10 Steps to a Better Mobile Customer Experience
As an app creator, you always have the goal of an incredible customer experience in mind. You want your mobile customers to be satisfied and enriched when using your app. However, achieving such an experience isn’t always easy. It takes time, research, and resources to ensure your app’s ultimate success in customer experience. So, where do you begin? Here are 10 steps to a better mobile customer experience:
Step 1 – Understand the Meaning of What A Mobile Customer Experience Is
You need to start improving your customers’ experiences somewhere, so why not here? When you think of a customer experience, you more than likely automatically think of your own experiences at local restaurants and stores. Customer experience has been limited to physical, in-person interactions. Now in the digital age, customer experience extends to mobile customers as well. Getting yourself in the mindset that your mobile customers deserve the same great experiences as any physical customer is a great place to start improving those experiences.
Step 2 – Define Goals and Objectives
If you have an app that doesn’t have clear goals and/or objectives, it will appear scattered and unusable to your customers. Have clear goals of how your app will appear and how your customers will interact with it. If the customers feel their time is being well-spent on an organized, efficient app, their experiences will be enriched every time they open your app.
Step 3 – Great Customer Service
Customer service doesn’t begin when a customer messages you about a problem with the app. It begins long before that in the development phase. Before your app is even released, you need to meet with your customer service representatives and discuss what the customers will be expecting when contacting customer service. Then, train your representatives on how to meet and exceed those expectations. Having representatives available to assist customers whenever a problem or question arises in a professional, timely manner will improve the customers’ experiences in so many ways.
Step 4 – Understand Your Customers
With any app, it is necessary to define a target audience. This audience could be made of customers in a certain location, age group, culture, etc. Once you know who makes up your target audience, you can then explore their environments. Research the physical and digital environments of your target audience, then plan your app to simulate into their everyday routines. Having your apps become a part of your customer’s routine will ensure its long-term success.
Step 5 – Enlist the Help of Professionals
There is absolutely no shame in asking for help. When you are developing, launching, and maintaining an app, you need expertise in many different fields. There are professionals out there that will take your app idea and make it into a smashing success. These professionals will know what improvements can be made to improve your customer’s experience. So, go ahead and ask for help from the professionals! It could be the decision that determines your app’s success or failure.
Step 6 – Be Transparent
Customers do not like being taken advantage of. One of the top ways you can deter customers and dampen their mobile experiences is by secretly selling out their personal information without their permission. Being transparent about what exactly their data is used for will build trust between you and your customers. Trust is the foundation for any customer-business relationship. Therefore, trust is one of the keys to a wonderful mobile customer experience.
Step 7: Listen to Your Customers
Many customers will want to send you feedback (good and bad). Make the submission of feedback easy and accessible to all your customers. Then, listen to that feedback! Now, I don’t mean make changes based on every little complaint made. But take the feedback, figure out what updates need to be made to accommodate and benefit the most customers, then make the changes. Finally, respond to each customer’s feedback in a one-on-one phone call, message, or chat dialog box. Avoid generic “Thank you for your feedback” messages as much as possible. Instead, acknowledge each person’s feedback with gratitude and assurance. Every customer wants to be heard. After all, without the customers, your business and/or app would not exist!
Step 8: Unification on Multiple Platforms
If you have an app that offers customer service through email, chat, and/or phone conversation, all customer service representatives need to be on the same page. It is incredibly frustrating for a customer to receive one response about an issue through email, only to have that response discredited by a customer service representative on the phone. Make sure all customer service representatives know how to properly handle feedback from customers. Having a unified procedure/policy, no matter how the customer contacts you, will cut out tons of time and frustrations. This will lead to a better, more efficient mobile customer experience.
Step 9: Understand Your Customers’ Needs
This step extends on Step 4. When you are putting so much time, money, and energy into an app’s development, you want it to be well worth all those resources. Understanding what your customers need and how to fulfill those needs will help your app reach its fullest potential. A better mobile customer experience is easily achievable if the app being used is catered to their needs.
Step 10: Study Trends
We know that app development and launching are two important parts of an app’s “birth.” However, maintaining the app is just as important. A huge component of maintaining an app is updating it according to current market trends. For example, if your competitor just released an update that allows customers to personalize their app experience, you will be overlooked by future customers. The trend of personalization is one that your competitor’s maintenance team knew about before yours. Constantly observing/seeking out current trends will give you an edge above your competition and will draw-in more customers. Additionally, the mobile experience of your current customers will be enhanced by the new trendy updates in your app.
Mobile customer experience is what drives your app’s success or failure. These 10 steps will help you improve that customer experience and provide your customers with the tools they need to commit to your company/app on a regular basis. Your ultimate goal is a happy customer. After all, having lifelong, happy customers will ensure your app’s future.
