How to Create a Top-Notch Customer Experience in 2023 (6 Ways)

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The year 2023 is almost here, so that means it’s time to put your marketing plans into action and find new ways to connect with your target audience.

Business leaders and marketers want to do everything they can to create a top-notch customer experience (CX). It’s no wonder why; happy shoppers turn into long-term customers and brand advocates. The more satisfied customers you have on your side, the more opportunities you get to build rapport and boost sales.

But creating a solid CX is no easy feat. You must look at your business and marketing strategies from several angles to thrive, especially in today’s competitive eCommerce marketing place.

Today, I will share 7 powerful ways to improve your CX for the year ahead. These tips will help you meet new prospects, connect with leads, and build lasting relationships with first-time customers.

Are you ready? Great! Let’s begin.

Spend More Time Learning about Your Customers

The first thing you should do is spend more time learning about your customers. You may know this, but it’s worth repeating; our customers are the reason we are in business. Without people engaging with our website and buying our products, we wouldn’t make it one day.

The more you know about your intended audience’s needs, goals, and pain points, makes every other marketing strategy easier. You can develop product updates, create new content, and get more engagement on social media by focusing on the topics that matter most to your audience.

I recommend using customer surveys and on-site analytics to determine key information about the people visiting your website. Use what you learn during this time to build actionable customer personas.

Many businesses have multiple personas or segments. Each segment has specific problems and needs that can be addressed through a product. For example, you would expect an online pet supply store to have segments for cat owners and dog owners. Each group has specific needs that are addressed through specialty products and services.

The more time you spend listening to your customers, the more opportunities you get to learn about the people visiting your website.

Create New and Exciting Content

The next step is to create new, exciting, and valuable content for your audience. Very few people are interested in engaging with a website if it’s a product storefront with nothing else to offer.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to keep your readers happy and interested in your brand. Blogging is one of the oldest and most effective strategies. Research shows companies that blog generate 67% more traffic than those who don’t,

Relevancy is vital to creating a memorable CX. The blog posts you publish on your website should tie back to the needs of your readers. Think about the pet store example I mentioned earlier. Imagine if a cat owner visited this website only to see blog posts about cars. Odds are, the pet owner wouldn’t bother going back to the website because the content doesn’t match their needs.

I also suggest creating more video content. A whopping 43% of online users say they want more videos from brands they enjoy. In other words, there’s a massive market for video content.

You can even take existing blog posts and lead magnets and repurpose them for sites like YouTube and Instagram.

Open Up New Communication Channels

Now, let’s talk about how you communicate with your readers. The most common ways to communicate with prospects and customers are through email and on-site messages. But the truth is, there are plenty of other ways to stay in touch with the people most interested in your products or services.

Many business leaders have had success with push notifications. I believe this is because people are more likely to check the messages on their smartphones’ notification tray than they are to, for example, open every email that hits their inbox. Studies show that push alerts have an open rate of 28%, which is significantly higher than other marketing communication channels.

You should also look into alternate social media platforms. Instead of relying on one or two sites, expand your horizon and experiment with other channels. When you consider that 31.24% of all website traffic comes from social media, and the average user spends 2.5 hours on these platforms daily, this strategy makes sense.

Over the last several years, we’ve started experimenting with YouTube and TikTok instead of just Facebook and Twitter. As a result, we saw a surge in engagement, customers, and traffic from these channels.

Use Personalization to Create Memorable Experiences

Personalization is no longer an eCommerce luxury. Instead, creating unique offers and content has become necessary for most businesses. We found that 4 in 5 shoppers say they want brands to do more to personalize their content in the years ahead. This eye-opening statistic shows that users expect personalization as part of a well-rounded CX.

A core reason for this shift is there are more businesses to choose from than ever before. People want to associate with companies that “get’’ them. Think about it; would you be more willing to engage with a brand if you felt they truly understood your goals and roadblocks? If you’re like most people, the answer is a resounding yes!

You can personalize on-site content, email, and social media advertisements to match each person. You’ll want to use the buyer personas you created to figure out how to best address your audience.

If you’re not sure what type of content your readers want to see, ask! Send a feedback form with your welcome email or show a questionnaire on your website and social media. Ask people to share their thoughts so you can better understand the needs of those who want and need your product.

Use what you learn to create tailor-made offers and curated content that resonate with readers. You’ll find that consistently delivering personalized promotions and content will result in happier customers.

Improve Your Support Team and Response Times

Most of us have had a poor customer service experience. Whether you had to wait days for a response or felt like the service agent wasn’t experienced or knowledgeable, you were unhappy at the end of the encounter.

Believe it or not, over 67% of people will leave a shopping cart with items still in it if there’s a problem. Now, consider that only 20% of those people will bother reaching out to your customer service center to get answers to their questions. It suddenly becomes clear how important it is to satisfy prospects and customers when they reach out to your live chat channel.

Here are a few ways to streamline your support channel and improve response times for a stronger CX:

-Train your team to overcome objections by meeting monthly and discussing common questions/complaints.
-Develop a resource center customers can use to find answers to their questions quickly.
-Make it easy for people to reach your support team by including a live chat bubble at the bottom of your website.
-Hire a social media team to help customers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
-Add chatbots to your website and social media to help with recurrent/common problems.

These strategies have helped us boost our customer satisfaction rating while learning more about our audience. The result is a positive, enlightening experience for everyone involved.

Create a Solid Feedback Loop

Finally, you need a strong feedback loop if your goal is to create a better CX for 2023. In other words, it’s important to consistently ask customers and leads to share their thoughts on your product, service, and brand.

Asking customers to answer surveys or simple questionnaires can help you develop new product features, content ideas, and much more.

I suggest developing a system that allows you to gather feedback at key phases throughout the sales funnel. For example, we have a customer success team that reaches out to new customers one week after they purchase our product. This is the perfect time to ask users to tell us what they like and where we can improve.

Our success team ultimately helped us fine-tune our onboarding program, which created a better experience for every single person who invested in our product.

I also think it’s a good idea to email leads who are not customers once or twice a year to ask what they think of your product. The goal is to find out what you need to do to convince them that your product is worth their time.

A solid feedback loop ensures you’ll have multiple ways to improve your brand over time while creating the best possible customer experience.

Final Thoughts

It’s easy to see that there are many ways to improve customer satisfaction and create better experiences for people who engage with your brand. The tips outlined here today have helped us over the last few years, and I firmly believe they will be even more critical for business leaders across all industries in 2023

Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.

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