5 Effective and Impactful Ways to Improve Customer Satisfaction in 2021

Achieving a high customer satisfaction rate and building a thriving community of happy customers are goals that every growth-oriented business should strive to achieve nowadays. The key to long-term success and prosperity in modern business is having customers who are truly delighted to interact with your brand, have positive experiences and memories across all touchpoints, and would gladly advocate for your company with their family and friends.

This is how you generate qualified leads, retain loyal customers, but also maximize the lifetime value of every customer that comes through your doors. That said, it’s not like it’s easy to achieve high customer satisfaction nowadays, because people are becoming pickier with their brands and they are constantly bombarded by companies and their marketing campaigns.

This can make them more apprehensive and distrusting, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have some powerful tools at your disposal. Here are some effective and impactful tips you can use to improve customer satisfaction in 2021.

Act on meaningful customer feedback

In many ways, customer feedback is one of the most powerful tools you can use to transform your business and push it to new heights of success. Experienced leaders know that the key to long-term success is not to push your vision, but to embrace the collective vision and innovate with your customers’ best interest at heart. By listening to your customers, you get access to truly invaluable data you can use to drive all your processes forward.

This means that you need to encourage people to leave reviews, share their experiences with your brand, and provide honest feedback. You can use all of this information to optimize your marketing, sales, and support strategies to provide your customers with the exact experiences they want and need. Because after all, nobody knows what’s best for your customers than the customer himself, so use feedback to improve their satisfaction across the board.

Build branded omni-channel experiences

In a world where people are constantly bombarded by companies and their marketing and sales strategies, what sets a business apart in the mind of the customer? The brand, of course. You can have the best products and services on the market, but if you don’t have a compelling brand, you will inevitably become indistinguishable from your numerous competitors.

It’s not only important to build a powerful and unique brand identity to help with brand stickiness, but it’s also important to deliver branded experiences to your customers across all touchpoints. Make sure to build an omni-channel strategy that allows you to communicate and interact with your customers across all online and offline channels, and deliver a consistent brand experience.

People not only want to do business with a compelling and inspirational brand, they want to consistently get a high-quality experience from the brand on all sales and marketing channels. By building an omni-channel structure, you’ll be able to generate more leads and keep your existing customers happy, eventually creating an even better brand image with higher customer satisfaction.

Improve your on-site interaction using technology

When it comes to improving the customer’s experience in the store or in your offices, you need to use technology to your advantage. Yes, having a friendly smile and a customer-centric attitude will always be paramount to success, but nowadays you want to improve their experience with on-site digital transformation.

For example, there’s a lot you can achieve with a well-placed digital display screen in your store, from creating a narrative for the customer to educating them and providing important information, all the way to keeping them safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital signs are engaging and will capture the attention of the customer, but they also serve a functional purpose that will transform their in-store experience in a positive and memorable way.

This is just one of the ways technology on site can help create happier customers that keep coming back.

Reduce customer effort across the board

Another goal your company should have is to reduce customer effort as much as possible. You can do this by simplifying their journey, using the right tech, and establishing new processes to cut out all extraneous steps that might be running their experience with your brand.

Running an Ecommerce store? Don’t force your customers to sign up or log into their accounts. People want a quick and seamless experience, so just let them make a one-off purchase without creating an account. You can apply this logic to any industry, in both the online and offline realms. Your goal is to streamline the buying process and make their journey as stress-free and efficient as possible.

Invest in hyper-personalization

Personalization has been one of the most important pillars of success in the last decade, but in 2021 and the years to come, hyper-personalization is going to dominate in the business sector. Why? Because people want and need companies to invest more in them and their needs.

It’s no longer about the needs of the customer group, it’s about the unique needs of the individual. By pooling vast amounts of customer data from your analytics and CRM tools, you can take your personalization strategy to new heights to create more meaningful interactions and experiences with your customers.

Over to you

Customer satisfaction should always be one of your primary goals. Make sure to use these tips to create a better CX strategy and build a happier community of customers to help your business thrive in 2021 and beyond.

• Emma Worden is a digital marketer and blogger from Sydney. After getting a marketing degree, she started working with Australian startups on business and marketing development. Worden writes for many industry-related online publications and is an executive editor at Bizzmark Blog and a guest lecturer at Melbourne University. Interested in marketing, startups and the latest business trends? Follow her on Twitter.