Personalize the Experience
Having personalized customer service is a great way to build customer loyalty and engagement. By personalizing the experience to include such things as handwritten notes or acknowledging birthdays with a special gift, you’re showing customers just how much they’re valued. Creating a more personal, human connection with online customers is essential to making their experience a memorable one. It’s a challenge to break down the imaginary wall that exists between you and your clients, but through personalization and a human touch (powered by digital experiences) it can be done.
At The Bouqs Company, we’ve implemented what we call a “concierge service,†a subscription service that tailors flower deliveries to consumer needs. This service personalizes the experience by allowing customers to choose to send flowers on a regular basis, just because or on important dates. Customers take their experiences with your brand personally and so should you.
Encourage Referrals
Customer referrals can have a huge impact on your online business. In fact, according to a recent study by Nielsen, 84% of consumers worldwide say they trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, a form of earned media, above all other sources of advertising. So, it works great. Now how do you get clients to spread the word for you? First, execute points one through three. Then, give them the tools to share your great story and an incentive to do so.
More and more companies are choosing to offer customers some sort of incentive to refer their friends or family. For instance, we offer customers the opportunity to earn a $40 free flower bouquet credit for every two friends they refer, increasing website traffic and building our customer base. On top of that, clients can give their friends and family a free second bouquet with their first purchase. So you get to give a free bouquet, and for every second redeemed, you get a free bouquet. Win-win!
Referrals are a great way to advertise your business without having to spend a fortune, and an effective program can drastically reduce your cost to acquire a new client.
Put Customers’ Happiness First
In the end, you want to create a positive experience for customers in the hopes that they’ll become repeat customers (and bring others along with them). To make that happen, put customer happiness first – always. Providing unrivaled customer service is a surefire way to create happy customers.
Start with having a customer “in the room†when making key decisions about your product offering. Designate an employee to be the customer, and give that employee the right to comment or debate any decision from the POV of the client. This will ensure a more customer-centric shopping experience.
At The Bouqs Company, we’ve created a happiness guarantee as a result of this process, which basically ensures customers that we’ll do everything in our power to turn their frown upside down, in the unlikely event they don’t have a great experience. For example, late delivery or quality issues result in a free Bouq replacement or equivalent store credit. This guarantee shows customers that we stand behind our product and experience. Pull together a customer-first service policy, brand it and communicate it to your clients. It’ll go a long way towards keeping your clients happy and shopping for years to come.
What experience hacks have you implemented to launch your business and set yourself apart from the competition?
BusinessCollective, launched in partnership with Citi, is a virtual mentorship program powered by North America’s most ambitious young thought leaders, entrepreneurs, executives and small business owners.