5 Ways for IT to Improve Customer Experience

Customer experience is becoming more and more important to IT departments. The emotional experience a customer has during the interaction is very important in determining how they feel about your company. Here are five ways for IT to improve customer experience.

Know your customers

Understand the different kinds of customers your team comes into contact with. It’s important you know your customers well so that your people are able to empathize with the sorts of situations they find themselves in. You will find it helpful and worthwhile to create personas, giving each type a name and personality. These personas can help prepare your staff and allow them to recognize and understand these types of customers better and be prepared to help them with their problems.

Friendly staff

Your staff are the face of your company and a big part of the impression that is made on a customer. An unfriendly or careless staff member can ruin a person’s opinion of a company very quickly. It’s crucial that your team members know what is expected of them and be equipped and trained to conduct themselves in accordance with your company’s culture. Reinforce to your staff the importance of maintaining a friendly, helpful, and pleasant attitude towards the customer. It’s not always easy to deal with the public, but it is important you have a staff that can keep their composure and not let on when becoming frustrated.

Nice, clean facilities

There’s nothing more off-putting than walking into a business and being affronted by an unpleasant odor, or even some gross looking carpets or walls. It’s just a bad way to begin an interaction with a customer. They’re already feeling unpleasant before they begin to speak with you, and that does not help your prospects. Clean and modern facilities should be a basic expectation for any business looking to build relationships with returning customers. Keep your entrance clean, your facility smelling nice, and your washrooms clean; it makes a big difference.

Create a connection with the customer

People don’t make decisions based purely on logic and facts, a big part of it comes from how they feel. Research found that more than half of a customer’s experience is based on the emotional component. Emotional connections are also crucial for creating loyal customers. You want people to remember how they felt when they dealt with your company and build an attachment to your brand and the service you provide. Customers that feel this connection are much more likely to recommend you and purchase again.

Categorize common service requests and encounters

Make an effort to catalog important and reoccurring service requests as service encounters. The best way to describe these events is by using the customer’s language, if possible. Examine and separate these encounters by dividing them into the before, during, and after sections. For each one, try and identify the moments of truth (MOIs). MOIs include first contact, greeting, use (checking up on someone), thank you or exit, last contact (for example, a follow-up call), and next contact (upsell or cross-sell). For each MOT, have a method of surveying the customer to find out how you’ve been doing.

Conclusion

It’s important for IT departments to make an effort to manage and improve the customer experience. Being prepared by knowing your customers and having a pleasant and clean facility are good places to start. Creating an emotional connection with your customers is key in whether they become loyal or leave and don’t come back again. Use these five tips to improve the customer experience at your IT department.