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Lesson 4:
Creating and Optimizing a Positive Customer Experience at Scale
Creating and Optimizing a Positive Customer Experience at Scale
Tommy Walker is the editor-in-chief of the Shopify Plus blog and the former editor of the popular eCommerce blog, Conversion XL. Working at Shopify Plus, he is intimately familiar with the growing pains of stores as they go from small operations to full-scale businesses. Here, he takes a look at a vital element many businesses forget as they grow: the value of a positive customer experience when taking your business to the next level.
A lot of people talk about customer experience, but too often we get lost in the clouds and don’t take the time to come down to earth to really examine what it means to build a good customer experience.
So, what’s a good customer experience?
It’s one where all of the questions floating through a customer’s head are answered proactively.
There are a million and a half questions a new customer might have when buying from a new or growing eCommerce brand, and if you’re not yet a household brand-name, it’s important you address these to reduce any inherent fears that come with buying from an unknown brand.
Growing businesses should never ever forget the importance of customer trust. It can be too easy as sales begin to grow to take customer trust for granted, but slacking off can have detrimental effects on customer experience.
Growing businesses can begin to address these questions by implementing feedback loops throughout the customer experience.
Live chat transcripts, customer service calls, and user testing sessions are just some of the ways to determine what kinds of hesitations a customer might have when buying from you. Also, asking new customers what almost made them not buy is a great way to learn from the people who overcame some kind of fear of buying.
The best way to stay on top of a growing customer base is segmentation. You’ve got to realize that soon growth is going to get our of your control, and only by having smart segmentation will you be able to truly pay attention to what’s going on with your customers.
Some segments may include:
Obviously, you aren’t able to send 1:1 communications as you scale, however, the more targeted your segments are, the more relevant your communications can be.
Also, just because messaging may not be 100% personalized, doesn’t mean you can’t include a personal touch. Using a service like Bond.co, companies can easily scale sending handwritten thank-you notes to their customers, which can have a pretty dramatic impact on how much a customer may bond with a company.
Often, businesses have a lot of steam at the beginning and a huge desire to delight their customers and encourage word-of-mouth marketing. But for buzz on an ongoing basis, nothing beats nailing the unboxing experience.
Seriously, think about it. The unboxing experience is the first physical interaction with your brand, so by creating an experience that people want to talk about, you could be multiplying your word of mouth referrals exponentially just by paying attention to the small details.
In fact, the research shows that 4 out of 10 people are willing to share product images online, so it’s not difficult to imagine that enthusiasm is carried offline as well.
There are many struggles that high-growth companies have when they’re scaling; ranging from learning how to hire & manage new employees, to improving their supply-chain and manufacturing process, to figuring out logistics and getting products to customers faster.
The best advice I can give is to find mentors who have dealt with these challenges in the past and learn how they’ve moved forward. Many merchants who have scaled for success are surprisingly open to lending an ear and giving advice.
I would also recommend finding a non-partial outlet, like a therapist, to learn how to communicate and handle all of the newfound stress that comes with running a successful venture.
It’s the entrepreneur’s dirty secret, but finding yourself in the position of having to make so many different decisions can be overwhelming, and you’re simply not going to make everyone happy. If unchecked, it can consume you, and carry over into your personal life in a very unhealthy way.
Speaking with a therapist and an experienced mentor can help you make the transition into this new phase of life with relative ease, and help you to develop into a leader that people admire, which translates to every area of how you do business.
Hopefully these tips help you retain the best results (and your sanity) as you scale. Remember, your customers are your business.
Keep them happy, and the rest will follow.
