As the world is shifting to complete digitization, the ongoing pandemic has accelerated it and proved it to be the only way of survival in the coming time. The COVID-19 lockdowns worldwide have been nothing less than a massive jolt to both businesses and individuals and have left us staring at uncertainty.
In the midst of all this, WhatsApp has been a constant support in keeping individuals connected with their near and dear ones. But its role does not limit to just that!
WhatsApp has now become an online store for many and where they interact with customers, provide them services, and even close sales deals. Businesses are now readily accepting WhatsApp as a channel through which they can reach out to their customers from any corner of the world. A platform that allows them to interact, engage with customers and sell their products.
With WhatsApp, businesses all over the world are seeing hope of revival. WhatsApp brings businesses and customers to a common platform. A platform where businesses can use customer-centric approaches to find, retain, and engage customers.
What is Customer Centricity?
Customer-centricity is an approach in which businesses focus on customer experience and makes all possible efforts to improve it. When many people think of customer-centricity, their mind goes automatically to customer service. Customer service is an important element of building a customer-centric business, but it’s not the whole picture.
How a business interacts with its customers, how convenient it is for the customer to make a purchase, request a return or refund, or reach out to customer service. All are a part of customer-centricity. So, the processes and procedures in a business and the daily actions and decisions of employees equally important. It contributes to a good customer experience and makes a business customer-centric.
Why is Customer Centricity Important?
In a time where customers have hundreds of brands and businesses to choose from, focusing on customer-centricity helps in finding new customers and retaining existing customers for a long time. Especially in a time where social media is prevalent, and consumers are talking to each other like they never have in the past. Customer-centricity has a direct impact on brand value as customers act like marketers. Social media and review sites have allowed consumers to share every detail of their experience with a company in a matter of minutes.
At its most basic level, it comes down to acquiring and retaining customers. Businesses need to do these two things if they are to survive.
6 Ways You Can Make Your Business More Customer-Centric With WhatsApp
Here are 6 effective methods to make your business more customer-centric and drive better sales using WhatsApp:
1. Interact with your customers
Interacting with customers can help a business improve its customer experience in many ways. Personal one-to-one interactions can help businesses build trust among customers and establish a strong relationship that they will wish to keep for long.
Another benefit of personal interactions is that it helps you gather all information about your customer’s likes, dislikes, preferences, experiences, and expectations. With this information, you can make sure your customers get exactly what they hope for. This approach helps businesses with being customer-centric not just with immediate actions but also plan products and services in the future accordingly.
Read more: 10 Ways To Get Customers To Opt-In On WhatsApp Business
2. Easy customer policies and procedures
Your customers should feel convenient shopping with you. Be it going through the product catalog, picking an item, making payments to return, or cancellation policies. More than 69% of customers abandon items in the cart never to come back to them. This is because they find the checkout process or the entire buying process to time consuming or difficult. Your customers should never feel that your policies or procedures are difficult or time-consuming for them to follow.
Using WhatsApp Business or WhatsApp Business API-based tools like SocialEpoch can make the entire process quite simple. WhatsApp Business allows catalog sharing, placing orders, and making payments. It can also be used for getting refunds, and other services all using the WhatsApp interface.
Read more: 4 Ways To Boost Customer Engagement & Marketing ROI Through SocialEpoch
3. Include automation for efficiency
Automation saves a lot of time, effort, and resources for a business. As for customers, it helps in get instant responses and useful information. They no longer have to dial up a sales executive or drop a query mail. Nobody likes to wait and keeping customers waiting for a response to their query can leave a bad impression. Instead, you can use automation bots trained to perform activities such as sending greetings, instant responses, and sharing shipping and delivery updates. This can improve the customer-centricity of your business to a great extent.
By using the Quick reply and Automated Response features of SocialEpoch, you can ensure instant response to thousands of customers.
Read more: Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools and Software in 2021
4. Forward-thinking
Customer-centricity isn’t something that you draw up a plan for once and then use this plan for the decades to come. Customer expectations are shifting constantly. New technology comes to the market all the time, and this technology has the potential to set a new bar for customers. To continuously be a customer-centric business, you need to adapt as customers adapt. Don’t be afraid of experimenting with new ways of improving the customer experience.
Read more: Top 5 WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Strategies For Businesses
5. Empathize with Your Customers
Your customers may have several questions and opinions about your business or product. Or at times, they may express extreme dissatisfaction with your services. You need to show empathy and treat your customers with love and attention. In doing so, you will instantly earn their love and loyalty and can retain them longer. Showing empathy to customers in their time of need can help you build an impressive rapport. It can make them feel that you are customer-centric and care for them.
Engage with them personally through WhatsApp chats, and try to resolve their problems or at least make them feel better with promising words.
Read more: WhatsApp SCRM: The Best Way to Carry Out Customer Service
6. Include your customers in your decisions
One of the wisest things you can do as a business is to get your customers involved in your decision-making process. This can be done in the form of group chats on WhatsApp-based polls. Getting your customer’s opinions for your products will make them feel important and will improve your customer-centricity. Moreover, customers participating in decision-making usually receive new product launches well and become natural marketers for your brand.
Also read: How to Build Customer Relationship During Critical Situations with CRM?
What happens when you improve the customer experience?
o Customer retention is improved.
o Customer satisfaction goes up – This leads to positive reviews online and a positive reputation on social media. It also encourages customers to spend more money or spend more often.
o It improves the success of cross-selling and up-selling.
o It attracts more new consumers and converts them into customers.
Conclusion
Customers hold the power to make or break a brand. Keeping them at the center of your marketing and product planning decisions can help you gain their loyalty. You can build trust among your customers and earn you a name among customer-centric brands. WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business APIs can play a major role in keeping your customers a the helm of your business and marketing approaches.
To know more about SocialEpoch click here or drop a mail at salessupport@socialepoch.com
