72% of businesses say their top priority is to improve the customer experience.
But are organizations actually doing anything to make it better? And if they are, what’s working?
To answer these questions, we’ll walk you through 5 real-world customer experience examples that have been wildly successful. We’ll also talk about the underlying reasons for their success so you can apply them to your own situation.
Whether you work at a Fortune 500 company or a small mom and pop shop, use these customer experience examples to improve your own approach!
Exceed your customer's expectations
Use surveys to track and improve your customer experience over time.
1. Betterment uses web chat to give visitors a timely consultation.
Most customers and prospects have really high expectations for your organization’s quality of support. For example, 90% of consumers say it’s very important that their questions/concerns be addressed immediately.
To tackle this tall order, Betterment, an online investment company, offers chat support to its users. Their chat opens right when visitors create an account, ensuring that they never feel alone when using the tool, and that any of their questions/concerns get answered in real-time.
Betterment’s move is shrewd: Roughly two thirds of customers (66%) say that valuing their time on your site is the best type of online customer experience you can deliver.
2. SurveyMonkey uses social channels to educate its audience and support its users.
Customers and prospects expect social content to capture their attention immediately—otherwise, they’ll keep on scrolling.
To increase the chances that our audience pauses and reads our content, our team posts several times per day, across social channels. We prioritize content that:
- Offers tips and tricks for using our tool
- Brings awareness to product releases
- Showcases the research we run on interesting topics
We keep our content visually engaging through formats like short videos, hilarious GIFs (if we do say so ourselves), and attractive images.
Equally important to entertaining and informing our audience on social media is providing them with first-class support.
That’s where our Social Care team comes into the picture. These hard-working folks are committed to:
- Proactively contributing to conversations on survey-related topics
- Responding to clients who reach out
- Funnelling feedback to the product team to better inform our product roadmap
Think social isn’t a relevant support channel for your business? The founder of our Social Care team, Melissa Francois, thinks you should reconsider:
“Customers’ expectations have changed. They want to receive a response from your organization that’s close to real time in the places they love to communicate most: their social media accounts.”
In response to clients’ high expectations, our Social Care team is devoted to responding to clients within 30 minutes—though their average response time is just 15 minutes!
3. Gainsight runs a “Customer Advisory Board” to help make key decisions.
When it comes to things like developing services and product innovation, no opinion matters more than the customer’s.
Gainsight, the customer success platform, applied this principle by forming a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) that’s made up of users from their key customer accounts.
The clients meet with Gainsight on a consistent basis (at least once per quarter) to discuss the product, its roadmap, customer support, and other topics critical to the customer experience.
Creating and running a CAB can seem daunting, but its returns make it well worth the investment. More than 3 in 4 customers (77%) would recommend your organization after a positive customer experience. And what could be more constructive than giving customers a chance to talk about their challenges with your product/service, and offer ideas for innovating it in a face-to-face environment?
4. Virgin prioritizes its employees in the hopes of improving the customer experience.
Virgin Airlines goes above and beyond for its employees. For example, in addition to salary and health care, each team member in the U.K. receives:
- Discounted flight tickets for the employee and their family
- Counseling services on everything from financial to legal topics
- Reduced prices on music festivals and movies
How does this impact customers? Happy employees are more likely to deliver customers value and, ultimately, delight them.
Richard Branson, the company’s beloved and legendary CEO/founder, believes in this concept deeply. He’s said:
“If the person who's working for your company is not given the right tools, is not looked after, is not appreciated, they're not gonna do things with a smile and therefore the customer will be treated in a way where often they won't want to come back for more.”
So invest in your employees and keep them happy! Everyone benefits.
5. Netflix personalizes its site to help users find great content, faster.
You’re probably familiar with this customer experience example. You sign into Netflix, and right from the get-go you see a variety of movies and shows you can watch based on your tastes and preferences.
Sure, other organizations know how important it is to personalize the customer experience, but few manage to do it in a way that meets their customer’s expectations, let alone the high bar Netflix has set.
We hope these examples inspire you to work harder to deliver for your customers. We certainly will!
