Although doing business consists of many aspects, customer interaction can be called one of the most important ones. A company can be extremely successful in producing its products, but when interaction with customers is not satisfactory, the company will still lag behind. Customer interaction consists of customer-to-business interactions, for example queries, feedback or service requests, and business-to-customer interactions, like newsletters. This communication is an ongoing process and requires time and effort from the business.
Customer interaction cycle
A customer interaction cycle has been distinguished, to classify the different stages in which customers interact with the business. This cycle is helpful to understand the different needs of customers in the different stages. The customer interaction cycle consists of the following stages:
- Awareness: This stage is early in the purchase journey, so customers are mostly looking for information about the business and the problems the business can solve for them.
- Consideration: In the consideration stage are customers evaluating your business and the products it offers. In this stage, businesses should clearly communicate their unique value proposition.
- Conversion: The buyer is in the final stage of the purchase journey, so the business can look forward to a new customer acquisition and make this acquisition go as smoothly as possible.
- Retention: When customers have bought at your business once, it is important to make sure they come back. To achieve this, a business should know what customers think of their purchase process. To keep customers satisfied, businesses should constantly adapt their services to customers’ needs.
- Advocacy: The most ultimate stage in the customer interaction cycle is the one where a company can use their existing customers to attract new customers. A business can encourage this by rewarding customers who bring in new customers.
Integrating customer interaction
The processes described above are a lot to handle at the same time. Therefore, businesses should automate as much as possible and integrate customer interactions into one system, for example using Triggre.com. This system can focus on one or more parts of the customer interaction cycle, depending on the needs of the business. A logical choice is to invest in a system for taking care of the conversion stage of the journey, since this is the stage where losing customers is most costly. Using a customer interaction system will save time, which gives employees the possibility to handle customer interaction more quickly. Moreover, a system can prevent and decrease human error.
Customer interaction systems: an example
To illustrate the customer interaction system, let’s take a look at the example of a coffee and cocoa trading company. This company implemented a Triggre system with which they improved customer interaction, check it out online. This system consists of automated order management, customer self-service and automated processes, thus focussing on the conversion stage. When potential customers are almost ordering, it is of most importance to provide a smooth process. The trading company provides this with tools like automated specification requests, complaint handling and contract management. The automated specification requests tool allows customers to request product specifications in an easy way. The complaint handling tool removes barriers for customers to express their complaints, and enables employees to respond to complaints quickly and efficiently. In the contract management tool, contracts are automatically created, after which sales managers can manage the contracts. Concluding, this example proves that investing in a system that improves customer interaction eases the life of both the business and its customers!
