It might be counterintuitive, but price is often not a significant factor to your very best customers. Creating value around your brand and providing great customer service actually tend to be more influential on whether or not people remain customers or decide to go elsewhere.
Creating a positive customer experience can yield more positive results for your business than simply adjusting prices, because the customers you value most will be the ones to stick around for the long term. One study found that 87% of customers felt that brands need to put more effort into their customer experience, showing that it’s an area that businesses can improve upon before they start slashing prices.
Keep reading to find out why price doesn’t matter to your best customers as long as they feel positively about your customer experience.
Why Is It All About Customer Experience?
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Trust - Customers and clients want a brand, business, or company that they can trust to provide what they need at a high level time and time again. Trust is one of the main reasons why price doesn’t matter to your best customers, because once you’ve earned their trust your best customers will be repeat customers. Customers are now looking towards brands that are localized to their region, personalized to their individual needs, and are sustainable in relation to their environmental footprint.
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Value - Customers that buy from you on a repeat basis generally feel that they are more valued by your company than other customers. For many business, their customers can often go online and find a cheaper competitor if they desire. However, one reason why price doesn’t matter to customers that stick with you is that they are willing to pay more in order to continue receiving the value they’re used to.
How Can You Create a Positive Customer Experience?
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Customer Service - Providing excellent customer service is the most obvious and visible way to create a great customer experience. This can take place on the phone, in-person, or even online. Responding to reviews, answering questions, and responding to complaints on social media is an especially great way of creating a positive customer experience. It shows clients that you are monitoring the conversation and actively working to resolve any potential issues. Social media can be a key competitive differentiator, as an astonishing 55% of requests for customer service made on social media go unacknowledged.
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Provide Information - Making it quick and easy for your customers to access helpful and relevant information on your website is another method of enhancing the customer experience. This applies not just to your online presence, but also when someone calls in and asks a question over the phone. Making sure that your staff is knowledgeable, helpful, and able to provide the right information to your customers promptly goes a long way towards improving how your business is perceived in the eyes of your customers.
How Does Customer Experience Affect Your Best Customers?
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Satisfaction - Price doesn’t matter to your best customers as long as they know you’re there for them and they feel valued. Customers expect a consistently high level of service, and by maximizing the customer experience you’ll make them feel that way. High levels of customer satisfaction will also allow you to upsell and cross-sell additional products or services in the future. Only 12% of companies in the US are effectively able to upsell and cross sell effectively, and you definitely want to be in the minority that knows how to upsell.
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Promotions - One of the benefits of offering a great customer experience to your best customers is that they’ll be more receptive to promotions and special offers you might want to market towards them. By having a database of information about your best customers, you’ll be able to use email marketing, for example, as an effective tool to offer promotions. This also serves to keep customers engaged with your brand at times when they may not immediately require your products or services. Promotions that aren’t strictly price-based can also serve to strengthen your brand. For example, ASDA (a UK division of Wal-Mart), ran a promotion where certain purchases went towards a social cause, clean drinking water in this case. Promotions like this help build trust with customers and the broader community, signaling to them that your company is trustworthy in the long term.
Creating a positive customer experience doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming, but it does require you to focus on the right areas. Things like making customers feel valued and providing them with the right information on time are major reasons why price doesn’t matter to your best customers. By maintaining a great customer experience for your top-tier clients, both online and offline, you’ll be able to keep them coming back again and again.
Want to tell us a little bit more about your best customers? What kind of experience does your business provide that makes them feel special? Go ahead and share with us in the comments.
