When social merchants think about their customers, they are concerned about giving them excellent customer service and yet, they should go beyond and provide great customer experience. If you have only been concentrating on providing good customer service, you are missing the mark. Yes. This is a lot to take in but I advise you to go back and slowly reread that sentence. Customer service is still important but it is a small part of what you want to provide. What you want to give your buyers and clients is great customer experience

What is customer experience?

There are several definitions for customer experience also known as CX. This is the holistic perception customers have of your brand, the journey through your service or product and the resulting feelings that customers are left with. CX is the final result of every interaction a customer has with your business.

Wikipedia defines customer experience as the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company. Direct contact generally occurs in the course of purchase, use, and service and is usually initiated by the customer. Indirect contact most often involves unplanned encounters with representations of a company’s products, services, or brands and takes the form of word-of-mouth recommendations or criticisms, advertising, news reports, reviews, and so forth. 

As a social merchant, your customer is going to meet you at various touchpoints.

First, it would be from the appealing visuals of your product. Your videos and/or photographs have to make a great impression. Then, what is the buying experience like? A customer wants it to be hassle-free and fast. Outside the app and beyond the point of making a sale, there are other  touchpoints before, during and after a transaction or interaction with your customer. 

Think about Dayo, a social media user who sees a great pair of boots on Instagram. He is drawn by the photo and can imagine himself owning a pair. However, he tries to make a purchase but the seller responds and says those shoes are out of stock. The seller is very apologetic and asks if he can give Dayo an option from stock that is available. Dayo, however, is not interested. He wonders why a seller should keep an out-of-stock product on his feed.  His disappointment is stronger than his appreciation for good customer service.

Everything you do impacts your customers’ perception and their decision to keep coming back or not—so a great customer experience is your key to success.

This is why every social merchant needs to understand the difference between customer service and customer experience and how to use both to improve their business.

Customer service is just one part of customer experience.

Customer experience is a customer’s overall perception of your company, based on their interactions with you. Here, a customer requests and receives assistance or help—for example, calling an operator to request a refund or interacting via email with a service provider.

As a merchant, your customer experience  offerings should cover every aspect of your product or service—the quality of customer care is important but so is your advertising, packaging, product and service features, ease of use, and reliability.  You also need  to consider your technology, the customer touchpoints, culture, service delivery and so on. 

The two primary touch points that create the customer experience are people and product. If you are selling online, think about these. How does a customer touch you and your people and how do they touch you or your product?

We made a list of suggestions for actual ways you can improve your customer experience as a social merchant.

Enable self-service 

On social media, provide enough information to your buyers without them having to ask you questions. Information, they say, is power.  The more empowered your customer feels to make a purchase, the better.

Reduce customer frustration 

Are you wondering why your customers feel frustrated? If you are, don’t. Customers are getting increasingly frustrated when they try to buy online. The three biggest frustrations mentioned by online customers in 2020 are

1.   Being unable to get answers to simple questions (34%)
2. Dealing with websites that are difficult to navigate (30%)

iii. And finding basic details about a business (e.g. address, hours of operation, or phone number) (25%)

As the wise merchant that you are, provide answers you think the customers may have, build easy into your store navigation and add the details that would let the customers feel like they know you.

Make communication hassle-free

If we are right, you chose to trade on social media because you love interacting with people. Make it easy to communicate with your customer. This is one of the reasons why you would enjoy Credo’s comment selling feature.    

Tailor your customer experiences 

All customers are not the same size or at the same place in their customer journey. Commit to spending a little time understanding where your customer is on his journey and help him from that point forward. Smart social merchants know that one of the benefits of selling social is the opportunity to know and customize your buyer’s experiences.

Be customer-centric 

Make it all about your customer. This is why you want to make listening to your customers a top priority. Ask for customer feedback to develop an in-depth understanding of your customers. Implement a system to help you collect feedback, analyze it, and act on it regularly. Reduce friction and solve your customers’ specific problems and unique challenges.

Don’t forget customer service 

What we said earlier does not negate the fact that customer service is still important. It may be basic but it is a good place to start. Customer service is where the path to providing a great customer experience begins.

At Credo, one point of business emphasis is providing a sterling customer experience to you. We are excited about our mission of being and remaining the business that provides unrivaled customer experience. We would be talking more about this subsequently.

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