If you’re running a successful local business, chances are that customer satisfaction is important to you. You answer the phone in a friendly, welcoming tone. Everyone who comes into your business is greeted with a smile and a “How can I help you?” You make a point of treating customers with respect, delivering what you promise on time , and following up to be sure everything went well — and that the customer will speak well of you to others.

We all want that to be our customer experience wherever we go. But customer satisfaction isn’t just something we want to experience when we physically interact with a business. It’s just as important (and sometimes more so) when we’re online. People have learned to be cautious on the Internet for good reason: There are a lot of bad people out there.

Engaging customers in a trustworthy matter makes all the difference when you’re trying to convert prospects into leads, and leads into customers. That’s why considering your visitors’ overall customer experience online is so important to your marketing strategy.

In today’s digital world, chances the relationship you have with your customers is going to include several online channels, including your website, landing pages, social media, email, mobile interactions, and more. Customer experience is much more than just a friendly voice on the phone.

These tools give you many more ways to communicate with people, but to be blunt, they also offer more ways to goof up. You can be the nicest, most professional person on the phone and send out thoughtful emails full of information that’s valued by your customers, but say the wrong thing one time on Facebook or Twitter, and your reputation can suffer serious damage.

Take a look at your website and/or landing pages. View what you’ve communicated purely from the potential customer’s perspective. Are you offering a solution to something the customer needs solved? Is your message consistent and relevant? Are you making it easy for the customer to understand the call to action and take advantage of it? These are all core aspects of a satisfactory customer experience.

Analyze your other digital channels the same way. Are you offering a discount through one channel that’s not replicated through others? If so, you’re risking dissatisfaction from customers who paid the higher price, only to discover the discount elsewhere.

When you pitch something in an email or blog post, does the landing page you’ve linked clearly relate to what you’ve promised? If the visitor feels like the victim of a bait-and-switch, that’s curtains for customer experience.

When you generate an opt-in email list, are you clearly communicating to the subscriber exactly what he or she will be getting, and when? Do your subsequent emails deliver on that promise? Have you considered a second-step opt-in promise that requires the recipient to confirm an interest in receiving regular emails from you? All these things go a long way toward ensuring a truly satisfactory customer experience.

If you find that you’re not delivering on customer experience as fully and consistently as you want, our marketing pros can help. We can help you implement best practices to keep prospects, leads, and current customers happy and coming back for more.