To mitigate poor customer experiences, and transform unhappy customers into lifelong brand advocates, businesses need to leverage the right amount of C.A.R.E.: Collect feedback, apologize, respond to the customer’s needs and escalate the issue if necessary.
In Experience.com’s recently published white paper, “The Future of CX: The 5 Key Steps to Take Your Customer Experience Strategy to the Next Level,” we take brands through nine pivotal actions to mitigate bad customer experiences in real-time and create opportunities that turn unhappy customers into brand advocates. You can read an excerpt of the white paper now, or download the full white paper that outlines each of the nine actions and how to implement them.
An excerpt from Chapter Five of “The Future of CX: Five Key Steps to Take Your Customer Experience Strategy to the Next Level.”
For enterprise brands, the customer journey is made up of multiple customer experiences, each created to move the consumer along the path to purchase. But a comprehensive and holistic CX strategy doesn’t stop at the transaction. In fact, the customer experience touchpoints that happen post-transaction not only determine if a customer will purchase from you again, they have the potential to impact future revenue opportunities.
A great customer experience that is shared by a consumer via a positive review on your website or third-party review site can be more valuable than any advertising campaign. A bad customer experience can have just as much impact in the opposite direction, costing your business future sales and harming your brand reputation. A negative review for your company, services or products can have a snowball effect, keeping an unhappy customer from returning to your business and stopping future prospects from doing business with you.
Unfortunately, bad customer experiences are inevitable for enterprise organizations, but they don’t have to be the end of the line for customers who had a less than favorable experience. In fact, with the appropriate response, brands have a chance to turn dissatisfied customers into their biggest brand advocates.
Why brands need to respond to negative reviews
According to a recent Harvard Review Business report, 89% of consumers read business responses to online reviews. This means a large majority of consumers are spending their time doing due diligence to find out how you treat customers before they decide to make a purchase. If you receive a negative review, and leave it unchecked, you’re taking a major risk by not addressing the problem.
A single negative review from one customer may not seem all that terrible, but if that review is being read by hundreds, if not thousands of consumers who choose not to do business with you, it could be making a major impact on your bottom line. As Harvard Business Review emphasizes in their report, responding to negative reviews is, “Not just about improving reputation, but limiting potential damage.”
Managing poor customer experiences with C.A.R.E.
So how do you turn a dissatisfied customer into brand advocate? In the time we’ve spent developing high-performing CX strategies, Experience.com has found the most effective and efficient process for managing poor customer experiences hinges on a brand’s ability to provide “C.A.R.E.” — a customer service process first developed by our CEO Scott Harris that is summed up in four specific actions: Collect feedback, apologize for the poor experience, respond to the issue and escalate the matter if necessary.
Scott writes about this process in his book Create WOW Customer Experiences, underscoring how important it is for brands to give customers a forum to tell their story and be heard, and then, as quickly as possible, fix the problem. A great example of a brand that has implemented a first class C.A.R.E. process, according to Scott, is the riding sharing app Uber.
“Uber makes it easy to connect in app, but they also have a website, help.uber.com, to address nearly any issue,” writes Scott, “They have a comprehensive and nearly instant complaint resolution process designed to turn detractors into promoters.”
A 9-Step process for turning negative reviews into winning customer experiences
While the C.A.R.E. process offers a best practices guide for responding to poor customer experiences, it can serve as an entry point for teams ready to commit to a more thorough post-transaction CX strategy.
Experience.com has identified nine tactical actions that are crucial components to a holistic CX program. The nine-step process makes it possible for brands to mitigate bad customer experiences in real-time, turning unhappy customers into lifelong brand advocates who will go out of their way to recommend your business to others.
To see the full 9-step process that allows brands to turn negative reviews into winning customer experiences — download The Future of CX White Paper.
Top performing brands know a comprehensive CX strategy extends far beyond the transaction. Monitoring and managing your customer reviews, and automating customer surveys immediately after a transaction occurs, allows you to proactively address poor customer experiences before they become a major issue that negatively impacts your brand reputation and weakens your ability to acquire new customers.
Collecting customer feedback, apologizing for a lackluster experience, responding to the problem in a timely manner and elevating issues as necessary demonstrates just how much you value your customers and prioritize their interactions with your brand. In the short-term, it gives you an opportunity to turn unhappy customers into loyal patrons. More importantly, it lays the foundation to create exceptional customer experiences that deliver long-term brand-consumer relationships, sustainable revenue and positive business outcomes.
This blog post is an excerpt from Experience.com’s recently published white paper: “The Future of CX: The 5 Key Steps to Take Your Customer Experience Strategy to the Next Level” — a phenomenal resource for marketing leaders and customer experience teams covering every aspect of exceptional CX, from building effective customer journey maps and identifying your organization’s most important touchpoints to tactical strategies for mitigating poor customer experiences.
