The term customer experience is ubiquitous in business these days. In fact, focusing on the customer experience has become the single most important way for and organisation to achieve success. Customer experience can include a lot of elements, but it really boils down to the perception the customer has of your brand. Even if you think your brand and customer experience is one ting, if the customer perceives it as something different, that is what the actual customer experience is. 

CX Defined

It is how customers perceive their interactions with your company. It was defined as being made up of three things from the customer's perceptive: 

1.  Useful - they deliver value 
2.  Usable - the value is easy to find and engage with 
3.  Enjoyable - they're emotionally engaging and people want to use them 

Every company provides a customer experience, regardless of whether you create it consciously. That experience may be good, bad or indifferent, but the fact that you have customers, you interact with them and provide them with products or a service means that they have an experience with you and your business. 

Customer experience is an integral part of customer relationship management and the reason why it's important is because a customer who has a positive experience with a business is more likely to become a repeat and loyal customer. 

It seems like common sense, happy customers stay longer with a brand. And if you treat your customers poorly and ignore their needs, then they are more likely to leave. Yet some companies don't place any importance on customer experience. 

CX moves us beyond the traditional definition of customer service - those individual moments when employees are providing direct service to customers. It is also about the bigger picture of what happens before and after these service interactions.

To truly understand customer experience, you must know that it encompasses every aspect of a company's offering - from the quality of its customer care to its reputation management, marketing, branding, product and service features, and reliability. 

Customer experience is about much more than just customer service. It is about fostering employee engagement. It is about truly understanding your customers, creating a strategy for delivering exceptional customer service, and then empowering employees to deliver it. It is about the culture you create in the work environment that empowers and inspires your employees to reinforce the right behaviors that support exceptional customer experience. 

Create a Customer Experience Strategy 

Understanding Your Target Audience/Customers: 

Who they are and what they need, this is crucial in building a positive customer experience. If you are really going to understand customer needs and wants, then your employees need to be able to connect and empathize with the situation that your customer faces.

One way to do this is creating a customer persona. By creating personas, your customer support team can recognize who they are and understand them better. It is also an important step in becoming truly  customer-centric. 

SMS 

Mobile phones are the fastest adopted technology of modern times, with more than 91% of adults having access to a mobile phone, and the number of text messages sent daily ranging between 5-6 billion. That's a lot of people communicating over SMS. 

SMS Marketing is a fantastic channel for your business to receive messages from your customers. By allowing your customers to text you, you can enhance your customer service. The majority of people prefer using SMS messages for customer service inquiries and comments, It's quick, hassle-free, and extremely cost effective. By offering an SMS feature you make your business accessible and allow customers to contact you with any questions or problems (this is also a great way to add to your opt-in marketing list!!). Immediately reducing the amount of time for a customer to resolve an issue they have and leads to a satisfied customer base, a win-win really!

Customer expectations are higher than ever, and as customers become more empowered, it increases the importance of the customer experience. 

Saoirse

Sendmode Bulk SMS and Mobile Marketing

The search market is a rapidly growing and changing area of marketing. Consumers are both more elusive and more connected than ever before and business owners need to keep up with customers’ online behaviour in order to remain relevant and prominent in the market.

How many times have you, as a consumer read an online review? The viral nature of the Internet, together with the growing distrust of paid media and traditional advertising has led to customer reviews becoming one of the most powerful influences of the consumer’s purchase decision.

Studies suggest that consumer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating in content marketing at 89%. Consumers don’t trust what a business says; they trust what customers are saying.

The three most influential customer reviews come from family and friends; social media; and online reviews published by total strangers.  A customer review has the potential to take your product or service to many customers who cut through your site in a convincing manner. So, by collecting and encouraging customers to leave a review you are building trust with your customers and giving potential customers the perception that you are a trustworthy brand.

Traditional forms of marketing are losing out to user-generated content, especially customer reviews. The more reviews you have online, the more likely your customer’s voice will come through and the more credibility you will have.

Encourage Customer to post reviews

Invite you customers to post their reviews about your service, preferably on your own website. Rather than having reviews posted on the likes of Yelp, etc., give them clear instructions on how to leave reviews on your designated website. Allowing you, as a brand, to build up an array of quality reviews quickly.

Be Consistent

Consistency is key. In anything you do, personal or professional, if you are not consistent, you will not be successful.As we all know search engines like fresh, renewable and relevant content, meaning that each time you get a new review your domain and pages gain a little more authority. You are creating renewable, original content about your brand with each published review or comment.So, having reviews published on a once of will not benefit your brand. Make sure they are regular and consistent.

