The digital age has broadened individual access to the world. Today, through social networking and community platforms, people can not only see, hear and read information from every corner of the globe, they can speak to the world. This has given rise to the next great historical age we live in today. We’ve emerged from an era dominated by ‘super-powers’ and now live an age of super empowerment. The impact this has had on business has been profound to say the least.
Today, innovation and growth depends upon interactions rooted in modern digital social contexts yet personalized and focused on the individual. The rapid expansion of the digital age, and the resulting empowerment of individual access to information and the ability to quickly gain a wide audience has rendered experiences strictly designed for all as unsatisfactory to most.
Of course, it’s impossible to create a customer success infra-structure for every individual you sell to; that method would simply be impractical. However, you can build into your customer success modalities instances which recognize the individual and engages them on a personal level. For instance, when establishing a product help or support site, there are considerations that should be addressed that would serve to create a positive personal reaction and a great experience for the user.
People Want to Help Themselves
First, the fastest way to get your customer up to speed and happily adopting your product is to employ a socially enabled publishing end-point for your product knowledge and documentation assets. By pushing your product expertise to the user when and where they need it, in a format that’s easy to navigate and understand, you’re addressing a specific individual need and by quickly satisfying the individual’s need you’ve created a positive personal reaction in them and have reinforced your company’s partnership with them as a problem solver. Conversely, if your site simply directed them to a static PDF which they would have to sort through to find the answer, well you’ve failed to create that partnership and created a poor personal reaction thru this interaction.
Customer Engagement Breeds Alignment
The next step, allow for user feedback on your documentation. You’re documentation may not always have the answer the user is looking for. By enabling feedback, you’re giving the individual a point of engagement and an opportunity for your company, subject matter experts and your user community to engage the user on a personal level. So, even though your documentation may have fallen short in some way, by embedding feedback and response mechanisms in your product help site, you have the ability to turn user frustration or crisis into a point of individual engagement which evokes a positive personal reaction.
Furthermore, by allowing your company to tune into this feedback and these interactions, you’ll have the insight you need to enhance and improve your product with your customer’s needs in focus. A company that invests in the ability to listen and respond to its customers, and align their efforts toward their satisfaction, will no doubt create a positive personal reaction to their products and their brand.
Unengaged Customers Don’t Create New Opportunities and Poorly Engaged Customers Kill Them
That customer whose sense of product fulfillment has been amplified because of their meaningful positive interactions via your social product help site is now primed and ready to become an advocate of your product at work, at home, among friends and peers, and across the vast digital social landscape. By engaging the customer, especially when they need help, you’re actually engaged in reputation building, and securing future opportunities to grow your company. However, having made no investment in the area of ensuring a positive personal reaction to every interaction a customer has with your company, and most importantly in your product help methods…well, quite the opposite happens.
You Can’t Fix What You Can’t Measure
By implementing a socially powered product help site you’ll gain valuable, actionable metrics. You’ll be able to analyze your documentation by quality, aging and customer search behavior in aggregate or by specific topics. What are your unique selling propositions? Have you covered these topics with quality and currency? Are these discoverable? Now you’ll know. With the right curation and behavioral analytics you’ll be given real-time insight into your customer’s sense of product satisfaction. By implementing tools in your product help site that measure these areas, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to fine tune your documentation, product, and customer interactions toward ensuring great experiences and positive personal responses in your customers.
