We’ve all heard it again and again. The customer is always right. The customer is king. All power rests within the customer’s hands. And it’s true. If you ever dream of increasing your sales revenue, you’ve got to treat your customers right. If you offer a bad customer experience, you’ll lose clients to the competition. Products and services are no longer the only competitive differentiators in business. The focus is now on the experience you can deliver to your customers during the entire customer journey.

Customers expect a timely, individualized, easy, and rewarding experience across all the channels. And you don’t need years to create an exceptional customer experience. It only takes the right attitude and a couple of minutes to wow your customers.

How to boost your customer experience

Here are the top five things you can do to boost your customer experience:

1. Let customers choose topics in your newsletters

Email newsletters benefit both consumers and businesses alike. For companies, it’s an opportunity to nurture their leads and hopefully convert them into buying customers. On the other hand, newsletters educate customers about your company’s services and products so they can make a wise purchasing decision.

But let’s be honest – not all emails appeal to your subscribers, which is probably the reason behind reduced open rates in some emails. If you don’t email your customers on the topics they find interesting, they won’t open your emails. Worst of all, they might unsubscribe in droves.

To keep them on your list, and have impressive open (and click) rates, you should give your subscribers an option to filter the email topics and news they’d like to receive.

When they are signing up for your newsletter, give them options to select their topics of interest. You may provide the following topic categories:

•  Company information/news
• Product updates
• Educational content, such as top-ten lists, recent studies, roundup posts and more
• Frequently asked questions (with answers)
• Industry news
• Upcoming events and webinars

Allowing your customers to choose the email topics they want to read shows that you value their preferences and can go a long way to enhancing customer loyalty.

2. Engage your audience on social media and address their pain points

Social media is powerful because it’s where your customers (and prospects) hang out. Once you choose the best social media platform for your business, it’s time to engage your audience. Other than sharing user-generated content, informative posts, and content related to your services and product, you should also post content that addresses your customers’ pain points. But how do you identify your customers’ pain points?

Survey your customers

Have you ever surveyed your customer and failed to get a response? Often, the problem is usually with the questions in the survey rather than the survey itself. To make your surveys effective, include questions that offer valuable, actionable data. Besides, ask both closed and open-ended questions so you can receive responses from people who hate filling out forms as well as those who are generous with information.

Check out online reviews

Read what customers post about your service or product on social media. To take it a notch higher, read review sites to establish the customer’s perspective of both your brand and the competition. As you read reviews, be sure to look at the reviewer’s profile, review date, and rating pattern, as fake reviews are out there, and you’d like to avoid those.

Learn from your competitors

Check out the competition’s social media pages and website, especially the FAQs, prices, and product features. Identify the pain points you may have missed, and include them on your site. Furthermore, check out the competitor’s Google and Facebook ads and analyze their marketing text. After all, ads usually address the customer’s pain points accurately.

After gathering the pain points, it’s time to create social media content that seeks to address these points. You may also publish problem-solution blog posts on your site and share them on social media. More importantly, respond to customer comments or questions on your posts.

3. Create an app to simplify ordering and communication

Since 45% of customers use their smartphones to make online purchases, creating an app to help them order your product will add more convenience to their user experience. A mobile application also ensures more people access and discover your business than if you relied on the desktop browser alone.

An app allows you to customize your messages and offers to customers so they can receive the most relevant information, increasing the likelihood of customers acting on your offers. But how do you create an app that suits the needs of your business? Well, you may choose to hire an in-house team to develop the app or outsource it. The latter is the most efficient and cost-effective option. Just be sure to choose an experienced app developer and supply them with the necessary details regarding your business needs.

4. Publish valuable and helpful blog content

You may have a better product than anyone else in your niche, but it won’t be useful if you don’t explain to your customers how it can add value to their lives.And the best way to align your product features with your customers’ pain points is by publishing useful blog content around it.

Creating features pages is not enough; you should delve deep and explain how the features make the customers’ lives easier. The best approach would be to pick a pain point and write a how-to post on the same then show how your product solves that problem. Such posts connect well with your audience rather than merely highlighting the product features.

5. Be accessible to your customers

Nowadays, customers expect to quickly receive all the information they need to make a purchase or sign up for a service. If they cannot find the answer they are looking for, and there is no one to answer their questions in a reasonable time, this can reflect poorly on your business.

Try to include several different avenues for customers to contact your support team. You can use:

• Email
• Phone
• Chatbots
• Social media
• Contact forms

If you can’t have a team on call 24/7, chatbots are a great solution. They can provide answers to the most common questions at any time of the day and redirect more complex issues to a human agent. However, not all customers will feel comfortable reaching out to a representative. That’s where FAQ and resource pages are invaluable. Make sure they are visible on your site and cover as many topics as possible.

A good source of inspiration on what to include can be your customer service team. They can provide you with information on what questions or issues customers are frequently facing.

Final thoughts on how to boost your customer experience

Improving your customer experience is the best way to boost sales and outdo the competition. Try to look at every touchpoint customers have with your business. Any small step you take to reduce friction and obstacles in the customers’ journey will have long-term positive effects on your business.

Not only will it make it a more pleasant experience for your existing customers, but it will also be easier to attract new customers to your business. Implement the above tips and spark an uptick in your traffic, purchases, and email subscription.

This guest blog article was written by Michelle Laurey works as a virtual assistant for small businesses. She loves talking business, and productivity, and share her experience with others. Outside her keyboard, she spends time with her Kindle library or binge-watching Billions. Her superpower? Vinyasa flow! Talk to her on Twitter or LinkedIn.