Council Post: 15 Steps To Humanize Your Customer Experience In Virtual Settings

Customer experiences have always been difficult to gauge. In many situations, creating a positive experience fell to professionals aiming to humanize the experience and put customers at ease. In-person connections have always helped improve customer relations. But this is difficult to achieve, especially nowadays with the limitations placed on companies by the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead of leveraging individual customer care for experiences, businesses have had to shift into the virtual space. For many professionals, it can be challenging (if not impossible) relating an in-person customer experience (CX) to a virtual setting. However, if a business wants to humanize their interactions with consumers, it needs to vault this hurdle.

Below, 15 experts from Forbes Business Council share the steps that a company ought to take if it wants to humanize its virtual environment into a much more involved customer experience.

1. Be Transparent

Be real and transparent. Let your personality show and invite your audience to do the same. Particularly now, we’re all starving for connection while having to keep physical distance. Ask questions, invite reactions, engage and respond in as close to real time as possible. Create topics to discuss and invite people into video conferencing so everyone gets to know each other better. – Sharon Lynn Livingston, The Livingston Center for Professional Coaching

2. Ensure Constant Communication

This has been a topic of talk for years and I don’t think that Covid-19 has made this any harder than it was before. The solution remains the same—constant communication with our customers will humanize the customer experience. In order to humanize, we must connect and communicate. – Joshua Osborne, Mr. & Mrs. Leads

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3. Bring The Team On

Even though you can conduct a virtual experience alone, it doesn’t mean you should. Having a team can enhance the virtual experience. Have someone that can engage the viewers in the comments. Someone to hold breakout sessions and have targeted conversations. Gamify your virtual session with competitions and prizes. I also like to send my viewers presents they can utilize during the live via snail mail. – Nselaa Ward, JD, Ni Nava & Associates, LLC

4. Turn On Your Webcam

I recently read an article from Gong.io which showed that deals are successfully won at a 41% higher rate when a webcam is used by the presenter. One way of enhancing and humanizing your customer experience is turning on your camera for the next Zoom call! – Bryce Kapitzky, GrowthLever

5. Make It Personal

Make it personal by doing the research on who you are reaching out to and tailoring your offering so it’s relevant to that person. This is not unique to a virtual situation but has become even more important when trying to establish brand-new relationships in a virtual setting. Do not be afraid to show some personality and bring in nonbusiness elements like movie or book recommendations. – Peta Conn, Invest Northern Ireland

6. Set Formal Guidelines

One thing companies could do to make the virtual experience more human is to set formal guidelines and provide formal education for moderators and hosts of meetings. For example, by now it is readily apparent that leading a virtual meeting is more of an art than a science. Hence, an element of that art is the host’s ability to keep all members of a virtual group actively engaged and feeling empowered. – Jeff Livingstone, Igia Pharmaceuticals

7. Have Regular Check-Ins

In my company, telemedicine has been a mainstay in keeping the business afloat and staying connected to our patients who desperately want to hear from us and keep their dreams of growing their families moving forward. I have found that regular check-ins are tremendously important. We provide regular updates about what we are doing in service of them, the patients. – Cindy Duke, Nevada Fertility Institute

8. Don’t Forget Small Talk

Don’t forget about small talk! Turn on your video and turn off distractions. Ask other meeting attendees how they are doing and really listen. Compassion and empathy go a long way in forming meaningful connections. – Beth Trejo, Chatterkick

9. Analyze Customer Behaviors

As Covid-19 was a collective shock, it’s having a decisive influence on many aspects of everyone’s behavior. Consumer behavior has changed drastically following the pandemic. Thanks to neuroscience and AI techniques, each consumer can be analyzed as a distinct silo and treated to a hyper-personalized marketing approach. A large number of marketing tasks should be delegated to algorithms. – Michel Kilzi, Fineon Exchange SA

10. Personalize Your Service

To enhance and humanize the customer experience in virtual settings, a company should personalize their service by means of providing personalized recommendations and humanizing communication. Companies should also avoid the overuse of automation solutions like chatbots. – Vladyslav Savchenko, Powercode

11. Stay Focused On Customer Needs

The most effective way to enhance and humanize the customer experience in virtual settings is to remain focused on who your customer is and what their needs are. Put yourself in their shoes and go through your various touch points adding personal touches at every step which are linked to them and why they do business with you. – Eric Rozenberg, SecuTix

12. Hire A Speaking Coach

Companies should hire a speaking coach to get their team up to speed with best practices on communicating well, conveying the right nonverbal cues and practicing visual presentations and “Zoom etiquette” in various scenarios. Habits developed during phone calls can make you look distracted or bored, but presenting yourself as a “televised speaker” can really command a client’s attention and respect. – Victoria Lakers, The Lancer Group

13. Don’t Use Virtual Backgrounds

I try not to hide the fact I am in my own home. If there is art/pictures in the background or you can see my bed, I won’t go out of my way to hide those. There is nothing more personal than seeing into someone’s home and I feel that builds trust. What you have in the background also shows your personality, so I never use the default backgrounds. – Harrison Baum, Daily High Club

14. Find Ways To Delight

Find ways to delight your team or clients in the meeting. What can you do to surprise them or personalize the interaction? It may be you ordering lunch to be delivered remotely to everyone and that’s a welcome surprise. Or everyone shows up in costume to a theme. People want connection. Even giving mini tours of the virtual office or doing a “meet the dogs/kids” show and tell would work. Think outside the box and roll with it. – Paden Hughes, Gymnazo Inc

15. Inject Humor

Inject humor into the mundane. Surprise and delight with unexpected questions. Share a recent joke your kids learned in class or one that you learned from your parents. Being able to laugh disarms tension, builds rapport and conveys one’s humanness, leading toward a more positive customer experience. Humor requires a willingness to be vulnerable and invites the other to lower their guard, too. – Darragh Grove-White, This One Marketing