92: Increase Sales With Positive Customer Experiences Whether You Are Starting A Business
92: Increase Sales With Positive Customer Experiences Whether You Are Starting A Business, Are Self-Employed, A Solopreneur, Entrepreneur, Mompreneur, Business Owner, Side Hustler, Freelancer, Bookkeeper, Virtual Assistant, Or VA
Focusing on your customer’s experience will not only help you increase sales in your business, but many businesses thrive on referrals from happy customers as well. By understanding exactly how your customer is experiencing your product or service, you’ll be able to capitalize on what you are doing right and improve what you could do better. In today’s podcast episode, I’m covering the major points for not only developing a customer satisfaction and feedback program but also how you can act on the information you receive so that you are able to reap the benefits by increasing the positive experience your customers have with your business. Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back from getting customer feedback. The best way to change, level up, and improve your business is to dig deeper into why your customers are unhappy. When you understand how your customers are experiencing your products and services, you’ll be able to focus many of your efforts on tasks that will directly increase your sales. This information will help you fine-tune your marketing by letting you know exactly who your most satisfied customers are and why you should be marketing directly to other potential customers like them. Understanding your customer’s satisfaction and experience with your business and developing a plan to follow through with this information will help you make good decisions for your customers and, in turn, will benefit your business by increasing sales as well. Whether you are a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper, or a virtual assistant or VA, now is the time for you to start collecting feedback so that you have a baseline to gauge your customer’s experiences on in the future. These tips are essential whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances; or doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document…
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Show Notes:
Focusing on your customer’s experience will not only help you increase sales in your business, but many businesses thrive on referrals from happy customers as well. By understanding exactly how your customer is experiencing your product or service, you’ll be able to capitalize on what you are doing right and improve what you could do better. In today’s podcast episode, I’m covering the major points for not only developing a customer satisfaction and feedback program but also how you can act on the information you receive so that you are able to reap the benefits by increasing the positive experience your customers have with your business. Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back from getting customer feedback. The best way to change, level up, and improve your business is to dig deeper into why your customers are unhappy. When you understand how your customers are experiencing your products and services, you’ll be able to focus many of your efforts on tasks that will directly increase your sales. This information will help you fine-tune your marketing by letting you know exactly who your most satisfied customers are and why you should be marketing directly to other potential customers like them. Understanding your customer’s satisfaction and experience with your business and developing a plan to follow through with this information will help you make good decisions for your customers and, in turn, will benefit your business by increasing sales as well. Whether you are a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper, or a virtual assistant or VA, now is the time for you to start collecting feedback so that you have a baseline to gauge your customer’s experiences on in the future. These tips are essential whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances; or doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document…
Welcome Back…Customer satisfaction is how well you meet or exceed your customer expectations. Your customer’s experience and happiness will dictate any recurring sales or referrals. An unsatisfied customer is likely to look for another business if they’ve received an unsatisfied product or service from your business. Retaining and making sure your customers are not only satisfied but they have an above-average experience with your product or service is key to increasing sales in your business.
When creating a customer satisfaction program, you first need to know how your customer’s experience is. You need to gather customer feedback so that you know what your customers are experiencing. You also need to make sure that you are willing to make any changes to improve your customer’s experience, or it doesn’t pay to put the time and effort into finding out how satisfied your customers are. Not only is it your time you would be wasting but also take into account the amount of time your customer is putting in to give you the feedback you are looking for. Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back from getting customer feedback. The best way to change, level up, and improve your business is to dig deeper into why your customers are unhappy. Customer feedback will help you understand what you are doing well and help you see where you can improve from the customer’s view. It is an often untapped resource for growth in your business. Before you start collecting data, make sure that you are ready to be flexible and make necessary changes to improve not only your customer’s experience but the success of your business as well. Your main priority for your business should be to create a solution to enhance your customer’s experience for any unsatisfied customer and be willing to go the extra mile to follow through with these solutions so that you can not only create customer retention but capitalize on referrals from these happy customers.
When you are ready to obtain feedback from your customers, you’ll need to decide when to gather the feedback. Will you ask for feedback after an initial purchase, 30 or 90 days after they start their relationship with you, or maybe when you release a new product or start utilizing a new system in your business? Making sure you send the survey out on a timely basis is extremely important. You want to make sure you are getting the most accurate response from your customers at the time they are experiencing your product or service. Your customer’s experience may also change over time, so you should ask for feedback throughout your customer’s life cycle.
