Your brand offers more than just a handful of products and/or services. At the heart of it, you offer your customers an experience. You have something they need, and the process of acquiring that from you is their customer experience. Customer experience has a massive impact when it comes to the likelihood of customers coming back and recommending your brand to friends and family.

So, how do you provide a customer experience that will bring your customers back for more? Here are a few of our top tips.

Have a Knowledgeable Team Facing Customers

Customers will have questions about your offerings, and it’s important that the customer service team member facing them has the answers. That means you have to actually train your team to be knowledgeable about the products and services you offer. They may not need to know the ins and outs of every department in your company, but there should be some cross-training.

This will leave your customers with confident answers to your questions, as well as a sense that your team is knowledgeable and ready to help. They will feel more personally cared for and more likely to come back.

Understand Your Customers

We cannot state this enough: to properly serve your customers, you must understand your customers. Do some market research to determine the demographics that your customers fall into. Take a look at customer data to try to get a sense of their habits. What speaks to them the most? What are they most interested in? Try to infuse these things into your customer experience.

It’s also important to know what struggles they might be facing. For instance, if your customers are busy working professionals, having a long and complicated buying process will only ward them away from your brand. Know what works for your customer base and cater to that.

Keep a Positive Attitude

This is something that is well known to anyone who has worked in customer service, but it really does make a difference. You must project confidence in your product or services, eagerness to see your customers, and a sense of calm optimism when resolving their problems.

This can be difficult to maintain if the customer is themselves being rude. It doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat. However, the more positive you are in your interactions and helping them achieve their goal for coming into the store, the better their customer experience is likely to be. This way, they’ll be more likely to come back.

Go Above and Beyond In Your Problem Solving

Sometimes mix-ups happen, and they’re not entirely within the control of your company. A package gets lost in the mail. A customer accidentally forgets to change their address and ships something to the wrong location. It’s easy for you to say, “We can’t do anything about that, it wasn’t on our end.” You would be within your rights to say so ethically. However, that wouldn’t be a great way to retain your customers.

Instead, don’t be afraid to go above and beyond. Send a replacement package out for free. Send the refund. There might be a chance that your customer is attempting to scam you, sure. But it’s more likely that the mistake was an honest one and that they do actually need the package. Responding quickly and going above and beyond in your customer service is an investment that will pay off by likely winning you a loyal customer.

Be Available and Responsive

Potential customers may have questions before they make a purchase. If your company takes days to respond or there is no clear way to get the answers to those questions, they are probably going to turn elsewhere without making a purchase.

Of course, your resources might be too limited to have someone available to help 24/7. In that case, make sure that your website clearly lays out all the information you think the customer should need, as well as how long it might take you to respond. This way, your customers have a reasonable set of expectations. However, if you can respond more quickly, it is always a good idea to do so. This will make a good impression and may just make them a returning customer.

Personalize the Experience as Much as Possible

No customer wants to feel that they are just a number. From your marketing to your sales to your customer service, try to keep the customer experience personalized. This might mean gleaning insights from their past interactions with your website to send them emails with custom deals or offers. It may mean making sure to use their name or to speak to their specific interests rather than simply giving them the standard marketing line.

However you choose to do it, personalization often has a positive effect and leads customers to come back because they feel genuinely cared about by your brand.