The hidden cost of a poor digital experience for self-storage

There is no doubt that a bad customer experience (CX) causes business losses. Most straightforwardly, a lost customer is a lost sale. Add up the potential future sales, and the number grows. However, it does not end here. An unhappy customer is very vocal and will scare away other potential customers. Every negative review puts your reputation as a business at risk.

It is challenging, maybe even impossible, to quantify the price tag of bad CX in a currency, but it is high. Here are a few hair-raising statistics about CX gone wrong.

• 93% of customers read reviews online before making a purchase.
• Of these, 68% check reviews on social networking sites. They say that they trust the reviews as much as recommendations by friends and family.
• 80% of customers won’t buy from a business with negative reviews.
• Every second customer is willing to switch to the competitor after just one negative experience with a business.
• Slow loading pages, faulty links, and other problems with your website can cost you 20% of your visitors every month. That is 20% of your marketing budget thrown out into the air.
• According to Google, 53% of customers abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Poor CX experience causes a vicious cycle that is difficult to break. Lost customers cause lower profits, which cause budget cuts. In turn, budget cuts affect staff morale and turnover increases. With higher turnover come higher staffing costs, onboarding, and training expenses. Staffing problems also cause bottlenecks, which then negatively affect your customer experience.

The best course of action is to stop the problem from manifesting in the first place. Good CX is all about prevention and planning. We also speak of Customer Experience Management (CEM) Strategies. A CEM is a long-term strategy that incorporates all channels and customer touchpoints to ensure that every interaction adheres to the same high-quality standard. At every point of the journey, your customer will have the same level of experience. CEM helps cement a customer-centric culture within the organization to make sure everyone pulls at the same rope.

A convincing digital customer experience builds on cloud-based, efficient, and effortless technologies, adds credibility, and, most importantly, safety. Many businesses suffer from poor digital experience because their systems are outdated and often custom-made. They make you vulnerable to security threats and make it harder to keep up with the newest developments and trends.

We work with two solutions to manage the digital customer experience in and around self-storage: Zendesk for all matter customer support and Storeganise for all matters bookings, payments, and management.

With Storeganise, you can manage every aspect of your self-storage business – customer-facing front end and back end from any device, anywhere in the world. You can fully automize and digitize booking, contract signing, invoicing, and billing with the software. Your customer can manage other aspects of their storage unit, like scheduling move-ins and move-outs or requesting item delivery. Within valet storage, they can easily manage and review the stored inventory. Storeganise takes over many repetitive and time-consuming tasks on the back-end, like generating and sending invoices or payment reminders. In facilities that work with smart locks, you can set up the system to lock doors if a customer is behind on their bills. The software is cloud-based and easily integrates with other modern solutions to manage your customer experience.

Zendesk is an all-in-one solution for an effortless, omnichannel customer support experience. You can manage every aspect of your help center, from FAQ to call enter from within the interface. Zendesk comes with a toolbox to automate repetitive tasks, making sure that no customer goes unheard and no inquiry is forgotten. You can use the knowledge center to encourage customers to self-service their troubleshooting with the FAQ or chatbot 24/7. This will deflect many questions and drastically decrease your resolution time. As both a Zendesk and Storeganise partner, we can help you select the right mix of tools for the future of your business. We have over two decades of experience working with self-storage and small businesses in Asia. Our consultants are multilingual and multicultural – giving them an insight into the markets and customer behavior that you won’t find elsewhere.