What’s customer experience?
Customer experience, also known as CX, is the interaction and experiences that your customer has throughout their entire customer journey. This includes the first contact and the final customer relationship.
Customer Experience ( CRM ) is an integral component of Customer Relationship Management. This is because customers who have a positive experience with businesses are more likely to be loyal customers.
According to a global CX survey, 74% of senior executives believed that customer experience is a key factor in a customer’s willingness to become a loyal advocate. You must invest in your customers’ experience if you want them to be loyal.
loyal customers are happy customers.
It is logical, doesn’t it?
Your loyalty to a brand will increase if you feel happy with it. If you treat customers badly or ignore customer service emails, they will be less likely to do business with you. Companies that provide a better customer experience are more successful than their competitors. This means customers will spend more time with you.
Here are some statistics that caught our attention.
· Customer experience has been the most important brand differentiation in recent years
· After one bad experience, 1 in 3 customers will abandon a brand they like.
· For the simple reason of having a great customer experience, customers are willing to pay a premium price of up to 13% for luxury and indulgence services.
· 49% have made impulse buys after receiving a more personal customer experience.
· Customers who rate companies with high customer satisfaction scores (i.e. 10/10 Spend 140% more, and stay loyal for up to 6 years.
It is crucial that you are focusing on the customer experience.
Customer experience is the same as customer service.
No. Here’s why.
Most customers will contact a company by first speaking with an employee, either in person or over the phone. This allows your company to provide great customer service.
Customer service is just one aspect of the customer experience.
If you call to book a vacation, and the agent is helpful and friendly, then that’s great customer service. If your tickets arrive on time and the hotel upgrades your rooms, that’s great customer service!
This is how they are different!
Customer experience, like many things in today’s marketplace, has changed. It’s not just person-to-person customer service. Thanks to technology, companies can now connect with customers in a new and exciting way.
CRM software allows you to view customer purchases and predict future needs, even before customers know they are looking. Being able to anticipate a future need allows you to be proactive and alert.
· Based on your purchase history, suggest related products
· Send targeted email marketing messages and create and send them.
· The 360-degree view of the customer
While customer service is still very important, it is not the only focus of the customer experience. The customer experience is now a way to improve customer relationships with technological advancements.
How is customer experience important?
Businesses cannot survive without customers. This is why companies focus on how to win new customers and, perhaps, keep existing customers.
A Customer Management IQ survey found that 75% of executives and leaders in customer experience management rated customer service a 5 on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most important.
This is the problem: Despite being a top priority, many companies fail to provide a great customer experience.
How many brands really deliver a great customer experience?
Surprisingly, there are not many.
In fact, less than half of all companies offer a great (or exceptional) customer experience.
Customers’ expectations are increasing faster than companies can improve customer service. Customers expect the best possible experience with every company they interact with, not just yours.
Impact of bad customer experiences
A great customer experience is about making sure all touch points with your company are easy, enjoyable, and seamless. The exact opposite happens when it comes to bad customer experiences.
Bad customer service costs more than $62 million each year. A second study showed that 91% of customers who are unhappy with a brand leave the brand without complaining.
It’s just too good to be true. Only 10 consumers believe brands deliver a positive experience.
Bad customer experiences are most often caused by:
· Difficult buying processes
· Customer support has been a source of negative experiences
· Compromise of a customer’s security
· Don’t wait too long to be put on hold
· Ignoring customer feedback
The question is, how can you create a great customer experience strategy for your company?
7 ways you can improve your customer experience
Let’s look at seven strategies to improve customer satisfaction and reduce churn.
1. A clear vision of customer experience
Your customer experience strategy starts with a clearly defined customer-focused vision you communicate to your company. This vision can be best defined by creating a series of statements that serve as guiding principles.
2. Know who your customers really are
Next, you need to make this customer experience principles real. This is how to show the different customer types that interact with your customer service teams. Your organization must be able to understand and sympathize with your customers if they are to truly understand their needs and wants.
Segmenting customers is one way to achieve this. Another method is to create personas (or customer profiles). You should give each persona a name.
Personas will help your customer service team recognize their personalities and better understand them. This is an important step towards being truly customer-centric.
3. Your customers will feel a connection.
Have you ever heard the expression “It’s not what I say, it’s how I say it”?
The best customer experiences are created by a member of your team that creates an emotional bond with a client.
Research from the Journal of Consumer Research found that more than 50% of experiences are based on emotion. Emotions shape attitudes and drive decisions.
Loyal customers are emotional and remember what they felt when they used a product or service. An organization that creates an emotional connection is more successful than its competitors in terms of sales growth.
It all comes down to the way you treat your customers. This has an impact on how they feel about you, their purchase decisions, and whether they return.
Customers who have a positive experience are a big deal, as studies show time and again.
· Consumers are 64% more likely to recommend a brand if they have a simpler experience and better communications.
· 71% of people would recommend a product/service if they had a great experience.
· A positive experience with a brand is more important than great advertising for 65% of consumers
4. Real-time customer feedback capture
What can you do to ensure that your customers have a memorable experience?
It is important to ask questions — and ideally, you do this by collecting feedback in real-time. To have real-time conversations, use chat tools. After that, you can send a follow-up email to every customer who used post-interaction surveys or similar customer experience tools.
It is possible to make outbound calls to customers to get more insight and feedback.
It is also important to link customer feedback with a particular customer support agent. This will show each member of the team the positive impact they have on the business.
5. For the development of your team, use a quality framework
Following the above steps will allow you to determine what customers think of the quality and service you provide. Next, identify the training requirements for each member of your customer service team.
Although many organizations evaluate the quality of email and phone communication, a quality framework allows you to track and schedule your team’s development through coaching, group training, and eLearning.
6. Regular employee feedback is a good thing.
Many organizations conduct annual surveys to gather feedback from their employees. This allows them to gauge how engaged they feel and whether they can deliver exceptional services.
What happens between these 11-month survey periods?
Most of the time, however, nothing happens. This is why continuous employee feedback is essential. It allows staff to share their ideas and gives managers the opportunity to view how employees feel about the company.
You can create a closed space where employees can give feedback.
7. Delivering great customer experiences can help you measure your ROI
Finally, how can you tell if your investments in technology, processes, and people are paying off?
The business results are the answer.
