If you're in business, you want your customers to be saying great things about you, right? Especially online where that information is accessible by anyone, anytime.
Whether you’re a huge company or a small-sized startup, you need positive online reviews. If you’re not paying attention to your customer’s happiness, you're missing out on a huge piece of data that can help you take your company to the next level.
Happy and engaged customers are a game-changer for any business, but particularly for a small- to medium-sized business.
On a recent episode of SaaS Academy, we had the opportunity to talk with Drew Sparks, Co-Founder & CEO at Swell CX ,about customer happiness and how stronger customer relationships can increase growth and revenue for your business. You can listen to the full episode by clicking the link below.
Here's a taste of what this episode is all about...
Measuring Customer Happiness
How do you measure customer happiness?
The fact is, customers aren’t just immediately willing to give feedback about their experiences with you. "I don't know about you," Drew says of review solicitations, "but I've never once completed one of those surveys." Instead, the people that have the loudest voice online are usually the ones that had a polarizing experience, be it positive or negative.
And the solution isn't easy either. The feedback tools that most companies use are typically built for very large companies, they're hard to implement, and can be confusing for the non-technical crowd.
Think about the last experience you had shopping online, or in a store. When those businesses sent you email surveys, did you complete them? Probably not.
But local businesses are becoming more consumer-driven. Consumers are realizing that they have options, and the opportunity to do research.
Imagine that you’re choosing a dentist. We’re at a point now where you probably aren’t just going to pick the closest dentist to your house. You’re going to ask for opinions, read reviews, and make an informed decision.
But these consumer-driven markets make it hard for small businesses to stand out. Their marketing budgets just can’t compete with the big guys.
Stronger Customer Relationships Increase Value of Each Customer
A lot of businesses will simply say, “We want to get better reviews.” What they don’t always understand is that those reviews are the result of a positive experience.
To really begin to use your customer relationships to increase your revenue, you’ve really got to understand every aspect of the customer experience. Often times, though a customer may appear thrilled, there can be a host of things that can color a customer’s experience.
Maybe it’s a lack of parking, or a particular employee, or a problem with billing. Whatever the case may be, a business really needs to understand the lifetime value of the customer.
The true value of a business comes not just from your customers, but from them coming back over and over again.
Drew highlighted 2 metrics that they use at Swell CX and that every small business should be implementing.
Customer acquisition cost
Lifetime value of a customer
What does it actually cost me to attract a new customer or patient? How much money and resources does it actually take to bring in a new customer?
And what is the actual value of that customer if they only come to your establishment once, and what is the value of that same customer if they remain a customer for 3-5 years?
The Polarizing Effect of Online Reviews
At the end of the day, most people who write online reviews, or interact with your business are going to do so because they either had an incredibly positive experience with your brand, or they had an incredibly negative one.
Either way, there are always a huge amount of touch points between a customer’s initial interaction with your brand and them leaving a review, and all of these touch points impact your revenue & profitability.
