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Table of Contents
Introduction
If you want your company to have a loyal following, increased revenue, and a bigger consumer base, then it is time to invest in customer experience (CX). You could have the best product in the world, but if your cx is poor, it will not matter. Don’t believe us? In this guide, we’re going to break down what the customer experience really is, the benefits of making it a main focus of your brand, and how you can create experiences your customers will actually enjoy and remember.
Key takeaways
Customer Experience Shapes How People See You: Customer Experience (CX) is the journey customers go through every time they interact with your business. A seamless, consistent, and personalized CX builds trust, loyalty, and long-term value.
Investing in CX Directly Impacts Revenue: Strong CX is a profit driver. Companies that prioritize CX will see increased retention, more referrals, and higher revenue.
Personalization & Feedback Are Game Changers: Improving CX starts with understanding your customer, creating meaningful interactions every step of the way, and continuously collecting feedback using tools like CSAT, CES, and NPS.
What is Customer Experience (CX)?
Customer experience (CX) is the journey consumers take from the first impression of your brand, to the very last interaction.
Think about all the ways your consumers experience your brand.
Does your website, social media, customer support agents create a positive, memorable experience?
If not, it’s time to start investing in CX. A great customer experience can help in establishing brand loyalty, increase profits, and bring in new consumers.
Fall short, and the consequences could be quite the opposite. Providing an outstanding CX experience today, will result in your customers returning tomorrow.
Importance of Investing in CX
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If you don’t invest in creating a memorable experience for your client, why should they invest in you?
A strong CX builds trust and creates lasting relationships.
An article by PWC shows that 32% of consumers will walk away from a brand, even if they love it, after just one bad experience.
Building loyalty involves investing in every single aspect of the customer experience.
Investing in CX can lift your revenue, increase repeat customers, and cause your best customers to be excellent marketers of your business.
In fact, according to research conducted by Deloitte Digital, companies that are customer focused are 60% more profitable compared to those who aren’t.
Happy customers buy more and if your business can invest the time in resources into creating a positive customer experience, you will earn more. To invest in customer experience, you first need to understand what makes up the client experience.
Understanding Client Experience
Customer experience starts with the very first interaction with your business and it’s crucial that you provide a genuine connection to the very end.
A successful client experience relies on creating a foundation of trust and added value overtime. Some key elements of the client experience include:
Communication:
Providing quick, clear communication is a great way to build confidence between your brand and the customer. It helps to keep agents trained and use software like CRMs to manage interactions with all clients.
Transparency:
Your clients deserve honesty and being upfront about your capabilities and timelines are a great way to establish trust from the get go.
Consistency:
If you don’t know who you are, your clients won’t either. So having a clear brand voice and messaging across all platforms will help consumers identify with and remember your brand.. Omnichannel support is one of the ways you can integrate communication channels and provide uniformity.
Personalized Interactions:
Offering tailored communication and support goes a long way in creating brand loyalty and making the customer feel seen. AI technology is also useful with personalizing interactions because it can analyze data to help predict any potential issues.
A business that understands the elements of the client experience is one step closer to improving their customer retention and increasing profits.
Customer Experience Examples
Before we dive into the good, let’s talk about a CX misstep that gained national attention.
A customer once tried to cancel their service and spent nearly 20 minutes on the phone being pressured to explain why, as the representative repeatedly refused to proceed.
The call went viral—and not in a good way.
This entire experience became a powerful reminder that it only takes one misstep to potentially lose a client for good.
Now lets pivot and explore how some companies with the help of Global Response are setting a high bar for customer experience in the retail and tech industries.
CX Case Study #1
Facing a surge in customer complaints and declining online sales due to subpar support from their third-party contact center, FILA partnered with Global Response to elevate its customer experience.
Our team of experts created more efficient systems to reduce case response times, implement best practices, and provide a team of trained agents that could effortlessly scale.
By implementing a customer-first approach. FILA saw:
- 25% increase in sales
- 28% decrease in customer issues
- A complete transformation of their customer experience
By overhauling their customer experience, FILA turned dissatisfied customers into loyal brand advocates.
CX Case Study #2
Another example comes from FinTech who struggled with conversion rates and sought a customer experience partner to enhance its performance.
Working with Global Response, the firm was able to provide personalized interactions, streamlined call flows, and clearer communication to make the user experience better.
This shift in customer experience resulted in tripled the Eligible Conversion rates, showing once again how companies that focus on the CX client experience are more profitable.
Strategies for Improving Customer Experience
If your company currently has not invested as much in the customer experience, don’t worry.
There are ways to improve it.
Start first with customer journey mapping.
This is a process where you outline your customers’ journey along with any touch points they might encounter (ads, social media, email, etc.), to give you a better understanding of how customers react to your brand.
There are a variety of ways to do customer journey mapping and what you include on your map will be specific to your business.
Customer experience can also be improved by creating personalized interactions.
In a study conducted by BCG, personalizing customer interactions provided a more positive experience by adding value, convenience, and overall more enjoyment.
Some effective ways to personalize customer interaction are:
- Use AI: Artificial intelligence can be used to analyze customer data in order to provide a better experience. It can predict customer needs, suggest next steps, and even automate follow-ups, all while maintaining your brand voice.
- Omnichannel Support: Your customers value consistency and you can provide that by integrating communication channels.
- Personalized Communications: You are more likely to acquire customers if they feel connected to your brand. So customize language and behavior whenever and wherever you interact with them.
Helpful Tip:
Actually listen to your customers.
To get feedback, try metrics such as the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) or the Customer Effort Score (CES).
Both of these metrics provide first-hand knowledge on how customers feel or experience your brand.
These and more will be covered further down the article when discussing how to measure the success of your CX.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Your CX
A good CX strategy will not be effective without proper tracking.
Establish the metrics you are using as well as KPIs to monitor.
Make sure that KPIs are specific, tangible, and trackable.
As mentioned before, metrics are a good way to get feedback from your customers and adjust your customer experience strategy as needed.
A few popular KPIs to measure customer satisfaction are:
- CSAT: The Customer Satisfaction Score is measured by creating surveys to get a better idea of the customer’s happiness with a product or service.
- CES: Get a better insight on how easy or difficult interacting with your company is with the Customer Effort Score.
- NPS: Use the Net Promoter Score to help you understand how consumers generally view your brand.
Using these metrics will reflect how well your CX strategy is working and indicate any areas of improvement.
Future Trends in Customer Experience
Artificial intelligence is changing customer experience more and more everyday.
Automations and virtual agents work together to provide an improved experience without feeling robotic.
Automations can be customer facing and agent facing to refine, and speed up the process.
AI can also be used to analyze data to provide valuable customer insights.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) helps it gain a better understanding of mood and subtext.
These insights help companies anticipate customer needs and problems resulting in more personalization.
AI is going to make the customer experience better by assisting in the process and empowering customer support teams to deliver faster, more personalized service across every channel.
Conclusion: The Long-Term Benefits of Investing in CX
Great customer experience doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice.
The brands that focus on people, streamlining processes, and providing a personalized experience are the ones customers will keep coming back to.
Invest in your CX and increased brand loyalty, more customers, and higher revenue will come your way.
As professional speaker Bob Hooey once said, “If you are not taking care of your customers, your competitor will”.
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