As companies grow, it can be difficult to scale the personalized attention they give to customers across their various teams. It’s no less important, however, to make sure that customers feel valued and understood.
Rather than being an afterthought, HubSpot’s CEO Brian Halligan believes that “you want every interaction that customer has with your organization to be tracked and then leveraged to create a delightful future interaction with them.”
HubSpot’s CEO Brian Halligan and Zendesk’s CEO Mikkel Svane recently sat down to discuss why delivering a seamless customer experience should be a priority for all companies. They suggest some of the best ways to effectively scale these efforts. Here’s what they had to say:
Embrace Technology
Consumers aren’t the only ones with information overload. Companies are also struggling to sort through everything they know (or don’t know) about their customers. With so many sources of contact it can be difficult to know where to look. Twitter stream? Last contact with customer support? Last email opened?
It’s hard for employees to do their best work if they don’t know where to find relevant details -- which is why Svane recommends using technology to help get organized:
“Businesses today rely tremendously on technology to help them with every part of their business. Especially in customer relationships, it’s so important because we have so many data points on our customers. We have so much information, and providing that in a seamless consolidated way for employees so they can better interact with their customers is critical for running a business at scale today.”
Don’t expect your employees to do it alone; give them the tools they need to build and maintain lasting relationships with customers.
Build Promoters
There is often more to happy customers than meets the eye. It’s crucial, of course, to retain customers, but Svane points out that good experiences can do much more than promote retention: “By providing your customers with a fantastic experience … they will become your biggest promoters and attract more audience, more customers to your company.”
Delighted customers can promote your brand, recommend your services to others and speak to why they’ve had such a great experience. This positive brand image is invaluable as a company grows, and having happy customers act as natural ambassadors is an easy way to scale.
Help Employees Help Customers
None of these tactics work, however, if employees aren’t empowered to use their own judgement to delight customers. Nobody likes dealing with massive amounts of red tape just to do what’s right.
According to Svane, empowering employees is critical to scaling exceptional experiences: “Providing a consistent brand experience at massive scale is really really hard. Focusing on empowering your staff to do whats right for the customer, really helps and really transforms how your customers really think about your brand.”
By giving employees the freedom to use their own judgement in interactions, you allow them to deliver a more personalized experience. Not to mention, it saves administrative time if members of the company have the information and discretion they need to make good decisions for customers on their own.
Originally published Nov 23, 2015 2:00:00 PM, updated January 18 2023