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The importance of customer experience for the success of companies

The customer experience (or “customer experience”) is at the heart of all the businesses that aim for success. When your customers feel valued and achieve the overall experience with your brand or product, they usually come back to buy. But if the interaction is negative, they probably go to the competition and become detractors, [...]

January 28, 2022 · Dudu Gentil · 10 min read

The importance of customer experience for the success of companies

The customer experience (or “customer experience”) is at the heart of all the businesses that aim for success. When your customers feel valued and achieve the overall experience with your brand or product, they usually come back to buy.

But if the interaction is negative, they'll probably get the competition and become detractors, which is not good for those who depend on sales.

We have already talked a lot here on the Blog about market authority and especially how your brand's reputation is as or more important than the products or services you offer. Therefore, creating an excellent customer experience not only makes sense in business, but it is the key to boosting your company's growth in the long term.

The application of a good customer experience has changed a lot in recent years.

What is customer experience?

The best definition comes from HubSpot: “The customer experience is the impression that your customers have of their brand as a whole in all aspects of the buyer’s journey. This results in their view of their brand and impacts factors related to their results, including revenue.”

Understand that customer experience is essentially the overall experience of the brand. From discovery to checkout to post-purchase, the experience your customers have with your brand is widely shaped and influenced by the journey you create for them.

Do well and you will see customer satisfaction, his loyalty and even the final result of your company get a good boost. Understand wrong and don't be surprised to see some customers go away, sometimes forever.

As we know, saying it is easier than doing it.

In the constantly evolving digital world, it is not uncommon for customers to jump between channels, often without realizing, when interacting with online brands.

For them, it doesn't matter what channel they're on; all that matters is that the brand experience is consistent and good, wherever they are.

There are several ways brands can raise customer experience today, but the main challenge does not allow deviations: the end-to-end customer experience is already part of the long-term planning, in the most successful companies and businesses in the world.

Increase in revenue

Start from the premise that a satisfied customer will continue to return for more purchases. Research shows that loyal customers contribute to a 300% revenue increase over a three-year period. This contrasts strongly with an unsatisfactory customer base, which can reduce your revenue by up to 14% in a year.

These are very attractive numbers to ignore, especially with the mind that improving the customer experience is not a complicated thing to do.

A simple act of receiving feedback from customers and using them to improve your services would already be a good start to satisfy the customer. It is more about showing a genuine effort to take a step forward to solve the customer problem.

Delivering an exceptional customer experience ensures high fidelity and retention. The more loyal the customer, the more purchases happen. And the most satisfied customers also help spread the positive mouth-to-mouth and provide new customers through references.

All of this positively impacts your organization's business revenue. After all, which company doesn't want to improve its financial performance?

When it comes to customer loyalty, I can quote Apple as an example. They make great products, although they are more expensive, but offer exceptional and proven service have some of the most loyal customers on the planet.

Think of the customer’s digital experience

Chatbots or conversational marketing platforms are more than just customer service tools and can also be great for marketing and sales. In addition, chatbots are being integrated into social networks and other tools to automatically respond to consumer direct messages.

Chatbots offer two main advantages about talking to a human: speed and availability. Artificial Intelligence (IA) can handle more consultations than humans and does so at an almost instantaneous rate.

These advantages are especially important for users not so digitally evolved. Try using platforms to make better use of chatbots and deal with simple queries or support requests.

But, watch out:

Human customer service agents are still an obligation for companies. Consumers in 2021 were still reluctant to trust chatbots. Only 63% of consumers are satisfied with the service of a chatbot, assuming they can request a human customer service representative if necessary.

Take Multichannel Care Serious

Companies interact with their customers on multiple channels, which can be through forms on their website, live chat, social networks and more.

However, while customers may be satisfied and accept different levels of service from different channels, they also expect communication to remain consistent.

And here's a crucial question: are you providing a consistent experience across all channels, both online and offline?

It may be challenging, but the gold standard that can be used as a positive example in the great customer experience is the IKEA.

If you go to any IKEA store around the world, you'll have the same experience. IKEA invests heavily in customer experience and the positive result has been enormous. IKEA is not just one of the world’s most beloved companies, but its annual revenues have reached more than $40 billion worldwide.

And it is this level of execution and result that is driving investment in omnichannel experience. In its 2020 report, the PWC consultancy found that the number of companies investing in omnichannel experience has jumped from 20% to more than 80%.

The custom customer experience

The time of the standard automatic service is gone. Current customers want to know if their wishes, needs and expectations are being met throughout the customer experience. In fact, about 86% of them say that personalization now has at least some effect on their purchasing decisions.

From your email marketing efforts to the customer information that service agents and solutions like automated chatbots have, they need to offer numerous opportunities to make customer experience unique and personal.

Think about offering your customers exclusive offers based on your previous purchases, encouraging side-by-side purchases with targeted discounts and anything else that essentially caters to customers wherever they are in your relationship with your company.

From the point of view of customer service, this may mean that agents – or customer self-service solutions – can track the complete history of a service request or access a customer’s profile, to check previous purchases and other useful information, to ensure that the interaction is as quick and painless as possible, leaving the customer with a positive resolution.

In this sense, try to segment your prospects and customers to make a good delivery of content or offers that meet the different levels of the purchase journey.

How to analyze the results obtained?

For your company to determine the effectiveness of your initiatives in the best customer experience, it is vital that you can measure your management. Tools that calculate the Net Promoter Score (NPS) can help measure how your customers perceive their services, brand loyalty, and the likelihood of recommending your brand to others.

However, your methods of measuring the effectiveness of your efforts should not end up frustrating users by making challenging demands. For example, if you use customer satisfaction surveys, make it easy to fill out. These surveys should not take more than 3 to 5 minutes to complete and should have a maximum of 15 to 20 questions.

The pillars of customer experience

Salesforce platform highlights the three main pillars to apply to companies of any size, with a view to an incredible customer experience: effort (effort), emotional (emotion) and success (success).

Effort: When talking about customer experience, the effort is not related to what the company should do to achieve this goal. It is about the importance of reducing the customer's effort throughout the process of interaction with the brand. This includes rapid and effective care to the use of clear and accessible language. The easier and more enjoyable the experience, the better!
Emotional: this pillar concerns the development of an emotional bond between the client and the company. Putting the customer always ahead, making him feel heard and delivering an experience made for him is essential to make him a loyal customer and, more than that, a brand lawyer, someone who will point out his experience to other people.

I've talked about this before in the customization part.

Success: The company must do everything in its power to ensure that the customer has the objectives achieved during the interaction with the brand or product. And this involves the process from beginning to end, from finding what he was looking for to be satisfied with the care and what was given to him. This is a very striking aspect for any consumer and can be used to measure whether an experience was positive or negative.

Conclusion

To focus on some things, consider mobile phone and messaging apps like WhatsApp increasingly vital environments to support your customers. Also, try to provide a consistent experience on all platforms.

Remember that your customers expect excellence, and it's up to you to offer them that. Satisfied customers will talk about it, but anyone who gets dissatisfied will have a significant impact on retention, growth of the base and overall value of the company. So go ahead and create amazing experiences!

Dudu Gentil · Nacionalvox

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