What You Get When You Get Empowered Customers
by Arnab Dey Customer Service 19 September 2022
Customer empowerment is all the rage right now, a term you can find splashed across the mission statements of startups and in the bodies of business articles.
But in truth, the concept has been around for decades – perhaps much longer. Empowered customers are more like an asset to the business.
Any time a merchant gives her customers the tools, resources, and attention they require to make successful purchases, she empowers that customer.
Whenever a service provider prioritizes transparency and accountability to advance consumer confidence, he empowers his customers.
What Are The Advantages Of Empowering The Customers?
What some of those mission statements and business articles fail to fully explicate, however, is why you should empower customers. What exactly is the upside? What will your business gain when you get empowered customers?
As you’ll discover below, the advantages are numerous and convincing.
Here is the power of empowerment.
1. Satisfaction
Let’s work our way from the ground up, beginning with the most obvious uptick with empowered customer satisfaction.
When you hand resources and options to a customer, you put them in the driver’s seat. Ideally, in a consumer empowerment model, the consumer always feels like they are in control of the purchase – because they are.
That control breeds confidence; that confidence breeds satisfaction. According to this McKinsey report, a customer empowerment strategy is far more effective than a “sales at all costs” strategy in boosting customer satisfaction.
2. Acquisition, Retention, And Loyalty
Customer satisfaction doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a metric that can profoundly impact other pivotal metrics, most notably acquisition, retention, and loyalty rates.
The through-line from empowered customers’ efforts to brand loyalty is a straight, short, and easy-to-follow line. As a company, you are generous with information, helpful with guidance, caring with choices, and accountable for your actions with transparency.
These are all traits a consumer might normally associate with a good friend or caring acquaintance. It’s natural, then, that the customer would feel incentivized toward loyalty.
As most business owners know, loyalty is worth its weight in gold. It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.
You May Also Check: How To Improve Customer Loyalty In Your Business
3. Stronger Company Values
Customer empowerment doesn’t just impact the consumer; it can also strengthen the internal culture of your organization.
Companies that have consumer-focused, articulate values and follow through on those values with an actionable business strategy inherently develop an attractive business culture – especially in today’s talent market, which prizes strong ethical points of view.
Take it from Regan McGee, the innovative tech maverick who runs Nobul. Speaking candidly about his successful real estate digital marketplace to Medium, he offered advice to other company leaders: “Focus on the consumer.
There is plenty of money for everybody. If you are focusing on the consumer, you could wake up and know what you are doing is good for the world and how to do that.
4. Consumer Ownership
When you get empowered customers, you get customers who take ownership over their purchase (a concept roughly related to “The Endowment Effect”). There’s a big difference between someone purchasing a service because it was foisted on them by aggressive sales tactics and someone purchasing a service after reviewing their choices and resources.
Similarly, there’s an appreciable difference between someone not liking a product because they don’t know how to use it and someone not caring for a product despite using it properly.
In the latter cases above, a consumer can take ownership over their purchase – whether they like it or not. If they enjoy their purchase, they feel confident, successful, and self-satisfied.
If they don’t like their purchase, they assume responsibility rather than blaming a coercive or unconcerned company. This sense of ownership may encourage a lower return rate and dissuade negative reviews.
5. Build Up The Consumer Trust Level
When you are empowering the customer, you can build up a strong consumer trust level. And one satisfied customer can drive at least three more customers to your business. This is the greatest achievement of empowering the customers.
An empowered customer can actually see the drawbacks of the products. So the manufacturers can see the drawbacks of the products. Then they can make the changes. So these small initiatives can increase the consumer’s trust levels and make things work.
The empowered customers know how to use wisdom and power for crowds and communications. Empowering the customers means this is more like affiliated marketing. Even for your branding, you no longer have to invest. Your customers will boost up the brand names.
Sum It Up:
In summary, empowering customers comes with a bevy of advantages. You get satisfaction, retention, loyalty, stronger company culture, and a consumer base that takes ownership of their decisions. Empowered customers mean a satisfied customer base.
This is a small initiative, but in the long run, these small initiatives are making a difference in your other competitor’s company business.
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