Gone are the days of only shopping local with the advent of the internet. Local stores and home businesses need to get their boat into the internet stream now as their potential customer base becomes international! Do you have a website? Check! Do you have a mobile responsive website? Check! Do you have your location, product listed, hours available on your website? Check! Are you out on social media? No? Do you have a loyalty program? Do you have good customer service? Are you available to chat with customers on website?
Today, these are the minimum of marketing strategies you need to be in the world we live in now.
Here are just some of the customer expectations now and the future trends in customer experience which some companies are lacking and others excel at, right now.
Remember,
Customers are willing to spread word to 10 times more about bad customer service than good customer service.
Loyalty Program
Having a loyalty program may be stale for some businesses but when you combine the loyalty card with the agreement that members will be notified of events and specials through email, you have a powerful combination to “sell more stuff” but also keep your customers loyal as they get to know more about your company from company fundraisers or new discounts on the loyalty card. I wait every week for my local dress shop email to see what is on sale and I don’t even have a loyalty card there. I gave them permission by opting for their email list by giving them my email address. How simple but what a powerful, less expensive form of marketing.
According to a study by L2 research, 90 percent of loyalty program participants say they want to receive regular communication from the brand, and studies show that programs which feature relevant, personalized messages lead to much higher levels of satisfaction. from Dear Uber: Reward Your Loyal Customers
Better Tutorials and FAQs for your product
One of my pet peeves these days is trying to buy a product without good tutorials to learn quickly how to use the product! There seems to be a “Rush” to launch products especially on the internet that means the business doesn’t set up a good tutorial section (or neglect it after a few videos) and customer service frequently asked questions. If your business is great at replying to customers questions on the internet these days, you will get great customer loyalty especially for the technically challenging businesses like web hosting or software.
Customers are empowered when they feel good about their ability to use your product effectively and save time and money on repairs from Revolutionary Trends Shift the Customer Experience, Increasing Brand Loyalty for 2016
Omniexperience is the Future and it is Now!
Public Domain from pixabay
According to omnichannel.me, Omnichannel is more than saying a customer will search on phone, website, ipad or any other device which is a cross channel experience. Omnichannel is the customer being able to interact with different businesses in a two-way dialogue and there being a sharing of data on customer preferences and brand information so that the customer can make an informed decision on his/her purchase and brand can learn about customers who come into the store but don’t buy. So, a free exchange of data between the store and the customer.
Their company Cloudtags has created an interactive tablet that customers can use in your store to look for product in the store as well in store catalog and they collect data in real-time as customer shops for retailer to learn what customers were looking for when they didn’t buy.
There are several Case Studies by Cloudtags on how the use of the interactive table in the store has increased engagement. For example, Heals had 83% increase in email signup from customers coming into the store using the tablet so of course, there sales went up because the store sent out promotions and events by email.
Gartner, a technology research company, found that a whopping 89% of companies surveyed plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016, a stark rise since 2014 (36%) and 2015 (58%). from Top 3 Trends in Customer Service for 2016 according to leading analysts
There are companies out there who are changing their form of marketing to prioritize the Customer Experience in their business. What about you?
Download the 
“How to Create the Ideal Customer Experience at each stage of their Journey ” infographic here and get more tips and ideas to improve your customer experience in your business!