Tariffs have affected businesses of all sizes, but small businesses are bearing the brunt of the impact, since they comprise 97% of U.S. importers. As small businesses grapple with rising prices, which many admit is their biggest challenge, they’re searching for new strategies to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction, including improvements to customer experience (CX).
Let’s explore why stronger CX is crucial for today’s small businesses and different ways they can adjust their CX to better meet customers’ needs.
Small Businesses vs. The Big Dogs
While major companies like Amazon and Apple can afford to keep their distance from their customers, small businesses have much more to lose by taking the same approach. The cost of losing a few customers to a big corporation is much less impactful than to a small one, and larger companies have greater buying power, allowing them to navigate economic uncertainty with greater confidence.
Whether a small business is selling food, apparel, or a specific service, they must leverage strong and personal relationships to keep customers coming back, especially if they are seen as the ‘premium’ option amid price increases. To build this rapport, small businesses must work continuously to build proactive, personalized CX.
Tips for Strengthening Small Business CX
While small businesses can’t control the health of the economy or consumer spending patterns, they must be prepared to navigate these potential challenges. Luckily, with the help of emerging AI tools and technologies, there are plenty of ways to leverage technology and AI to make CX a differentiator that ensures ongoing loyalty. These can include:
- Offer 24-hour customer self-service: This sounds ambitious, but advancements in AI are making this a reality that is accessible and affordable for small businesses. According to the S. Chamber of Commerce, although the majority (77%) of small businesses plan to adopt emerging technologies, such as AI, they typically lack the same budget and resources as major companies, which consistently upgrade their internal tools and technologies. This leaves small businesses trying to compete with manual, outdated methods of providing customer service (like 1:1 phone calls or emails) that just don’t scale—especially off-hours or with a small team. However, AI platforms exist that offer sophisticated self-service capabilities at a consumable price, allowing small businesses to harness the power and benefits of AI and serve their customers around the clock without being overwhelmed by the costs.
- Centralize customer communications: Customers expect that every interaction with a small business is personalized to them—and remembered. Often, this is why they choose to do business with a small business rather than a large, anonymous provider. Centralizing knowledge about a customer’s purchase history, previous inquiries, order status, and recommendations ensures that the individualized touch is something that sets the business apart. Now, tools are available to make this personalization even more accessible to small businesses than ever before.
- Use AI to delight customers in real-time: AI allows small businesses to connect with customers more intimately than ever before. For example, AI can aid in translation, so language no longer acts as a barrier between customers and the small businesses they’re interested in supporting. AI can also help customer service representatives better gauge a customer’s tone of voice and provide context about their inquiries in real-time, removing any guesswork and potential misunderstandings.
By using AI in CX, small businesses also ensure they are seamlessly meeting customers’ needs, leading to greater satisfaction rates. To achieve this, here are some of the steps small businesses should take:
- Use centralized CX tools throughout the entire customer journey: When customers reach out to a small business, they often have to repeat their concerns, questions, and needs to each new person or department they encounter. To avoid this unnecessary hassle, small businesses can implement CX tools that enable all employees to see every point of the customer journey, so they can immediately and adequately begin servicing the customer and making personalized recommendations or responses.
- Implement agentic AI capabilities to reduce workloads: Small businesses have smaller teams, which typically means that employees wear many hats. To eliminate the bandwidth and time constraints associated with taking on all these responsibilities, small businesses can put AI agents in charge of specific tasks, like responding to routine inquiries and streamlining workflows. This allows small business employees to focus on more complex aspects of CX, which they may not have had the time to address otherwise.
AI is a key tool for small businesses to utilize to improve CX, as it allows them to maintain customer loyalty, offer personalized experiences, and stay competitive. While challenging times are inevitable, the way small businesses communicate and show up for their customers during difficult periods will sway their loyalty and satisfaction.
By leaning on 24/7 customer self-service, ditching outdated legacy software, and leveraging AI throughout the customer journey, small businesses can rest easy knowing that they are providing personalized CX that differentiates them from larger businesses.
Crystal Miceli is the SVP of Product & Industry Marketing at Talkdesk.
Photo courtesy Mariia Shalabaieva for Unsplash+