How A Great Customer Experience Can Drive More Deals

We all know what it means to provide great customer service, but what about a great customer experience? What's the difference? Why does it matter?

This article from Forbes sums it up beautifully:

“Customer service is the advice or assistance a company gives its customers…Customer experience is the total journey of a customer's interactions with a brand.”

Honestly? It's something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough and in today's post we're going to be showing you how a focus on creating a great customer experience is going to become your competitive edge in your market.

We're going to discuss how focusing on improving the customer experience will help you close more deals, generate more referrals and build a bigger brand to become the go-to authority…

And what we can learn from industry giants like Amazon that focus a HUGE amount of their time and energy measuring (and innovating to improve) customer satisfaction.

So many investors are just treating their businesses like a series of transactions with little to no concern about the customer relationship or the customer's interactions with the processes they take them through.

But when you create a positive, customer-focused experience for people thinking about doing business with you, you'll find very quickly that you'll be able to out perform the competition simply by surpassing the customer expectations on what it will look like to do business with you.

And if you prefer to learn via video, check out this one from our director of marketing, Josh Arras:

What Amazon Can Teach Us About the Value of a Great Customer Experience

If you've ever purchased from Amazon or are a Prime member, you know how easy it is to do business with them.

That's because when the company launched in 1995, they set out with a mission “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

They have since succeeded in creating a process that is so easy and frictionless, most people question why they would ever consider purchasing products from anybody else:

With a Prime membership, you can buy virtually anything you need with one-click purchasing and enjoy free two day shipping.

It's no wonder this obsession with measuring customer experience has won them loyal customers across the globe.

While you may not be wanting to become one of the biggest companies in the world, if you're reading this, you are trying to grow your business.

And creating a great customer experience is going to help you do that.

Mapping Your Business Processes for a Great Customer Experience

You need to know where you're starting from in order to know where you are going.

Let me ask you:

Have you taken the time to map out the repeatable processes in your business?

What currently happens when a new lead opts in to receive information?

I'd encourage you to grab an ipad, a whiteboard or a good old fashioned legal pad and a pencil and draw out what that process looks like.

When you do this exercise, you're going to find some possible weak points in your business and where you're losing customers and/or leads due to a poor customer experience.

And what's more, you'll be able to get creative and intentional on creating the kind of experience that drives customer loyalty.

How to Create a Customer Centric Experience with Your Website

Let's assume you're marketing your business online and/or are driving people to your website.

I want you to consider the following questions:

• What happens when somebody comes to your website?
• What are you telling them?
• Is who you are and what you do being communicated clearly?
• Is it easy for them to interact with your business?
• Is it easy for them to opt in and/or give you their information?

You definitely want your website to include a few key elements.

The first is you want to be speaking to a very specific market, with a very specific need and include a very specific call to action.

For example, in this website, we're speaking to Nashville home owners who need to sell their house fast, with a call to action to submit their info or call for a fair cash offer.

Note*: Part of what makes the customer experience great on this particular website, is we've given them those two different options to contact us; calling in our submitting their information via web form.

Another great way to improve the customer experience is to redirect then to a custom “Thank You” page.

This is where you can continue the conversation and set the expectations for what will happen next.

Maybe you even want to include a custom video introducing yourself and your team and explaining a little more about how your process works.

All of these elements are great ways to build the relationship with your prospective client on autopilot.

The custom thank you page is also a great place to gather some additional (IE: nonessential) information about the property.

Not everybody is going to want to fill that additional information out, so you don't want to force people to jump through any hoops they don't want to.

So stick to gathering their name, email, phone and the property address on your lead capture page and leave it at that.

However, if somebody DOES fill out the additional property information you're asking for on the thank you page, that's a signal to you that this seller is highly motivated and willing to work with you, and you'll want to get them on the phone as soon as possible.

Studies show that when you get back to a lead within the first 5 minutes, the likelihood of them doing business with you goes up by 100x!

And when somebody fills out a form on your website, REI Blackbook will send a notification to you or your team member via text or email so you can follow up immediately.

This contributes to the quality of your customer experience in a big way by demonstrating that you are prompt and reliable.

Even if you can't follow up with a live phone call right away, the REI Blackbook system will send them a confirmation text you can customize to say something like:

“Hey, I saw you filled out the form on our website. We'll give you a call back here in a little bit! Just text me with any questions you have in the meantime.”

How to Create a Great Customer Experience Over The Phone

So, now, let's talk about what happens when a customer calls in to your business…

• Is it easy for them to get the information they need?
• Does the call go to a call answering service so they get to speak with somebody live?
• What happens if somebody doesn't answer the phone?
• How is your team notified?
• How long does it take you to get back to them?

All of these little things can add up and make a big difference in your business.

Let's assume you're marketing your business via billboard, radio, online ads or some other means.

When prospective sellers call you, you MUST answer the phone if at all possible.

Or at the very least, forward them to a call answering service like PATLive.

If somebody is calling your business and willing to speak to a salesperson, that typically means they are pretty motivated. There's generally some pain there, and they're in need of a solution you can help them with.

Another really incredible tool we have within REI Blackbook to help with creating a killer customer experience is Callflows.

Callflows allow you to set rules so that any time somebody calls you, it will trigger a set of automations you can customize around things like:

• Where do you want their call to be routed to?
• Who on your team do you want to follow up with them?
• Applying tags to the contact record
• Set rules for if a call is answered vs not answered like either sending them to voicemail or triggering a text message on a 1 minute delay saying something like, “Hi, sorry I missed your call. Is this regarding a property you want to sell?”

(To see our marketing director Josh build out a custom callflow, watch this video at 10:26)

Not much of the competition is putting much energy into this kind of follow up.

Most investors are churning and burning through lists of highly motivated leads and if they're not interested in selling, they just move on.

But it's hard to build a sustainable business that way.

You need to put yourself into the shoes of the people you're serving and consider the fact that most people looking to sell their house are going to want to do some research and talk with several investors to understand all of their options.

On average, it takes about 7 interactions before a decision is made that leads to a transaction.

The REI Blackbook system does a lot of the heavy lifting of reaching out to “touch” your prospective clients and keep you and your product or service top of mind.

People want to do business (and refer people to businesses) where a great customer experience is top priority.

If you put a large focus on creating a positive and memorable experience for your clients, it will have a compounding effect in your business.

And to find out how to leverage the power of REI Blackbook to help you do that, book a FREE On-Demand demo today.