Guest post by Rodney from EcommercePlatforms.io
Great customer experience is one of the reasons Amazon is so successful. Indeed, the company has a “near-mythic status” for valuing its shoppers.
Getting lots of great reviews and seller feedback is a way of evidencing the good customer experience your business provides. However, you need to give your shoppers a great experience to get them to brag about it.
I’ve given you three simple examples of what this looks like, why it’s important, and how you can do it. Let’s get started.
Showing Genuine Empathy For Your Customers
Whatever your line of work is, one thing always remains true – you’re nothing without your customers and you must empathize with this reality.
Your customers are the people that put money in your company account, pay your wages, and keep the lights on, both at home and in the workplace.
Great customer experience doesn’t mean that you have to pander to your customers, but it does mean that you need to treat them with care and consideration.
One way you can do this is to put yourself as closely in their shoes as possible by addressing the intent they have behind the purchases they make from your company.
What do I mean? Understanding how your goods will make their lives easier.
The way you address this is by showing not telling them. One way of doing this is by creating product demonstration videos that take account of the problems your company solves and demonstrating how your product or service fixes them.
The benefit of this is that you can answer some important questions your customers may have about your goods while they’re still in purchase mode, removing barriers to sale and giving them a good experience to boot.
Discover eight ways to improve your ecommerce customer service.
Offering Great Related-Product Tips
Let’s make one thing very clear – your company isn’t the only one in the world that offers the products it sells (even if you’d like to think it is). And the goods you provide aren’t the only things your customers need.
What am I getting at? If you want to really deliver an excellent experience for your customers then you should offer them great product-related tips – even if it’s for things you don’t sell.
Of course, Amazon does this for you, but I’m advising you go beyond that.
This means that if your company specializes in office furniture (chairs, desks, etc…) then you can be sure your customers have an interest in their working environment.
With this in mind, you can recommend non-competing products that improve their office.
A great example of this are plants. They increase the amount of oxygen in a room, help to dampen background noise, reduce stress levels, and offer a host of other great benefits.
The example I’ve linked to above is a perfect example of how to make recommendations that help you and your customers – it’s from a business that specializes in creating “enhanced commercial spaces”.
This means that while plants aren’t something it sells, they’re a great addition to the service the business offers – one that makes the lives of its customers better without threatening its business model with outside competition.
Giving Your Customers More Than FAQs
How many times have you needed to use the FAQ section of a website and found that it doesn’t answer your questions?
If your experiences are anything like mine then it’s pretty much every time.
FAQs are an afterthought for many businesses and they aren’t at the forefront of many customers’ minds – until they need to use them, when they can become a lightning rod for dissatisfaction with your products, your business, and even you as the company owner.
Of course, the customer reviews feature of Amazon gives you something to work with. However, to offer your shoppers a really great experience you should give them a one-stop-shop knowledge base that answers all their questions – including the ones they put to you.
Image credit: Amazon
Building this one-stop-shop is a simple process that can easily be done with the correct tools. The hard part is pre-empting the questions your customers have.
This is something that requires real effort because you need to think like your customers and really understand their pain points. This may mean that you need to spend hours poring over the reviews your customers have left on your Amazon page.
But this is valuable time spent because creating your own knowledge base for your customers has benefits that go beyond providing a good experience. This is because it gives you a chance to really sell the value of your products and increase sales for your business. Why? Because people who visit help centres are around 2x more likely to buy your products than those who don’t.
Final Thoughts
There’s a common theme throughout all of the tips that I’ve offered – a great customer experience looks like going beyond the business-buyer relationship and treating your shoppers like real people.
By getting prospective customers to your Amazon page, you’ve already got them interested in buying the products you sell – what you need to do is get them invested in your business.
Showing your customers that you understand them, care about them, and value them is about doing the simple things well and every piece of information I’ve given you is incredibly simple to implement.
All you have to do is put them in practice and you’ll give your customers the great experience they need to invest in your business – in the short, medium, and long term.
