What is the difference between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty? To get satisfied customers, you just live up to their expectations and nothing more.
The goal should be to create an experience that exceeds the customers’ expectations. This is something that is critical today to achieve long-term success.
It comes down to the experience that the customer has at each point of contact with your company.
For example, when a customer visits your blog, checks out your online store, or talks to a customer service representative over the phone.
Everything counts and if you have a good strategy in place, you can create a highly positive experience.
Today, it is easier than ever for a customer to change a product or brand if the company does not live up to its promises.
According to Nielsen’s customer satisfaction research, recommendations from friends and family are what people trust the most compared to any other form of marketing.
Attracting a brand-new customer is about six times more expensive than taking care of your existing ones.
Delight Your Customer
Inbound marketing consists of three phases that your customer goes through:
- Attract
- Engage
- Delight
The Delight phase is what we are going to take a closer look at. It is about how you take care of your customer after purchase so that you can get more satisfied customers.
What are the different ways to make your customer happy? How can you use social media for this purpose?
A customer can receive a positive after-sales experience through:
- Discount codes and coupons
- Email newsletters
- Social media interactions
- Customer Outreach
1. Discount Codes And Coupons
Discount codes can be used in many ways to make your customer happy. One way is to send a discount code after purchase and include a personal greeting.
You can also surprise and send a discount code to a dissatisfied customer who has returned an item to “heal the wound”.
2. Email Newsletters
Email newsletters allow you to send useful information and improve customer satisfaction.
The first step is to send a welcome newsletter and thank the new subscriber with a personal greeting. This is a great way to start building a personal relationship with the customer.
If you run a blog and do content marketing, you can create segmented newsletters based on the type of products purchased by the customer.
Link to a product review or how-to guide in your blog so that the customer gets more value out of the newsletter. You could also link to a relevant video on your YouTube channel.
If you use an emailing service, you can create automated campaigns that are segmented.
The campaigns can be set up according to criteria such as purchase price or the type of product. It could be sent out to do a follow-up after a certain number of days of purchase.
The more you can segment, the better results you will get. Use the contact information you have and create personalized emails with valuable content.
If you get it right, you can create the impression that you are talking directly with the customer. It’s like you know each other, and you know what they are looking for.
3. Social Media Interactions
Use social media to delight your customers. Many companies use social media as a bulletin board to display products or services. But they put little effort to delight their customers and followers.
Here are some ways in which you can use social media to get more satisfied customers:
Personal Connection
Try to create a personal connection with your customers on social media.
For example, you could spend a few minutes a day asking a question or creating a discussion around a certain topic.
These are small actions that convince customers that they have chosen the right company.
If you see that someone has uploaded a photo and tagged your company, share the photo and thank them for sharing. This makes the customer feel important.
Customer Service
How easy is it for the customer and how many times do they have to contact you to fix a defect or problem?
If the customer has to chase you and try several times to get in touch, they are going to be upset. This can be really frustrating, and they may decide to leave a negative review about the experience.
Today, Facebook Messenger is what a lot of people use to get support and service.
Do not forget to check your accounts and respond to inquiries as soon as possible. You should do this, regardless of whether the issue is small or large in nature.
Use absence notifications and automated replies when you are not available and tell the customer when they can expect a response.
There are also tools and software for customer service management, that make this process easy for businesses.
Problem Solving
Use search tools and go through different platforms where you know your customers are hanging out.
Look for comments or problems that are mentioned about your brand or services.
An unexpected response from you could turn someone into a satisfied customer. Also, share your expertise in discussion groups that are related to your niche.
In Facebook groups, you are able to join and comment using your business page. Then interested people can easily click on your company website through your page.
This is more powerful in marketing your brand compared to using your private Facebook profile.
4. Customer Outreach
Finally, reach out to your customer. For example, if a customer had previously experienced a problem with your product, reach out and make sure that everything is working as expected.
Some customers may remain silent and never use your service again – if you do not ask, you will not know.
Make sure you understand the customer’s needs and know why he or she is buying your service or product.
When you know the customer’s needs, you can better assist them with the problems that may arise down the line.
Conclusion
One way to be better than your competitors is to offer great customer service and take the necessary steps to delight your customer after purchase.
A process is needed to create a positive experience with your brand to increase the trust of customers. This would turn them into your brand ambassadors that can attract more customers.
Regardless of the industry that you work in, you can adapt the tips above to get more satisfied customers.
Here’s a quote from the poet Maya Angelou that sums up customer delight:
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.