pay for customer’s purchases saying it’s on us. Think of other reward or loyalty schemes. Make your consumers feel like they are gaining value from you. Go above and beyond for them.
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