Now that you know how often you’ll be requesting feedback, you need to decide on how you will implement this procedure. A survey is one of the most common ways to determine your customer’s experience. You can utilize systems like Typeform, Google Forms, or even Survey Monkey to deliver your survey to your customers. By using technology, you will save time and effort on your end, and you should try to automate these surveys whenever possible. You can have your customers utilize a rating scale for questions like: How was your experience? Overall, how satisfied are you with our product? How likely would you recommend our product or service to a family member or friend? Or, how likely are you to continue to purchase or utilize our product or service in the future? Keep your surveys short so that your customers are more likely to complete them, and only ask questions that you need to gather information on so that you can continue to offer exceptional results or improve your product or service to meet and exceed their expectations. If you do offer a longer survey, you might want to consider offering a discount or a giveaway to enhance completion. You should also always include an open-ended question for your customer to complete to elaborate on their experience, such as, is there anything we could improve on to enhance your experience?
Once you have received feedback from your customers, it is time to analyze the data and start to generate your actions and responses to the data. Be ready to adjust your offers and experiences for your customers to increase customer satisfaction. Monitor this information and compare data over time to see if you are improving the overall customer satisfaction. Know what your goal is and which steps you need to make to reach and maintain your customer experience goals.
You are going to find out who your most satisfied customers are and work towards increasing this customer base by focusing your marketing efforts on more of these types of customers. Dig into what makes these customers happy and intensify those experiences. By listening to your customers and creating solutions they need, you’ll gain additional customers and grow your business with recurring sales and customer retention. Being in service to your customers and providing what they need will not only help you get that first sale, but you’ll also see longevity in your customer base. Capitalize on what you are doing right, and you could even decide if a loyalty program would be beneficial for your customers. It is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, and many businesses thrive on customer referrals coming from satisfied customers. Start to utilize positive customer feedback by having these customers promote your business with incentives from your business. Your referral base could increase significantly if you set up procedures to encourage happy customers to promote your business for you.
When you have negative customer feedback, finding what is causing unhappy customers and then taking action to improve their experience is the most crucial part of finding out information about your customer’s experience so that you can improve your processes. Try to find a way to resolve problems quickly and easily. You may need to take a look at your onboarding process, see if your customers would like a community aspect to your business, or maybe you just need to make your sales process more manageable. Just knowing that wherever you are in your business, you can always improve will help you get in the right mindset to help satisfy your customers. It is all about making good decisions for your customers in your business.
You’ll also want to decide if you will follow up on any survey feedback information from your customers. If you’d like, you can add a line in your survey and ask if you’d like them to be contacted about their experience and, if so, to list their contact information. Whenever you add this to your survey, you want to make sure you have the ability to follow up with each person in a timely manner to help improve their satisfaction rate.
If you have a variety of customers in your customer base, you may find different satisfaction points. Make sure that you take this into consideration as well. Each customer group may promote different results. Knowing these different points can help you when you are marketing to a wide variety of customers. Remember that creating an experience for your customers that is low in effort but produces fast results will likely increase your customer’s overall experience.
Generating new customers and making sure current customers are satisfied is one of the topics my one-on-one clients and I work on together. Making sure that they are doing everything they can to increase customer retention is vital to many of my clients. They understand the value of their current clients and work towards the overall customer experience. As a CPA, Business Strategist, and Coach, I am here to help you and your business succeed. I want to make sure that you have someone you can talk to whenever you have questions about your business, help you make decisions when you feel overwhelmed, and hold you accountable so that you follow through with your plans. If you are interested and would like to schedule a free consultation session with me, you can go to www.FinancialAdventure.com/Contact-Us. During this consultation, we’ll spend up to one hour together going over where you currently are in your business, where you’d like to see yourself and your business in the future, and take action to get you started on the path to success. I’ve been helping business owners and bookkeepers achieve their goals for over 25 years, and it’s the best feeling when I see the joy it brings my clients when they follow through with their aspirations. I am looking forward to meeting you in a consultation session soon. I’ll post links to this and other valuable resources for business owners and bookkeepers where you are listening to this podcast and in the show notes.
And, you know I’m going to ask…what’s at least one thing you will take away from this episode that will help your business succeed and grow your bottom line? If you need some accountability, join our PRIVATE Facebook community and post your action item, we’d love to support you.
