
Never underestimate the importance of a positive customer experience.
A failure to meet the needs of your audience can have a major impact on your churn rate, chasing valuable buyers away to your competitors. In fact, 73 percent of consumers cite a good experience as a major factor in their purchasing decisions.
This applies to all of your buyers, including those affected by disabilities. One of the most prevalent is vision impairment, with 1.3 billion people living with sight-related problems.
Accessibility is a vital factor affecting the quality of customer experience you provide. Businesses may even want to take a look at this webpage to learn how implementing a customer experience management platform could take their CX to the next level which will hopefully translate into increased business and customer retention. Here are 5 tips to help you improve business’s accessibility.
1. Gather Feedback from your Customers
One of the simplest, most effective ways to discover more about your existing and prospective customers is to simply ask.
Send surveys out to buyers or visitors, invite them to answer a few brief questions and include polls on social media. Ask them how accessible they feel your property and website are to everyone, including those with disabilities, and welcome their suggestions.
Make sure that everyone can share their experiences, whether in person or online. This will let you know which accessibility issues should be addressed as a priority, and why.
2. Consider Layouts and Physical Obstructions
Just because you find your workplace easy to navigate doesn’t mean everybody else does.
Perhaps the layout of your office, store, shopping mall or other environment is inconvenient for people with visual impairments — it may even be dangerous.
Keep all physical obstructions (such as seating, signs and barriers) to a minimum. This is safer for people dependent on guide dogs, wheelchairs or canes.
3. Ensure all Employees are Sensitive to Visitors’ Needs
If any of your customers/visitors are affected by visual impairments, they want to feel as if your business will take care of them while in your premises.
This means all staff they interact with should be trained on dealing with customers in a sensitive, sympathetic manner. Employees must deliver a positive experience and ensure they receive the help they need.
They should also be able to identify accessibility flaws, as they’re on the frontline of customer service.
4. Utilize Indoor Navigation Aids
Indoor navigation solutions or indoor orientation solutions like RightHear are a powerful way to help customers affected by visual impairments enjoy the best experience with your business.
This app utilizes innovative sensor technology to provide guidance to users indoors, helping them navigate your business with ease. Once sensors have been installed, anyone using the app will receive clear audio directions throughout the areas covered.
This is a terrific way to help boost your accessibility.
5. Be Willing to Go Above and Beyond
Don’t just settle for the minimum accessibility required of you by ADA regulations. Instead, aim to make your business a leading force in your local area, highlighting the need for a more inclusive, sensitive culture.
Take advantage of all the digital signage, indoor navigation solutions, braille, training and other resources available to help maximize accessibility in your workplace. Not only will you be more welcoming to people with visual impairments, you’ll inspire other businesses to do the same.
These 5 tips offer practical ideas to help you embrace accessibility and provide people affected by blindness with a more satisfying customer experience. Remember to take people’s personal views and insights into account: ask consumers what they want and build a strategy that aims to solve their problems.
Have more tips on how the business can be even more accessible?
Let us know in the comments below.