Ecommerce is a type of business model in which a seller tries to sell his/her goods and services in an online market space. The opportunities in this domain are so rich that you may find a number of businesses entering this space on a regular basis. Not necessarily a start-up, these businesses also includes those who have subsisted in their domain for years now.
The new business model of ecommerce industry is certainly challenging the old and traditional methods of doing business offline. This model is focused more on offering exceptional services to its clients while keeping their ease and convenience in mind.
However, the success of an eCommerce business does not come easy. The most crucial factor that defines any eCommerce business’s success story is its ability to meet the customers’ demands in a way that delights them. Delighting your customers is all about delivering an outstanding experience that, in turn, helps in building a trail of lifelong and loyal customers. According to the latest customer service statistics shared by Helpscout.com, a single negative experience is enough for around 51 percent of the customers to switch their brand loyalty.
Customer delight is not important to retain your existing customers but is also helpful in attracting a pool of new customers. Studies have revealed that acquiring a new customer is around 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Therefore, it is extremely important to keep our focus on keeping our customers happy so that they stay loyal to our brand.
Implementing a number of strategies can enable one to win this goal. A few of these simple yet effective tricks to please your customers are as mentioned below:
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1. Send A Personalized Thank You Note
While every business has embraced automation in their processes, adding a bit of personalization can serve as a great help. For instance, you may opt to send your customers a personalized thank you note instead of an automated email to delight them.
Delivering your customers a custom-made treatment instead of going the standard way is sure to leave a positive impression on your existing as well as new customers. If you are a large-sized enterprise, don’t worry about sharing handwritten notes as apps like Thankbot and Gemnote can do it for you.
2. Make The Best Use of Your Social Media Handles
Social media platforms have become an intrinsic part of every business’s customer engagement and delight strategy. Therefore, it is important to know the right tactics of making their best use on a regular basis. For instance, the Twitter handle of a business account can be used to pick and thank a few customers every day for completing a transaction with you.
Do not miss to include the customer’s Twitter handle in such tweets as doing so will have a higher chance of delighting your customers, thereby, leading to a more number of shares of your tweet.
Using a social media monitoring tool can also serve as a great help. Tools like Hootsuite can serve as an active responder to those who are talking about your brand on social media, thereby, making them feel that you exist for real.
3. Implement The Right Referral Program
Referral bonus or gift cards are one of the best tricks to promote word-of-mouth marketing for a brand. These programs not only benefit the brands directly but also offer their customers a chance to get lucky by winning a referral bonus. Implementing such programs not only helps in keeping your existing customers happy but also makes it easier to attract new customers for your brand. Some of the common tricks to implement in a referral program are offering excellent discounts, freebies, and other exciting offers.
Programs like ReferralCandy or FriendBuy can make it incredibly easy to get such programs going and help a brand in winning a reputable market share.
4. Send Free Gifts
Sending free gifts has always been a proven technique to delight your customers. Commit to sending regular gifts to random customers or to those who make a minimum number of purchases with your brand on a regular basis. Another simple trick can include delivering special treatment to those who mention your brand on social media or talk about it. Doing so will not only let people know about you as a brand but will also make them understand that you value your customers and spend time on making things better for them.
5. Surprise Your Customers
Do not miss any opportunity to amaze your customers. Follow them on social media platforms, greet them or share their posts in which they have talked about your brand. This will make them believe that you as a company care about them and therefore, are keeping a closer check on all their actions. If there’s an opportunity to send them a gift or a present, do not miss the opportunity as this can help in creating a brand exposure and building a decent brand image in your customers’ mind.
See Also: 5 tips to manage online catalogue process for retailers
6. Be Ready To Apologize For Your Mistake
There are many businesses selling the same services or products like yours. Therefore, you should always be thankful to your customers for choosing you over your competitors. Similarly, if you commit a mistake, do not feel ashamed in making an apology for the same. Mark your customers an email that talks about your problem area, the factors that caused it and how do you plan to solve this issue
It is very important to ensure that you take the required corrective measure for any of your mistakes as this may make your customers feel that they are important for you. Do not miss out on responding to any feedback shared by the customers as this can help in building a positive brand reputation in the market.
7. Offer Free Shipping
It has been a common observation that shoppers visit a website, add items to their cart and abandon them before final checkout. While the reasons for this can be many, one of the most common factors that lead to an increase in such incidents is additional shipping charges.
It is important to remember that nobody likes to pay even a penny extra for the items they have purchased online. So, make use of this opportunity to delight your customers by offering them free shipping for their purchases. Make them happy by inviting them to shop without paying any extra shipping charges. Running such campaigns will not only help in making your existing customers happy but also in attracting new ones.
8. Assuring Agents’ Availability via Welcome Email
There can be times when your customer might need the support of your customer service agents. In order to build your customers’ trust and loyalty towards your brand, it is important to make them believe that the customer service agents would be available at their service whenever they need them. This can be done immediately after the customer registers on your website.
Send them a welcome email that contains all the details about the company, the customer support offered and other necessary details. Along with these, do not miss out on including other crucial details like agents’ availability for the customer support at all points of time. While you do all this, make sure that you are able to fulfill all your commitments and are not just firing in the air.
9. Distribute Free Samples
Distributing free samples has been in the trend for quite some time now. Though this certainly requires a lot of preplanning and cost, executing it the right way can lead to excellent results and make your customers believe that you care about them and are not here just to earn revenue and gain profit.
For instance, an eCommerce company selling cosmetics can send free samples of a new moisturizer to its customers. These can also be sent along with an order package that is about to be delivered to the customer. Remember, one must opt for this method only if they can afford it or else it might lead to an unnecessary burden on their business.
10. Stay Committed To A Social Cause
A lot of your customers might be in love with pets or firmly believe in the need of making a contribution towards a social cause. And if you, as a brand, depict yourself to be a supporter of a social cause and use a part of your profit towards a cause, then you are sure to win the loyalty of a lot of your customers. They might begin respecting your ideology and even might get interested in contributing to the social cause through indirect means.
Final Thoughts
Providing timely feedback and response to your customers is crucial to keep them happy. It is important to remember that there is a difference between attaining maximum customer satisfaction and delighting your customers. Therefore, you need to stay active and respond to your customer needs even before they arise. Also, while staying in touch with our customer is important before a sale, it is vital to ensure that you keep delighting them even after they have completed a transaction.
Remember that delighting your customers is not a one-time game. You need to stay on your toes and offer the right services at the right time to attain maximum customer delight.