The success of a business doesn’t rely on the quality of products alone. Many other factors drive a customer to add a product to the cart and proceed to check out. These days, it’s not enough that your website is appealing. Read on to find out what other things you need to pay attention to.
Factors Affecting a Customer’s Decision to Buy a Product
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Values
Customers, especially the younger generations, buy products that align with their values. If they support eco-friendly efforts, they will buy your product if it is sustainable. Make your packaging environment-friendly. Don’t test on animals or be linked to any issue on animal cruelty.
You need to exert extra effort to make a solid brand image. And to align this image to what values or beliefs the customers support. This is a driving factor for sales.
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Need
You should know by now that for a business to succeed, you need to sell a need. Otherwise, there will be no market for it. Go beyond the product and focus on what it brings to the lives of the customers.
Are you selling luxury? Or do you give your customers comfort and flexibility? If you have solid answers to these questions, you are good to go.
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Price
One of the biggest reasons why a customer buys a product is because they can afford it. Make sure that your price point is something that your customers can afford. Establish why the products cost that much. Highlight what benefits customers can get from your products and why it is worth every penny they will spend.
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Customer Service
Finally, something that can make or break your sales performance is the availability of customer service. Product labels used to have an address where customers could send their concerns. Nowadays, that is replaced by Facebook page names and Instagram and Twitter handles. Because of the internet, nothing irritates a customer more than when a company takes days to answer their inquiries.
If customer service is not your strong suit yet, there are ways you can improve this part of your business.
How to Use Tech Solutions to Improve Customer Service
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Chatbots
You have been a customer yourself most of your life. You have probably listed a bunch of questions about a product that you want to purchase. Imagine your frustration when you keep sending queries to a business’ Facebook page, but you don’t get any reply.
You want to avoid this situation as much as possible. A common solution is automated messages. Think of all the common questions a customer can have about your store and products. And then, use automated chatbots to answer these most basic questions. That is just the first level. If their questions are not part of the common ones, place an option where they can talk to a customer representative.
There are self-reliant customers. On your website, include a self-service section where they can seek answers to their possible questions.
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Automated Service Apps
You can invest in an app that caters to your customers’ inquiries. Through such a service, you can provide a more personalized, more efficient way to respond to customers. Cloud automation services often power some of these apps. Consult with a tech firm on how you can develop an app that will help you solve your customer’s inquiries and complaints in the most efficient way.
Clearly, automation is the best way to create a fast and effective customer response. Even with phone support, automation is beneficial in creating tickets. These tickets help you organize complaints and inquiries based on the type and urgency. Furthermore, through the help of artificial intelligence automation, the tickets created will reach the right people assigned to solve them.
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Software for Internal Collaboration
Banks and airlines have the worst customer service ratings. An agent will usually receive your complaint, and then nothing happens. You wait two days before calling again just to be passed to another agent. Before you get to the correct department, your patience has already significantly depleted.
You can avoid this by investing in software that allows collaboration among the departments in your business. This will enable you to streamline the communication and the workflow so that a customer doesn’t get passed around. The goal is more responsive support and less irate customers.
It’s hard to understand these tech terms, especially if you have no background related to technology. But this doesn’t mean that you cannot use these powerful tools to improve your customer service. Just reach out to the right people so you get the help that you need.
