Customer happiness is the key to the success of a business. Irrespective of the business you are in, and the nature of the service you provide, satisfying the customer is your key target. This thumb rule applies to businesses that operate online as well as offline.
2019 has been life-changing. Life will be defined as before covid and post covid. The sudden outbreak of the pandemic calling for Nationwide lockdown resulted in a businesses breakdown. Especially the business that catered to on-ground services like, hotels, malls, hospitality, fashion etc.
However, as we say, to look at it as half glass full, as things slowly strive to get to normalcy, businesses that were on a pause during the pandemic learned new lessons of how to operate their business post-pandemic. The key lesson learned is:
- Ensure to live up to customer expectation
- Strive for customer experience
- There are no shortcuts to customer satisfaction.
So, we bring you 5 ways to keep your Customers Happy in a post-Covid World:
- Go Digital
The very outbreak of the pandemic, made businesses understand the power of digital. All the on-ground businesses realized that the only way to engage and retain customers during the pandemic is to have a digital presence. Post the pandemic, the same digital presence has proved to act as a catalyst to reduce offline engagement or waiting. For example, if you are a retail store dealing with any product, having a digital presence showcasing all your products in detail with features and pricing, reduces the probability of the customer wanting to visit your store. In addition, from the customer’s perspective, the customer feels assured that its favourite brand is being sensitive and is making efforts to stay connected.
- Be available:
Please understand that, just like you, the customer too is trying to adjust to the new normal. Therefore, be open to customer feedback, make efforts to know the customer experience. Have a good customer support team that is prompt enough to know the customer concerns and be quick enough to address them most effectively. On the on ground level, yes you have downsized your teams and are facing a shortage of manpower, but that doesn’t give you the leverage to be not available to your customer. In fact, in these tough times, you need to be more accessible. Therefore, whenever a customer walks in, be available to attend to them, make them feel safe and comfortable.
- Communicate right
Communication any day is the crux to customer satisfaction. Communicating with the customer happens in various forms i.e. communication on social media, on-ground and more. Wherever you communicate, communicating effectively and right is essential. For example, post the pandemic, communicating to your customer about the in-store rules like the waiting period, promptness of service, manpower you have etc. This will help avoid customers having wrong expectations or helps set precise customer expectations.
- Make them feel safe:
In the post-pandemic world, the one fear that’s holding all of us to get back to normalcy is the fear of safety. Therefore, the first step towards attacking this fear is to embrace all safety measures at your facility. Ensure to have sanitisers across the facility, ensure the staff is taking all safety measures, ensure that every customer who walks in is thoroughly checked, space out the facility with relevant social distancing norms. Make clear to the customers the safety measures they must follow when they come to your property. This makes the customers feel happy and safe. Also, it will make them look positive at the new normal.
- Have effective retail queue management in place
As people have started embracing the new normal, retail stores are experiencing footfall. However, due to social distancing and new safety norms, the facilities are functioning on 50% capacity. This has resulted in queuing of customers at retail stores. That’s where having an effective retail queue management system becomes mandatory. When we say queue management, you must consider proper safety measures while in the queue, demanding the customers be masked, creating some kind of engagement activities to make your customers not feel bored while waiting, showing gratitude to your customers for standing by during these tough times etc. These would majorly contribute to customer happiness.
A run-through of the above pointers gives you a broad view of how to make your customers happy. However, not to miss is, the above pointers must be tweaked based on your business. As you read the above points, you may wonder why so much importance is given to customer satisfaction when you are providing the best service to them. So, here is a look at why customer satisfaction is so important:
- Customer satisfaction is the key to loyal customers. When you focus on customer satisfaction, you are actually focusing on making your customers loyal customers.
- A satisfied customer is forgiving. Despite all your efforts and planning, any business is prone to make some mistakes. Considering the current situation, the possibilities are even more. In such conditions, it’s a satisfied customer who would stand by you even if you fail at times.
- A satisfied customer is your brand ambassador. In these tough times, wherein businesses find it tough to sustain, spending money and efforts on publicity becomes a burden. In such a situation, the most cost-effective way to build your brand is to satisfy your customers. A satisfied customer, not only keeps coming back to you but also does a lot of mouth publicity about your good service. This in turn makes you not only win a loyal customer but also enables you to win new customers with fewer efforts.
Thus, it is loud and clear that customer satisfaction is primary and has long-term benefits for the business and brand. Therefore, it is definitely worth spending time, money and energies in keeping your customers happy. Therefore, in the post-pandemic situation, keeping your customers happy is not easy but not impossible. Therefore, all you need to do is find your right equation for keeping your customers happy.