How many times have you come across the phrase “86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience”? I mean, that’s the actual statistics depicting the customer preferences! And where are you in leveraging this so far? It’s over the years when the internet made most things just so accessible for the customers. And in no time it became important to deliver an awesome customer experience at all points of their communication and transaction. This is what Customer Enablement is all about!
The expectation grew just as when they imagined a smooth buying experience with no friction. I’m a buyer too, the customer experience influences my buying decisions, and why not others right?
With a software as a service (SaaS) model, it’s just not enough to initiate the one-time sales and be done with it. It takes continuous renewals and a need to increase customer lifetime value as well.
Having these burdens in mind, the first thing that pops into my head is the efforts of customer success teams in enabling the customer experience. And it’s time for you to define the processes and strategies to get this right. That’s why customer enablement!
What is customer enablement?
An approach that defines the customer-facing and internal processes to give out the branded experience meeting the expectations of the customers and the intended customer experience, a company wishes to deliver to them.
Having enabled the individuals and the teams to lay out the best experience for the customers in their buying journey is just so crucial these days.
Creating the best experience comes into play when both the customers and the business want to stay on the profitable side and it’s not just the business from the traditional method.
Mr. Puneet Kataria, Co-founder, and CEO of CustomerSuccessBox did a podcast on CSM Toolbox on “Enabling Customers in a better way”. You can check out the full episode here. 👇
How does customer enablement work?
Making the entire organization instill customer experience.
Imagine the delicacy of offering the experience and from that point of view, it all makes sense as to why it can break or make!
Most of this initiative is looked after by the teams like customer success, marketing, sales, and customer support. But this initiative shouldn’t be just limited to them but rather to the entire organization.
How seriously the entire team takes it, the better the experience is getting. Let’s imagine a scenario. Amazon is one of the customer-centric companies, that approach lets them lay out the customer experience so well.
From the marketing team to the shipping department, they work on serving the customers right. And understands how important it is to see happy customers as loyal customers.
To enable this, executives have to imbibe the notion in every individual who is working to fulfill their duty but with customer satisfaction in mind! As soon as the teams are trained and made available with resources and tools, they should focus on closing the deal faster. It’s the next step to enable the customer experience.
Have you noticed the fact about the days when internal departments hardly know who they are working with? That just is the indication of poor customer enablement! The processes should be such that the teams have interdependency to communicate throughout.
Data that enables customer intelligence!
Lately, have the organization realized that the insights from the data can be valuable and there was an abundance of data being wasted. That realization led to now where you see the hype in roles that workaround data, to get insights by analyzing it better.
In SaaS, it’s the use of a customer success tool that derives the customer intelligence by tracking 1% of data that the organization cares about while ignoring 99% of the data which is a noise to enable the right customer experience and to take care of the revenue generation.
So, it’s most important to collect the data of the customers that help you stay ahead in your actions to all the threats that the businesses might face through the alerts. So, an analytic tool is not enough but an intelligent tool is much needed.
Having not just the right data but also segregating the high-value customers who are most engaged with your brand gets the privilege of experiencing better with your brand with personalization.
Work on the metrics that suit you.
Though you have the data, you aren’t aware of what part of that data can help you track better insights but it’s time you work on that.
Customer surveys are just one part of gauging the customer experience through NPS but they are not quantifiable, although you need them. But other metrics like customer lifetime value, time to value, customer retention rate, and customer acquisition cost can aid in growing your business to another level. These metrics help you to monitor the efforts that your business and the teams have been working on, otherwise, how do you know where your business is heading?
Ultimately, you should know what are your customer’s expectations from your brand and how well are you working on making this image in their head and how are your customers perceive your brand, and how do you set it right as you grow.
The businesses that are offering customer satisfaction have a greater customer enablement impact on customer minds, eventually leading to greater engagement and repeat purchases that the businesses expect.
So, start it right by monitoring your consistent efforts and do the necessary changes whenever applicable in the strategies when something is not working.
Understand your operations and what metrics work best to start tracking. Trust me, you are not too late in the process.
Enable the success right!
In short, this enablement makes the processes smooth at every transaction and communication point. Makes customers available to the first value much earlier and engages the customers with the brand effectively by acknowledging the feedback, whether it is to improve the product or the service or any other aspects of the business.
As important as it is for the business to see satisfied customers, it doesn’t come easy. It all comes with how good the customer experience is laid out and of all, for it to outshine, the customer success teams have to go through the training that gets them there.
And in no time, this customer enablement boosts the retention, acquisition, and brand advocacy that major businesses care about. It said that since 2020, customer experience will be the priority over pricing and the product.
So, if you’ve been lately thinking about improving your customer experience all this while but haven’t taken action to set it right, you must give it a thought again. Customer experience is the driving force behind success in the organization and it comes with a customer-centric approach mainly.
If you are wondering where to look for a customer intelligence tool? We are here, check us out!
