WOWing the customers to build goodwill for your business

Businesses have a tendency to be seen as ‘robots’. This is indeed true especially for large businesses which follow set standards and procedures for customer interaction. Years of dealing with monotonous procedures have made people get used to this idea of businesses being robotic. What distinguishes startups from conventional businesses is not so much as their ability to be professional, but un-robotic at the same time, and being able to ‘WOW’ the customers in this process.

Every time I pay Cash on Delivery for a Flipkart product, I am WOWed thinking of how this was not possible a few years ago. Every WOW creates more and more goodwill for your brand and hence its importance. Here are a few things to keep in mind while trying to WOW your customers:

1. Make your business as ‘human’ as possible: No one likes dealing with robots. The more human your business is, the better you will be able to connect with your customers. Making your business human does not mean adding more humans to the process. Rather what it means is behaving in a more humanly fashion. Cash on Delivery is a great example of making a business human. Conventional businesses in India could have never considered the possibility of utilizing cash-on-delivery at such a massive scale, but once introduced it did wonders for the Indian e-commerce industry.
2. Make the customer feel that you care about them: This is very hard because to ensure this you have to actually care about them! Your customers need to value what you are doing for them and that cannot happen artificially. Our website development partners really care about how any glitch on their part affects our sales, and this is what makes us love them.
3. Personalize and Customize - Go the extra mile: Every satisfied customer is a brand ambassador who’s going to get you many more customers. Sometimes, going the extra-mile, customizing your product/service to suit specific needs (even at an increased cost) makes the customer really appreciate your effort, and getting the desired WOW points.
4. Pay attention to detail: You should put yourself in your customer’s shoes and try to minimize every inconvenient step involved in the process of him reaching to you. Fast is convenient. Customers are smart and convenient processes make them appreciate the attention and effort you’ve put in to every detail. Customer care centres where it is easier to reach the human assistant faster are much more appreciated by customers than in those where one has to go through long steps of auto-mated inputs.

One thing that needs to be understood in this process of WOWing the customer is that in the end, the deal-maker or breaker for every business will be the primary product being sold. WOWing will certainly help you grow but only once your product is in proper place. For example, no matter how easy it might be to book an OLA cab for me, if the cab does not reach me on time, very soon I will have to switch to conventional operators. Interface is ancillary to your product, but no doubt of utmost importance.