What Your Business Can Learn From Gaming Companies About Customer Experience
Are you providing the customer experience that your market expects? According to a report from Nielsen, only 8 percent of global consumers and 9 percent of US consumers say they are loyal to brands or products they’ve always bought. Today, having a great product or service isn’t enough to keep customers coming back. The experience is what drives customers to keep buying from you.
So, if so many brands aren’t able to retain their customers, where can they look to resolve this? One of the leading industries we can draw inspiration from is gaming. This industry has exploded, in part, because of the way gaming companies cater to their audiences.
Let’s explore how mobile gaming companies appeal to customers and what businesses can learn from them.
Gaming targets key demographics
Gaming companies attract a specific demographic that everyone else is chasing — millennials. According to the Millennials on Millennials report, two in three Millennials in the U.S. play video games every month. Research also shows that the popularity of gaming extends to other generations. More than 68 percent of Gen Z males report that gaming is an important part of their identity.
Clearly, gaming is a growing industry, but the most popular games have to engage and serve their customers to stay on top. How are they doing it? Successful gaming companies know how to give their customers the service that they expect on the platforms and devices they already use.
Gaming and mobile
The customer experience has changed as the popularity of mobile devices continues to rise. In fact, by 2021, mobile purchases will account for over 50 percent of US e-commerce sales. Consumers can do everything from setting alarms to trading stocks on their phones. Still, it’s been challenging for some companies to translate what they offer into an in-app digital experience. Gamers, in contrast, are inherently digital and mobile.
Set up to scale
Many companies wouldn’t be able to handle a sudden spike in customer inquiries. If a product launch is more successful than planned or a major problem occurs, businesses aren’t prepared to meet customers’ needs. That can either stifle growth or have a negative impact on your brand’s reputation.
For example, we can look at what happens during a product recall to illustrate this. A traditional company may be set up to handle the number of calls they usually get per month. If there’s an issue, like a recall, they won’t have the bandwidth to handle calls and customer service requests.
If your product or service sees more success than you expect, how would you scale? If there’s a problem, how will you ensure that you have the bandwidth to help customers? Most companies can’t keep up when the demand for customer support drastically fluctuates and then fail to retain customers as a result.
Gaming companies, on the other hand, are designing things to be scalable because they understand that demand can change and grow quickly. They can release an app and have thousands or even millions of users a month later. So, they design the product and customer service experience with that in mind from the start.
Prioritize the consumer experience
Some traditional companies tend to rely on the experiences they offer to customers outside of the digital world. You may have physical stores or brick and mortar locations with excellent service, but a bad digital experience can quickly sour relationships with consumers. Research shows that 88 percent of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. That means it’s critical to ensure that your customers can find everything that they need in a few taps.
Gaming companies know that the digital experience users have with them can make or break their success. They have to keep users immersed in the game. The only way to do that is to provide a great digital experience. So, they design the mobile experience to engage users and give them the information they need to continue playing.
How to be more like a gaming company
Want to know exactly how your enterprise can take the lessons learned from gaming and apply them to your product or service? To be more like a gaming company, you need the ability to scale your customer support. Here’s how you can do just that.
Upgrade your communication
Today, consumers expect quick responses from brands on all channels. However, many companies aren’t meeting that expectation. Often, shoppers are taken out of mobile apps to get support. This can create retention issues. Allowing users to find exactly what they need in-app is what improves the customer experience and increases brand loyalty. To make this happen, businesses need to level-up their communication.
That’s where technology can play a huge role. For example, asynchronous messaging, when combined with AI and chatbots, can work together to collect information, suggest helpful self-service options, and route issues to the proper agents. This ensures that you can resolve your customers’ issues as efficiently as possible.
Scale with ease
It’s true that businesses are under pressure to keep costs low and satisfaction high during their busy seasons, but this doesn’t have to come with a huge price tag. Instead of increasing costs by hiring more people, you can change how you scale with intelligent automation. This way, you won’t have to rely on a complete agent workforce, and you can handle more customers.
Put customers first
Customers have more choices than ever before. If they can’t get the answers they need when they have a question about your product or service, they’ll move on. If you aren’t there to respond to their concerns about an issue, they won’t purchase from you again.
This is why it’s so important to think about the experience your customers want to have and how you can give it to them. To reach the customers you’re targeting, you need to provide a great user experience and customer experience. That’s what will incentivize them to choose you over other options.
Conclusion
Want to keep customers coming back to your business? Take these lessons from the gaming industry and use them to transform the way you interact with your customers. This will help you reach audiences that you may have struggled to capture in the past.
