Trends That Show You Must Improve Customer Experience

What is customer experience, and why does it matter?

The quality of service a customer experiences when they shop for a brand affects the business more than you can imagine. 

Here are some ways customer experience can affect a business.

Sales and revenue

By satisfying customers, brands put themselves in a position to increase their revenue exponentially. Insights from a Salesforce research report show that 86 percent of customers will tend to make an additional purchase after a good customer experience. 

Put simply, great customer experiences  drive sales and may also inspire customers to promote a brand, which will eventually lead to more returning customers and even more sales.

Customer retention

The impression people get about a business service can make or break the enterprise. Therefore, consistent and excellent service will quickly convert potential into recurring customers. 

Then again, lousy service drives them away. Zendesk reports that about 80 percent of customers switch to competitors after a bad experience. 

Brand personality

Customer experience is a critical distinguishing factor that separates a business service from competitors. Yes, reduced prices, shopping discounts, and other factors matter greatly. 

However, consistently providing a pleasurable shopping experience will help create a unique brand identity that stands out from the competition.

Effect on brand loyalty

Business leaders and researchers often advise businesses to prioritize improving the customer experience over creating new customer acquisition strategies. 

Creating a more personal experience with customers helps them develop a sense of attachment toward a business. 

How to measure customer experience: 5 key metrics

When you implement a customer experience strategy in your business, you must see how effective your strategy is. You want to know what worked and what needs to be improved. 

Here are a few metrics that will help keep track of the quality of your customer experience. 

Net promoter score (NPS)

The net promoter score allows you to know – on a scale of one to ten – how willing a customer is to recommend a product or service to friends and family.

Customer effort score (CES)

When customers can easily navigate through your service or use your product, it’s a pointer to a good customer experience. 

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

The customer satisfaction score allows brands to know if customers are happy or not after using your service. They can get this score by asking customers to fill out a short survey after they interact with the brand.

Average resolution time

The average resolution time measures how long it takes a business support team to resolve customer complaints. A shorter resolution time typically translates to a better customer experience. The fewer pending issues on the ticket backlog, the better.

Customer churn rate

The customer churn rate shows how many customers stop engaging with a business. It helps you to know how many of your old customers you’re losing. 

One way to use the metrics above is by conducting a survey that helps you narrow down your customer’s interests. 

Business owners may further track customers’  interests by monitoring their purchase preferences. When you get their feedback, use these three steps to perform your analysis and rate your business’s customer experience.

1. Analyze customer satisfaction feedback. Take the results from each of the forms and group them.
2. Determine churn rate. Identify how many customers are leaving the business and set new targets to reduce the figure. 
3. Check the trends in customer support tickets. Analyze the customer support team reports, check the average resolution time, and the recurring issues that make customers complain. 

Spotting the need to improve customer experience

Research shows that the customer experience heavily influences customer actions, and many businesses are increasingly prioritizing customer satisfaction. A report from Dimensions Data shows that 88 percent of businesses see the customer experience as a potent strategy to beat the competition. 

Despite the increasing focus on CX, a PwC report on customer intelligence shows that many customers are still unsatisfied with their experiences with businesses. In the report, about 54 percent of U.S. customers say that most companies still need to make improvements in their customer service.

Although there is no exact way to measure the customer experience score, some scenarios may point to poor customer service. 

Increased churn rate

The churn rate is the percentage of customers who leave a business in a given period.

It’s used to measure customer loyalty or a company’s ability to retain customers. High churn rates are often a sign that a company is not meeting customer needs or not doing enough to keep customers engaged.

Consistent complaints from customers 

Even the best and most prominent businesses receive negative reviews from customers. However, when your business receives too many negative reviews or consistent complaints about an issue, it raises a red flag about the general customer experience.

Communication and transparency gap

The most loyal customers will likely doubt the integrity of a business if they ever feel conned. 

Businesses must understand that they’re in a relationship with their customers – hence the need for consistent and proper communication. 

Ways to Be More Transparent

• Pay attention to clients’ needs, 
• respond promptly to their questions, and 
• keep your campaign messages simple and engaging.  

If a business does not have that, it’s an indication they should work on customer satisfaction more.

Spotting the need to improve customer experience is one thing, developing a working strategy is another. 

A broad-view approach is often the preferred path, where companies can improve customer satisfaction at every contact point – from ensuring a unique returns process to providing better software interfaces, and prompt customer support.

Tips for improving the customer experience

When you spot these challenges, it’s imperative to start fixing them. Here are 5 things you can do.

Harness feedback culture 

Feedback is the best way to know if your customer experience strategy is genuinely compelling. You do not know whether your customers are satisfied unless you hear it from them. 

Always ensure that you ask customers for feedback to know how well you have performed and how you can improve.

A common trend among big companies is to employ omnichannel and multichannel strategies to build better customer interaction.

• Omnichannel strategy. The company employs various customer touchpoints, from social media to mobile apps, SMS, and live chat widgets, all working as a single framework.
• Multichannel strategy. Like omnichannel, this strategy uses various communication channels to interact with customers but each works independently of the other.

Prioritize trust

Building customer relationships can be tedious but it’s a necessary step to help you win customers’ trust. Such relationships make customers feel included in your brand.

When customers trust a brand, they may begin to refer other people to your business. Effective customer relationships can turn periodic customers into lifetime customers.

Create a personalized customer experience

Creating a personalized customer experience helps you tailor your customer’s experience specifically to their taste. 

It also helps you direct customers to products they’re likely to buy whenever you notify them of the latest offers. 

Provide an easy-to-use service

An easy-to-use service will increase customer satisfaction, so ensure that you have a high Customer Effort Score. This shows how easy it’s for customers to use your products or services. 

According to the PwC report cited earlier, around 70 percent of customers agree that quick delivery, customer comfort, and employee friendliness are crucial for achieving better customer service. 

For example, a positive return experience both improves customer relationships and makes it easy to resell this inventory, minimizing company costs.

Use automation for better service

Automated services provide you with a quick and effective way to handle lots of customer support services. They help to provide prompt responses to customers and save business owners lots of time, effort, and money. 

While adopting automation is excellent, it’s essential to keep the human feel alive as that is essential for building a better business-customer relationship. One way to achieve that is to consider using a CRM tool.

Time to improve your customer experience

Aside from competitive advantages, improvements in customer experience will boost other metrics, like customer loyalty and revenue. It goes without saying that the ultimate goal of any B2B and B2C business is its profit margin, but aiming for improvements in customer retention, your communication strategy – all of which leads to favorable reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations – plays a huge part in your sales figures.

Using the information provided in this article, business owners can identify their business’s customer service strengths and accurately get solutions to transform their performance. It’s time to improve the customer experience.

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