How to Improve the Customer Experience at Your Local Business

Customer relationships are a cornerstone of success for any local business. Recent consumer surveys have found that the customer experience is just as important, if not more important, than price when it comes to affecting where shoppers choose to spend their money. In fact, 61 percent of consumers are willing to pay more in exchange for a better customer experience.

The quality of your company’s customer experience (CX) has a direct impact on your ability to achieve strong customer engagement, drive repeat conversions, and build customer loyalty over time. Looking for strategies to help you build a better CX for your local business? Here are some practical tips to find local customers and build better relationships.

Invest in Digital Transformation

Technology is one of the most important elements of a modern customer experience. Even with limited resources, a local business can make strategic tech investments that improve customer engagement and give your target audience the kind of experience they’re seeking.

A customer relationship management (CRM) solution can help you manage your customer contacts, coordinate outreach through email and SMS, manage digital loyalty programs, and build digital local marketing campaigns that are targeted to your core consumer groups. Ecommerce, digital point-of-sale solutions, and regular social media interaction can further enhance your digital CX and make it easier to keep your brand top-of-mind with your customers.

Utilize Data to Optimize Engagement

As you build out your digital customer experience, the data generated from these solutions can be used to better understand customer behaviors and preferences. This data can be invaluable in helping better understand your customer base, which in turn can improve both your product and service offerings, as well as your localized advertising strategy.

A local health and wellness business, for example, might realize its customers are engaging much more with online content about its wellness services than its products, which could encourage the company to shift its offerings more toward those in-demand services. Another business might discover that its core consumer base resides primarily in a specific neighborhood or ZIP code, and decide to invest in hyperlocal marketing focused on building out its customer base in that area.

The more you know about your customers and what they want, the more proactive your business can become in meeting those desires through your customer experience.

Stay Engaged with Your Customers

A good customer experience is always evolving. As customer preferences and needs change, your business must also be responsive to that change.

Regular communication and interaction is one of the best ways to make sure your business is able to improve your CX. Encouraging feedback, sending out customer surveys, paying attention to social media interactions and tracking available performance data can all be used to enhance your customer experience and reinforce consumer confidence that they’re getting value out of their brand relationship.

Prioritize Quality in Every Aspect of Your CX

One of the great advantages enjoyed by local, small businesses is the ability to deliver the attentive, responsive customer service your audience wants in exchange for their loyalty.

For in-store retail experiences, this means offering expertise and personalized service through your knowledgeable in-store associates. For marketing and advertising, that quality is found in the relevance of your campaigns: every local advertiser should build campaigns that are targeted to a specific audience and feature messaging that will be immediately relevant to each consumer.

Better audience segmentation, social media engagement and efficient customer service all play a role in elevating the quality of your customer experience. This quality offers your audience proof that your business cares about its customers and the finer points of its experience. There’s a lot of value in simply being available to help resolve your customers’ problems: according to one recent consumer survey, the ability to address these issues was the most frequently cited factor contributing to a better customer experience.

In a world where consumers have more options than ever before, a great customer experience can give your local business a clear competitive advantage. Embrace technology and focus on delivering quality in every aspect of your brand experience, and your customers will reward you with their loyalty.

Ready to take your digital strategy to the next level? An advertising and marketing strategy consultant can help your local business align its digital campaigns with your CX goals. Contact Cox Media today to see how we can help.