Angry customers can be loyal customers too… Well, not if they stay angry.
Just because a customer is irate or frustrated with your company right now doesn’t mean that they will not be a loyal customer in the future.
We’ve all been there; Your phone mysteriously stops working when you need it the most, so you borrow your friend’s phone and when you call customer service you are placed on hold for 50 minutes listening to the same song over and over again. Most of us have had at least one similar experience and in that moment you decided that you’ll never use that company again.
Not focusing on customer retention and customer service can actually be extremely costly to a company. According to the White House office of consumer affairs, ‘it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one’
Thankfully moods change and opinions can be swayed if issues are dealt with correctly. Businesses that lead the pack in customer retention and customer service often do so by developing company-wide customer experience strategies.
How Does Customer Experience Create Loyal Customers?
Customer Journey Map
Start with the basics. The reason why customers get angry in the first place is often because the company isn’t even aware that there is an issue with their processes. Nobody sets out to disappoint their customers but if you don’t have a detailed map of where customers interact with your company, product and brand then cracks are bound to go unnoticed. By leveraging tools like customer journey maps, companies can build an all-encompassing view of their many customer touchpoints to ensure that no angry customers fall through the cracks and are left to stew in their emotions.
Download the Free Customer Journey Map Template
Customer Feedback
Being aware of each customer touchpoint allows management to focus on the areas of the organization most effected by below-standard services in order to ensure that no future customers have similar poor experiences. It also affords them the opportunity to contact customers who had previously interacted with that area of the business by getting feedback and asking what their experience was like. Even though these customers may have been disappointed and angry in the past, by showing them that positive changes are being made and by offering them compensation in some way for their experience, they can be turned into loyal customers.
Simple surveys like Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction and open-ended questions can be sent directly to customers using customer survey solutions like Feedbackly. With real-time data, customer journey capabilities and the ability to message customers directly from the feedback dashboard, Feedbackly users are able to manage customer issues quickly, turning angry customers in to happy, loyal ones.
Business Strategy
Customer experience strategies only work efficiently if everyone in the organization follows the plan on a daily basis. It’s all well and good for management to decide that the company is customer-centric, but if employees do not believe in the message then there is a problem.
Customer experience is not just a buzzword, it is a way of life within a company. All of the world’s leading customer-centric companies have embedded customer experience into the heart of their company culture and as a result their employees genuinely feel the need to delight their customers on a daily basis.
By creating a ‘customer first’ culture within an organization, every employee instinctively thinks of the customer when making everyday decisions, so that if issues arise they are dealt with professionally and with true empathy from employees. Customers value sincerity and will trust a company and want them to succeed if they are empathetic to the needs of their customers.
The main takeaway is that just because a customer is angry now, doesn’t mean that they won’t be a loyal customer in the future. People can be swayed by dedication, empathy and above all else a better customer experience. It’s never too late to improve your customer experience strategy and customers will appreciate the changes you make.