The Complete Guide To Amazing Customer Interactions – Part 1

George on February 20, 2023

Redefining What Customer Interactions Mean To Your Business

This short series of blogs is Viewabo’s Complete Guide to Amazing Customer Interactions. As we start the new year, we want to help our readers get a great kick-off to 2023. This guide can be a launching point for you and your team to redefine what customers mean to your business and develop strategies to engage customers in more meaningful ways.

Part 1 will cover customer interactions and the different types of customers.

What Are Customer Interactions And Management?

Let’s start by answering what is a customer interaction. Any communication exchange between a customer and a business is referred to as customer interaction. This includes every opportunity to delight, improve retention, and promote advocacy with a consumer.

Managing customer interactions across many channels and various phases of the customer life cycle is referred to as customer interaction management. This function within a business aims to provide a better and more individualized customer experience. Usually, there is not a team of customer interaction managers, but it exists within other functional roles. For example, sales, marketing, and customer service managers help define customer interaction processes across departments and preserve cross-functional information sharing.

The 5 Types Of Customers

One of the first considerations before building customer interaction strategies is identifying the type of customers you may encounter. Different ways of communication and interactions can be better defined depending on the kind of customers that frequent your business. Here are the 5 types of customers typical of most businesses:

New Customers

There will always be some questions that new customers have about a brand and its products. If a business is fast enough, it can provide the information customers want before losing their attention. This could be in the form of online information like product pages, social media, and online videos. Sales agents can also be ready to take calls to help customers answer questions and learn more about the business.

New customers frequently seek assistance with minor problems, and although it may be evident to those within the industry, customers, on the other hand, start from a blank page. Therefore, the information they need should be readily available across different platforms and form factors.

What new customers need:

Information and advice to help them make decisions
Onboarding support that will allow them to utilize the product successfully
A favorable first impression sets the tone of the relationship

Impulsive Customers

Some customers quickly buy without much thought. Impulsive customers like being in the spur of the moment and only care a little about the details ahead of time. Often the things they buy are lower-cost items or things that have caught their eye.

For impulsive customers, the first impression is critical. After that, the attractiveness of the display and limited but well-thought-of information are enough to get them hooked.

After the purchase, support services may often be needed when customers find out they need more information. In these cases, customer support becomes crucial in maintaining a good relationship with this type of customer.

What impulsive customers need:

Product presentation that is attractive and attention-grabbing
Excellent and fast service during the sales process without lengthy pitches
Good customer service if problems come up

Related Post: Visual vs. Textual Information – Which Gets The Attention?

Educated Customers

Some customers love to do their research. They looked around, compared, and predeveloped their concept of the brand and its products before they visited the store. These highly informed customers can be very easy or hard to handle. Some will know what they want and what to expect when they get the product home. On the other hand, others are so well-informed they may be very insistent on getting their way on certain things. Being polite and accommodating can help build trust and get educated customers on your side.

What educated customer need:

Information that is not available to the public or expert advice
Discussion partners to share their ideas and thoughts

Angry Customers

Many things can get a customer angry. This is the most challenging category of customers to handle as these customers display anger in many ways, including verbally and physically showing their temper. In addition, customers’ built-up frustrations and miscommunications cause rude and hurtful behaviors. Most of the time, this occurs after the purchase, and customer service agents deal with them. To handle such customers professionally, customer service agents need social, empathy, and patience skills.

What angry customers need:

Empathy and understanding from their perspective
De-escalation of issues without lowering the importance of their situation
Direct attention and fast resolutions to their satisfaction

What’s Next?

We will continue with part two of this series soon, so please stay tuned as we will cover the different stages and types of customer interactions in the next blog.