Does CX Customer Experience impact Revenue growth?
A customer’s overall experience when interacting with a business can be the decider between winning and losing over the long term. A recent survey among shoppers found that 73% of the respondents said that customer experience (CX) was the deciding factor when making purchase decisions. In contrast, two-fifths of the respondents were willing to pay more when they found a friendly customer experience. When companies provide outstanding customer experiences, businesses see higher conversion rates, see more loyal customers and create brand awareness for the product through word-of-mouth marketing. But what is customer experience, and is it crucial in increasing revenue growth?
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience is the perception of your company by your customers. Customer Experience is the result of every interaction that a customer has at every touchpoint of the business- from the visit to the website, engagement with online chat or a call to your office/ showroom, interaction with staff or interaction with the product or service, the purchase process, post-purchase experience with the product and or service staff interaction.
Everything a company does when designing, marketing, and selling the product is designed to move the customers’ perception of the company positively.
The customer experience acts as the signature on the dotted line stating whether the company lived up to its promise and decides whether you have a repeat and loyal customer or a disgruntled one who will never stop bad-mouthing you. Customer experience, in short, is the decider for the success of an organization.
The Importance of Customer Experience
In recent times, organizations have outright dismissed the importance of customer experience, forgetting that it can make or break the company in the long run. A study by Forrester found that companies that prioritize customer experience can outperform their peers in revenues by as much as 80%. A positive customer experience fuels word-of-mouth publicity through positive reviews, references, and recommendations across their circle of influence and beyond, bringing traction to your offerings. A study confirms that WOM (word-of-mouth marketing) publicity significantly impacts decision-making since 95% of prospective customers read reviews, and 86% said they considered it an essential factor when making a purchase. An enhanced customer experience brings additional benefits, such as lower cost of customer acquisition, lower marketing expenses, saved costs & consequently increased profits over time. A loyal customer base helps boost the long-term growth of the organization organically. By creating a great customer experience, organizations make customers feel appreciated, building trust and implicitly encouraging them to buy more from the company.
How Can Companies Improve Their Customer Experience?
Having identified customer experience as a vital cog in the wheel called organization. Let us understand how companies can achieve it.
Step one is to map your customer journey. The last 2+ years have been fraught with change forcing consumers to alter their purchase journey; while markets and life is returning back to normal, the customer journey has altered itself on its way back to normalcy. The purchase journey may be unique to each industry here is one that works for us
Using Automation — Companies can automate certain aspects of the business, including the inventory management process and customer service requests, to ensure a smooth &efficient experience. By automating inventory management, companies can ensure that they don’t have problems with a stock out, which can often create a negative experience for shoppers and lead to them moving to competitors. Similarly, employing bots to provide 24/7 customer support can be crucial in helping customers deal with their challenges. Bots have also been increasingly successful in other customer-facing tasks by leveraging natural language processing, ensuring that lead generation and conversion are much smoother for the business.
Improving In-Person Experience — As Richard Branson famously says, take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business — is a mantra that we all need to live by if success is the goal. Companies need to focus on employee engagement to minimize discontent. Disgruntled employees make for rude and disengaged customer engagement. SOPs need to be defined for customer interaction, and training needs to be imparted to get everyone on the same page and equally skilled. Front-ending employees need to be empowered to take decisions that help deliver a seamless experience to the customer. The exercise is required to be replicated at every customer touch point to ensure that the customer gets a consistent experience. For building customer advocacy and brand, consistency is the key.
Employing Big Data — Businesses have previously failed to provide the best customer experience as they have generally lacked insight into the customer’s preferences. With increased digitalization, businesses can now leverage big data to create a deeper understanding of customer behaviour, including shopping preferences and interests. By understanding these preferences, companies can create personalized experiences that cater to each customer, thus delivering the best customer service. A survey by Gartner found that 80% of businesses that collected customer data ultimately showed positive revenue growth.
Prioritizing Convenience — A recent survey conducted with responses collected from shoppers found that 76% of the respondents prioritized convenience as the number one reason when selecting a retailer. Nearly half (46% of respondents) said they would pay a premium for convenience. Thus, businesses need to create the smoothest shopping experience, including
- Creating a Personalized Shopping Experience
- Continuity in Shopping When Switching from One Device to Another
- Seamless, Fast Delivery
- Convenient, Speedy Checkout Experience
- Smooth Returns Process
- Seamless omnichannel experience
Increase Engagement — Now more than ever, customers want to engage with the brands they shop from, including receiving answers to questions and inculcating feedback into the product experience. A survey conducted by Linnworks research found that 77% of the participants had a more positive view of the company when it actively sought out feedback. Customers also want to shop in places that offer a more personalized experience, offering intelligent product recommendations based on past purchases or interests, customized messaging and promotions in communications such as emails or messages, and storing shipping information for future purchases. Using tools like artificial inelegance can also help businesses better understand customer behavior. Brands can thus use this to create a more personalized approach, increasing cross-selling opportunities and revenue growth.
Conclusion
Creating the best customer experience from the beginning of the shopping lifecycle to the end is crucial for companies in the modern business environment. Businesses need to use the latest tools, including artificial intelligence, big data, and automation, to create a more personalized customer experience. Prioritizing customer experience at the heart of the operations ensures that the organization sees its revenues grow more quickly and has reduced costs as a result of lower marketing expenses and higher customer loyalty and engagement, which encourages repeat purchases & higher spending over time.