Engage with your audience

Responding to reviews is a great way to learn and build a trusting relationship with your customers. On their own, positive reviews are already hugely powerful but when you get involved in the conversation, it shows that you are genuinely interested in what your customers have to say.

In today’s market, creating an engaging relationship with your audiences is a very powerful thing. Consumers seek a relationship with a brand, the goal is no longer selling a product but rather making a meaningful connection, and creating a community around your brand.Listen to you audiences and remember that a thoughtful and timely response consistent with your brands values goes a long way. Reviews are the best way to build customer trust. When potential customers read your positive reviews, they become familiar with the quality of your service and are more likely to commit when they get to you.

Hopefully this article was helpful and please feel free to visit our website Sendmode at any time for a free consultation on your mobile marketing and web texting strategy.

In marketing, if you’re going to win, you have to know what your goals are, what it takes to get there, and if you’re not getting there, what needs to be done differently. Goals are part of every aspect of life. Everything comes down to priorities, and what you would like to accomplish in every aspect – and this is especially the cause when it comes to an SMS marketing campaign.

Without setting goals or objectives, a campaign may become chaotic.

Most people in business will be more than familiar with setting and using SMART goals. But what exactly is a SMART goal? SMART goals bring structure and trackability to your goals and objectives. Instead of vague resolutions, SMART goals create verifiable trajectories. A SMART approach clarifies the way goals come into existence.

Specific

As with any SMS marketing campaign, it is essential, to begin with, a specific objective in mind. What exact do you want to achieve from your SMS campaign?

Remember, no two SMS marketing campaign are going to have the same specific goals.

Measurable

Measurable goals mean that you are identifying exactly what your brand expects to achieve once you’ve reached your goal. You need to break each step of your SMS marketing campaign down to measurable elements and know what result you are expecting from each step of the process, whether it be ROI or generating good quality business leads.

Know if your SMS marketing goal is obtainable.

Attainable

Once you’ve identified goals that are most important to the success of your SMS marketing campaign, you need to be sure your goals need to be realistic and attainable to be successful. In other words, they should stretch your marketing teams’ abilities while still remaining possible. When you set an achievable goal, you may be able to identify previously overlooked opportunities or resources.

Relevant

Is your SMS marketing goal realistic? Does it correlate with consumer behaviour? Is your campaign relevant to your target audience?

Time Based

Every marketing campaign needs a target date so that you have a deadline to focus on. Without a deadline, nothing will be achieved and your marketing team will have nothing to work towards. Having a deadline will prevent everyday tasks from becoming a priority.  Each of the SMART components provides an aspect to your goal that helps you to create something that will be attainable. Having SMART goals will assure your SMS marketing campaign is executed in a way that meets your objectives. It’s important to understand that your SMS marketing campaign will likely impact other parts of your company, therefore it is important to communicate your goals and strategies clearly throughout.

For more information visit our website www.sendmode.co.za, we'd be more than happy to help.

Thanks,
Saoirse
Business Development

If you haven't heard about it let me tell you more. Cybatar is a new social networking and collaboration application that allows users to send SMS messages to mobile phones for free. The network also allows users to share document files besides media files which is uncommon with all available social networks.

The company responsible for this product has developed their first application, being made available on stores and only available on Android devices for now. The development team on Red Diamond World is confident that it has developed an awesome product which will go viral a soon as the public becomes aware of it.

Cybatar comes as a more innovative service, on a different market with common social networking websites Facebook and Twitter and is not looking to substitute them but co-exist with them as the are very important especially for companies and professionals to increase their online presence which is a contribution Cybatar will make to users. This shows that Red Diamond World is in this for the long-run like big internet companies Facebook, Amazon and Google.Users can find the application on various Android application stores from today.

The application will reach more stores as time goes by and more application for Apple and Windows devices will be developed. Cybatar is currently available on HTML5 for all devices with internet access on http://www.cybatar.com and users are able to access all features.

{pp}South African debtors have nowhere left to hide from SMSs reminding them of their overdue accounts.

Until recently, only big business had access to SMS functionality for reminding their clients of overdue accounts and monthly payments. One year ago, DebtHound began offering an affordable scheduled SMS service to SMMEs for the purpose of debt collection, and as of now has added bulk SMS to their list of services.