Did you know over 70% of startup founders don’t have a customer support strategy? In its CX benchmark report, our tech partner, Zendesk, discovered a lot of surprising facts, but this one was by far one of the most shocking.
While most startups recognize the need for customer service, it’s often an afterthought. Many decision-makers want brand recognition before they invest in a customer support system. While this seems logical, it can be damaging in the long run.
Customer support and customer experience (CX) are also different landscapes. Your startup can have reliable customer service and still lose out, thanks to poor CX. And the biggest culprit when it comes to bad CX is the lack of a formal strategy.
So, where do you begin?
The skinny on CX
Customer experience is very much how it sounds: the experience customers get when interacting with your brand about anything.
CX begins before you land their business and ends once they stop using your product or service. The meat of it, however, is the feelings and experiences they have in between.
You must foster every customer journey and prove you care about them from beginning to end. Show them you’ve got their backs, and they keep choosing you because of it. This is just as—if not more—true for startups as it is for more longstanding brands.
The difference is, those brands usually have a far bigger budget.
CX isn’t just for big brands; it’s for small businesses too
Startups with a consistently great customer experience are rare. But that’s only because, until recently, many saw CX as an add-on rather than an essential.
Exceptions fared better and have a clear competitive advantage. Fast-growing startups were the ones that implemented customer support solutions early on — ones that put the customer first.
Zendesk also found that these startups were 33% more likely to sign up for their support within their founding year, making early adoption the sweet spot.
Startups can shake things up on the go more quickly than established brands, and their main advantage is that they get to be flexible. For example, if a startup adopts omnichannel support, it can adapt and respond quickly to customer feedback, improve customer experience, customer retention, and satisfaction, and reach new markets.
But what should you look at first?
CX features ranked by startups
Although more startups recognize the importance of CX, success stories aren’t as widespread as they should be, showing that many aren’t prioritizing key features linked to rapid growth.
Everyone wants to be a unicorn, but even unicorns start somewhere.
Unicorns are 37% more likely to offer omnichannel customer service than their peers. They’re also 38% more likely to have rolled out chat and 48% more likely to have phone support.
Existing startups rank price and ease of use as the most important CX features to implement in their CX strategy. On the other hand, features like omnichannel and self-service are closer to the bottom usually because people see them as more expensive or difficult to implement.
So, what CX features should startups consider when weighing customer engagement options?
Ease of Use
While user experience (UX) and CX aren’t the same, they complement each other. For example, customers who can’t navigate your website will go elsewhere.
As of February 2021, 55.56% of all web traffic comes through mobile phones. So, if your website isn’t mobile-optimized, you’ll miss out on a lot of potential customers. To combat this, you need a simple, fast-loading, mobile-friendly website.
Analytics
All those math lessons were not in vain: data analysis has an impact.
Used correctly, the collection and analysis of customer data gives you tons of useful insights. With them, you’ll be able to see if and how your CX strategy works and identify any trends or recurring customer issues within.
By eliminating guesswork from the equation, you can spend more time on solutions and less on what doesn’t work.
➜ Find out what data-driven customer service analytics can do for your startup.
Price
You can’t put a price tag on a great customer experience — what you can do is connect customer experience to price.
A recent study found that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. So, offering your customers competitive pricing is a great place to start.
See what other brands are doing, figure out where you differ, and you’ll see optimal results.
Customer relationship management
CX is now the leading priority for most businesses, and solid brand-customer relationships drive great CX strategies.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is about centralizing customers’ needs. It’s also about how you respond. Humanizing and making a focal point are now the benchmarks of good CX, and making customers feel like you care about them improves customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The best CRM requires symbiosis: a relationship where you work together for each other’s benefit. You observe and respond; they react and commit; you both leave happy.
➜ Boost your startup’s customer service with CRM and help desk solutions.
Workflow Management
Workflow management is a way to make things easier for brands and customers alike. As a result, many brands now use workflow automation to improve the quality of their CX.
With automation, you can do anything from tracking customer issues to leading outreach emails: everything you need to do without spending too much time doing it manually.
When done right, you’ll be able to speed up customer interactions. In the words of The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miyagi, with fast customer service comes great customer experience.
➜ Discover what automation can do to increase customer experience.
How to up your CX game
Upping your customer experience game doesn’t have to be daunting. It’s simple to implement and pays off in the long run.
Startups consider customer inquiries, CX costs, and new product launches as the top reasons to implement a CX solution — but they shouldn’t have to wait until then. The sooner you bring customer experience to your startup, the better. Engaging with your customers is equivalent to having a successful CX strategy.
Zendesk suggests rolling out self-service and customer support within the first year. Once you know your customers, you can use their preferred live support channels.
Above all, you need to approach customer experience as the long game. Each of the above features has one thing in common: CX. CX runs through everything from price to data analytics and workflow to omnichannel support. Once you recognize that, you’ll start to grow.
If you’re unsure where to start, you can outsource your customer service. Companies like 5CA provide multiple services to help you begin your CX journey while focusing on your business — both matter, but you don’t have to do it all yourself.
Nothing is more important than the CX journey
As customer support pioneers, we’ve always cared about the people we help at all stages of their startup or customer journey.
Our lengthy experience in customer support has enabled us to find a new way to future-proof CX and build our own data analytics platform. With it, we get in-depth support metrics in real-time that help us know how our CX is performing — and where we could improve.
We see our CX strategy as a relationship-building activity: Connecting clients with the agents who can best help their customers. Our vetted, global CXperts are your best choice for quality CX — because they are your customers.
So, whether you’re ramping up for new markets or just beginning your startup adventure, why not supercharge your CX with 5CA?
Our full-scale, future-ready customer service solutions include automation, workforce management, CRM and configuration, dashboards, customer journey mapping, and more. For more information, contact us.
