6 Strategies To Scale User Experience In The “New Normal”
Updated on: 18 October 2021
Since last year, consumers have put more weight on the quality of user experience a business can offer them. In other words, customer experience (CX) has more value than any other business aspect.
Nowadays, it’s more than just having a great product or competitive pricing. What becomes the determining factor whether a customer will choose you over your competitors is the quality of the experience your customers will get when doing business with you. As if that’s not challenging enough, things have made a turn for the worse as businesses all over the globe struggle to market their brands during a time when the global economy is dwindling.
The business world in the “new normal”
According to leading cloud communications and customer engagement platform Twilio’s State of Customer Engagement Report 2021, “In 2020, digital engagement kept us all connected. In 2021, it will be crucial to every businesses’ success and survival.”
Twilio also reported that COVID-19 changed the way businesses engage with their customers. Since last year, digital has kept soaring. In fact, the healthcare, public sector, and financial services have gone digital. This means that any business wanting to remain relevant should have a well-optimized website or e-commerce site by now. This also means that most engagements will be digital from hereon. The page speed should also be looked into for a better user experience.
This year, customer engagement has become a more complicated concept. Consumers nowadays expect a lot from brands. For one, they want to be engaged personally without being pushed or coerced into buying anything. This means that privacy and transparency are put into the limelight of customer engagement.
While the coronavirus outbreak didn’t start the trend, it, however, push digitization from being an option to being a necessity for all kinds of businesses. In Twilio’s report, 96% of respondents think that if they didn’t go digital before the pandemic started, it would have hurt their business badly. Aside from that, 95% said they will be investing more in digital user engagement even after this pandemic has ended.
Another noteworthy finding that Twilio highlighted in their report is that consumers want more interaction/engagement with the brands they buy from. Nowadays, more and more customers demand more engagement in their customer journey. This has pushed a lot of companies to increase the average number of digital touchpoints on the customer journey. This doesn’t mean though that sending emails and surveys would suffice. You need to make sure that you look into how and where customers are searching for more significant support from you.
So, how do you improve user experience in the “new normal?”
Leveling up user experience today
While it is still not absolutely clear what the “new normal” will look like and what other changes it will bring, especially to the business world, it makes a lot of sense to invest your time and effort in formulating strategies that boost user experience starting now.
Understand your audience
It’s going out of your way – exerting extra effort – to understand your customers. What motivates them? What makes them happy? What drives them to make a choice? The answers to these questions will help you create personalized digital marketing strategies such as SEO that will allow you to reach them more easily. It will also enable you to customize your products and services based on their wants and needs. All of this will be particularly important once this pandemic is over because consumers nowadays are more careful with where and how they spend their money.
It’s important to note though that your best customers will most likely differ in a lot of ways. This is where you need to be able to cater to all customers based on their profiles, also known as customer persona or buyer persona. To keep distinctions among your buyer personas, you have to give each persona a name and short profile that will highlight their major pressure points.
Be where your audience is
Since last year, while most of the world was on lockdown for several months, businesses with online platforms enjoyed a huge boost in their sales. This is the very reason why you need to present on all online platforms. After all, the majority of consumers nowadays use different online channels to access information. Aside from that, you can use different online platforms to increase your brand visibility. Also, keep in mind that today’s buyers expect brands to communicate to them on their preferred online platform.
Buyers want to be able to easily and quickly interact with the brands they patronize through social media. This is why you should invest time and effort in being active on social because it is where you will find most of your prospective buyers.
Be consistent and efficient
Not only should you have a strong presence on different online platforms but you should also be consistent and efficient in your messaging and marketing techniques. Make sure all your messages have the same tone and theme so your audience knows that it’s from you right away. On top of that, you should make sure that your customer service team is able to resolve problems in a speedy manner to ensure your customers that their concerns are important to you, too.
Be human
To scale user experience effectively, it’s also important to put your customers’ needs front and center. To humanize your brand, you need to deliver personalized messages at scale. Today’s consumers tend to ignore messaging that’s clearly written from a template and sent out to a lot of people. Such emails or other forms of communication are cold and impersonal. They make people feel alienated. To ensure that your customers and visitors have the best user experience at all times, you need to make it a point to humanize your messages.
Reward loyalty
This has always been an effective strategy to keep customers loyal to you. Keep in mind that loyal customers who have an emotional connection to your brand will spend two and a half times more than a regular customer. You need to leverage this and make sure to show those customers your appreciation.
One of the best ways to reward your most loyal customers is to give them early access to new products. Special discounts are added bonus. You can also ask for their opinions on new products that you are developing through surveys. This makes them feel that you value their opinions, making them even more connected to your brand.
Take customer feedback seriously
It’s important for businesses to closely monitor customer feedback. This will give you useful insights on your products or services from the people who actually use them. Also, make it a point to respond to reviews or feedback immediately to show that you value what your customers think and feel about your brand. This will make them appreciate you more, which means that they’ll do repeat business with you and even recommend you to others.
Conclusion
In the “new normal,” it’s not enough to just market your products and services to a group of people. You will need to step up and scale user experience and engagement by being more proactive in really connecting with your customers and building lasting relationships with them. To make that happen, you need to follow the tips mentioned above.