Here’s something you may not have heard before: providing good service simply is not enough to get ahead of your competition. Customers expect that businesses will provide good service in today’s world, otherwise they wouldn’t even consider shopping with you.. There’s a huge, huge difference between providing good service for your customers and providing a rewarding overall customer experience for your customers, clients, and potential prospects. Here at Paradiso Insurance, we want to help local businesses provide not only a good customer service, but a superior overall customer experience.Let’s take a deeper look!
The Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience
The customer service and the customer experience sound very similar, so it’s completely understandable if you’re not quite sure what the difference is yet. Basically, the customer service is broken down into your business’ direct interaction with your customers and clients, and how well you handled their problems, or how you dealt with them face to face. The customer experience goes way beyond that, though. The customer experience includes why your customers ended up interacting with your business, how you connected with them while handling their problems, or even how your business resonates with your customers after you provided them with a great service. In many cases, the customer service is the “how” behind interacting with your customers, while the customer experience is the “why” that goes along with that service. If you still want a better understanding of the customer service, feel free to take a look at this article that we put together for Paradiso Presents that fully defines the difference between the two concepts.
Where the Customer Experience Begins
While customer service covers all of the time that the customer is directly interacting with your business and your business’ employees, the customer’s experience is so much more than that. The customer experience begins as soon as a prospect identifies a problem that your company’s products and/or services can solve. For example, for a restaurant, this could just mean that they are hungry, or in our case, it could be someone has recently purchased a new vehicle and is in need of an auto insurance policy. Regardless of what their need is, as soon as it’s identified, the customer experience begins, and they will be looking for a solution to their problem.
People will often turn to friends and family for recommendations when looking for a new product or service provider. This is why word of mouth referrals is still the number one form of new business to this day, and why it’s also so important to give your customers great service, so that they will be more apt to talk about your business when they are asked. If the prospect looking for a solution to their problem through word of mouth referrals, they will then turn to the internet, usually Google.
A Brief Introduction to SEO
If you haven’t heard the term “SEO” before, now is a better time than ever to make yourself more familiar. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and is any and all efforts your business can take to rank higher on Google search. If you take the time to SEO your company’s website, then when people search for your products and/or services on Google, you will rank higher, and show up sooner in the results. As we mentioned earlier, Google is essentially the second place that your customers turn to when they are looking for your business, so SEO is crucial for your business as part of the customer experience as a whole. Without SEO, you could be missing out on potential leads and closings, which will only hurt your business in the long run.
So how exactly do we go about SEOing our businesses online? We can’t give you the “perfect” answer, because Google updates their search algorithms roughly once every 18 hours, but, we can help you get higher in the results regardless. The secrets behind SEO is to be consistent, authentic, and credible. To accomplish these things online, simply put, you need to be real because you can’t cheat the Google system these days. When we say that you need to be authentic, your content needs to pertain to your business, it needs to be original, and it needs to be well-crafted and well-thought out, whether it’s a blog, a press release, or other content you post to your website for the online world to see. It’s also important that when you write your content, you use keywords that pertain to your company or business. Our keywords would include phrases such as “commercial insurance,” “personal insurance,” or even “auto insurance.” You can’t just throw keywords around though (by spamming them in your content) or try to hide them in the background of your website either, because Google will realize it, and it will make you less credible. Other ways you can get more credible is to post your content to your social media, because Google realizes that your website is being backlinked, and the more backlinks your website has, the more Google will respect your credibility. Additionally, you could also get your business partners to backlink your website on their home pages or social media as well, just like we do for our partners, because it will help their SEO! Other than that, just be consistent with your posts, because if you stop posting, Google will catch on and your rank will potentially drop.
If you want to get even more in touch with SEO, then we can recommend you to a professional SEO service to help your SEO efforts online. Remember, the customer experience journey isn’t over yet, so check back next soon as we discuss the next steps in providing an outstanding customer experience for your customers, clients, and prospects. And remember, if you have any questions about Connecticut business insurance, we are here to help, and you can call any of our professional agents with any questions you may have at 860-684-5270.
