By Hagen Weiss
Believe it or not, customer experience (CX) is the trend with the best expected return on investment (ROI) right now. This means that you can reap significant benefits from investing in improving your customer service offering compared to the amount of money that you put in.
What is the customer experience? It is the perception that your consumers have of your brand throughout their buying journey. The best part: you are in charge and in control of mapping out and creating that journey.
Did you know that just one bad customer experience could drive your consumer away for good? According to data gathered by PwC in the context of their Future of Customer Experience Survey 2017/18, 17% of American customers will walk away from a brand or product after having just one bad experience and, in Latin America, that figure reaches 49%.
More than simply using your products or services, people want to have a unique experience with your brand.
That is especially true of the gaming community, which is very demanding and more educated than regular customers – not to mention the fact that they have thousands of games to choose from, making it easy for unhappy gamers to stop using your product.
This brings its own set of challenges as it means that customer experience needs to be tailor-made to your target market in order for your brand to stand out.
How to Create a Personalized through customers experience
Hire the right people for customers experience
Your customer service representatives should be a reflection of the industry that you evolve in; if you’re a game developer, you should hire fans and avid players of your games.
This will ensure that they have the first-hand experience with your products and are more knowledgeable than the average customer, which is essential to avoid frustrating exchanges and bad reviews.
Localization to know customers experience
A great way to tailor your service to your customers needs, but one that is often overlooked, is to provide a localized experience , with all the cultural implications that it entails.
Your support team should speak your customers language and be located in the right time zone to ensure prompt communication. This also helps you build trust and a stronger relationship with your fans, who will appreciate communicating with someone that speaks their native language and not having to wait until regular business hours halfway across the world to get support.
This involves translating your content, such as FAQs or support guides, into those same languages, so that you can offer a consistent experience across the board.
Rely on data through customers involvement
Take a good hard look at the data that you have available; who purchases your product, who uses it the most and for how long – you need to get to know your customers in order to provide them with a personalized customer journey.
This will ensure that the investment that you make into your customer service efforts pays off.
This also includes analyzing the support tickets that come in on a regular basis in order to identify repetitive issues that could potentially be easily solved to make for a smoother experience for your customers.
Reach out to your customers participation
Be proactive. Ask your customers what they want; whether it’s a new feature on your app, a new storyline or characters in your game or simply fixing a pain point in your software, your customers are best-positioned to give you real insights.
Creating a platform where your users can interact and that is monitored by a community manager of your choosing can be a great way to offer an exceptional customer experience in the gaming industry; making players feel like they’re part of something bigger, a global network of people just like them, is a key aspect of the customer experience.
Adopt a multi-channel approach with customers contact
You should make it easy for your audience to interact with your team by creating and using appropriate communication channels and make it possible for your customers to solve basic issues themselves.
If your gamers interact on forums and share tips with each other, then your customer service team should be active on there to offer prompt solutions to glitches instead of waiting until players get frustrated and submit formal support requests through your website.
This could also mean building a live chat function on your website that goes straight to a customer service representative or creating a support shortcut within your app or game, which will, in turn, reduce the number of tickets that you will receive and allow your employees to dedicate more time to more complicated issues and delivering premium customer service.
More importantly, when adopting a multi-channel strategy (website, social media, app, chat function) make sure that you remain consistent across platforms, as your customers will expect a certain standard from your company.
Be authentic with customers experience
More than ever, customers like to feel connected to the brand reputation that they love by learning more about company values and the people behind their favorite products; that is what we call storytelling.
And it is easier than ever for businesses to leverage technology (such as social networks) to share their story and develop a strong brand identity which, in turn, will increase community engagement. And make sure that your team personalizes their replies – no one likes having the impression that they are interacting with a robot (yes, even in 2020).
Every single individual has a different experience when playing a video game due to the in-game choices that they make; their customer experience should be as unique.
Measuring Your ROI With Customers Experience
Determining your exact ROI when it comes to customers experience are easier said than done as profit cannot be directly attributed to any single event or initiative.
However, there are a few metrics that can be taken into account and tracked to determine if your budget is properly allocated; here are some KPIs that could be relevant to your business:
- Customer retention rate
Looking at how long a customer keeps playing your game or using your software is a good indication of how happy they are with your product but also with the support offered. A customer that is loyal to a brand is one that feels valued and spoken to.
- Churn rate
Conversely, you should track your churn rate by calculating how many customers stopped doing business with your company or using your product over a given time period and dividing that number by the total number of customers left.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
You can determine your CLV by tracking all purchases made by a single customer over the years; if your customer buys a $100 game from you every year for 10 years, the CLV would be $1,000 less the cost of acquiring and providing support to that customer. This will help you determine how much you can spend to acquire new customers, as you will know how much an average customer is worth.
- Average number of upgrades or additional purchases
Having customers who purchase your product after a free trial or who buy add-ons to make their gaming experience better is a good sign that they are happy with the level of service provided as well as with their experience as a whole.
More and more, companies are generating revenues through in-game purchases rather than through the sale of new games due to the free-to-play model, which is another reason why you should allocate time, budget and resources to make sure that your existing customers are satisfied.
- Customer support team efficiency / average time resolution
Determine how long it takes on average for a standard customer support ticket to be addressed and for a solution to be found. This will give you insight into how much you are paying for a ticket to be resolved in terms of personnel as well as make you aware of any inefficiencies that should be addressed.
And have a look at what is in your team’s backlog; what questions or issues seem to come up frequently and require further assistance from senior team members or additional information to be resolved? You could create guides or easily accessible resources on your intranet that your team can refer to in order to speed up response time.
- Customer satisfaction
This metric goes hand in hand with the one above – you can ask your customers to rate their interactions with your customer service team right after their ticket is resolved, to get a better idea of where you stand.
- Sales
If you implement a new customer service strategy or invest more budget into this function of your company you should be tracking your sales. This will allow you to confirm that the investment was worth it and readjust as needed, as your sales should logically have gone up.
All these metrics should be tracked over time when testing your customer service strategy, especially if you made any changes to how you do things, such as allocating more staff or hiring new customer service representatives in a certain country that speak a certain language.
If you see that your customer retention rate and satisfaction score has improved and your sales have gone up you will know why and will be able to justify allocating more budget to your customer experience department.
Scaling Your Business Through Your Customers Experience Efforts
A generally-recognized principle in marketing is that it is easier to sell to existing customers than to an audience that has never heard of you or purchased from you. But in order to be able to upsell those existing customers you need to treat them exceptionally well so that they are open and interested in purchasing from you again. So take advantage of that principle and invest your time and efforts in nurturing your customer base, it will pay off.
While you may still attract and retain some customers by providing an average customer service experience, you will not be making the most out of your existing audience and you will have to spend large amounts on marketing to grow your business.
On the other hand, if you offer exceptional customer service, your efforts will be rewarded by customers organically spreading the word about your business and new product releases free of charge. And humans tend to give more value to the opinions of people that they know than to advertising; there is nothing better or more effective than word-of-mouth marketing.
Let’s face it, there are a lot of great game studios out there and the competition is fierce – make your company stand out by putting your customers first.
We at iGlobe offer a wide variety of 24/7multilingual customer service experience solutions to help you stand out from your competitors and make you the CX reference in your industry. Get in touch with us today to discuss your needs!
If you have any questions about ASO on Google Play for your game, contact us today! Here at iGlobe, we offer gaming companies with various marketing, customer service, and translation services.
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