Importance of Experience in Customer Experience & How to Enhance It?

Here is a rule of thumb.

Acquiring a new customer or replacing a lost customer is likely to cost you at least 500% more than maintaining an existing customer.

Besides this, we have to consider these.

• Customer acquisition costs significantly boosts overheads of your business but often go unnoticed
• Loyal long-term customers mean increased lifetime value, and this can add up to millions even for small operations
• Over 60% of the customers who skipped to a competitor did so due to a bad experience, according to Dimension Data
• More than 70% of the consumers expect personalized brand experiences, and more than three-quarters of them get frustrated when they aren’t
• An Accenture report found that nearly 50% of customers are willing to pay more for a shopping experience that exceeds their expectations

So, the focus has to be on the experience part of customer experience.

According to a 2017 Dimension Data report, an astonishing 84% of companies that focus on the customer experience witnessed a significant revenue hike.

Now, How Do You Go About Enhancing the Experience?

1. Create a Clear Customer Experience Vision

Zappos uses their core family values, and these values are embedded in their culture, which includes delivering wow through service, being humble, and embracing change.

The easiest way to define your vision is to create a set of statements focused on your customers. Let us look at a few examples.

• No customer goes back without an answer for a query. Define a timeline for that as well
• I want to retain 92% of my customers for a minimum period of 3 years

Both of these are related to the experience that you would provide.

2. Look at the Touchpoints

Look at all the touch points of your customer interaction. Let us assume you are an electronics brand, and the possible touch points could be your website, online store, retail outlet, floor sales guy, delivery expert, implementation engineer, service engineer, and customer support team.

Identify what can go wrong at these touchpoints and address them proactively. In terms of culture, train all of your resources at each of the touch points on the brand guidelines and customer experience strategy. This would remove a lot of issues that you might end up with.

3. Identify Who Your Customers Are

Are your customers aged 50+ who would prefer to pick up the phone and reach your contact center or send an email about an issue? Or, Are your customers in the 20+ age group comfortable using social media and mobile apps, and going through self-explanatory videos, and doing things themselves?

Understand them deeply, and based on the age groups and their preferences, you have to design your customer experience strategy.

4. Real-Time Feedback Is the Key

Do you want to determine if you deliver a great customer experience? The easiest way to find out is to seek feedback as and when you provide the service. You are more likely to get honest feedback this way.

It helps in multiple ways – you can understand how well your product is performing and your customer experience function is performing.

The most important thing is to act on the feedback and keep the customer who gave the input informed.

5. Train, Train, and Train

Act on all the feedback you get from your customers and your customer-facing employees. Use all of this as a part of your training, and run them through your continuous improvement program.

Read more on: Digital Customer Experience

A positive customer experience means a lot. Studies have proven this time and again. SuperOffice research shows that:

• 64% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand to others if it offers simpler experiences and communications
• 71% of people recommend a product or service because they received a great experience
• 65% of all consumers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising