Having such a high level of customer experience is not surprising.
According to a survey conducted by American Express, 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for better service.
Recent studies published by the Temkin Group found that companies earning $1 billion a year can expect to earn an additional $700 million after an investment in customer service within three years of making this investment.
In just 36 months, the company’s revenues have increased by 70%!
Bottom line:
To increase customer satisfaction, companies that have successfully implemented a customer experience strategy have reduced customer churn, increased revenue and reduced churn rates.
Isn’t that what you are aiming to achieve here?
There is a surprising finding: less than half of organizations will invest in customer experience initiatives in the next year.
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How do you define customer experience?
Customer experience (also referred to as CX) is a process defined by the interactions and experiences the customer has with your company throughout the entire customer journey, from first contact to becoming a happy and loyal customer of your company.
CX is an integral part of customer relationship management (CRM), and it is crucial that companies place a high value on customer experience, as those who have a positive experience are more likely to become loyal and repeat customers.
In fact, according to a global customer experience study by Oracle, 74% of senior executives believe that customer experience has a direct impact on customer loyalty. If you want your customers to stay loyal, you need to invest in the experiences they have.
The longer they stay loyal to a brand, the happier they will be with it. Therefore, if you ignore customer service emails or treat customers poorly, you are more likely to lose them or stop doing business with them. That’s why companies that offer a superior customer experience outperform their competitors in the long run, and that means customers will end up spending more money with your company (rather than theirs).
Taking a look at some statistics we’ve come across, we think they’re worth mentioning:
Over the next two decades (and beyond), customer experience will be the primary differentiator between brands.
After just one bad experience with a brand, one in three consumers will abandon it,
There is no doubt that a customer will pay an additional price premium of up to 13% (and even up to 18%) if they are provided with an excellent customer experience,
An average of 49% of shoppers have made impulse purchases after experiencing a more personalized level of service.
The company with the highest customer experience score (i.e. 10/10) is more likely to spend 140% more and retain customers for up to 6 years.
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Poor customer experiences can have a significant impact on your business
When it comes to the perfect customer experience, the focus is on ensuring that all interactions and touch points with your business are easy, delightful and seamless. This is the opposite of what a bad customer experience entails.
Every year, $62 billion is lost as a result of poor customer service. According to another study, 91% of dissatisfied customers leave a brand without complaining if they are unhappy with the service they receive.
The situation is not likely to improve any time soon. Among consumers, only 10% believe that brands meet their expectations of a good experience.
A poor customer experience can be due to a number of reasons, including
Difficulty in the buying process
Customer service experiences that were negative
Compromising the security of the customer’s personal information
Waiting too long on hold
Ignoring customer feedback
That said, the question remains: how can your organization create a great customer experience strategy?
What can you do to improve the customer experience?
Establish a clear vision of the customer experience.
The first step in building an effective customer experience strategy is to create a clear customer-centric vision that can be communicated to your organization. It’s a good idea to create a set of statements that serve as guiding principles for creating this vision.
Zappos, for example, uses their core family values in their culture, including delivering wow through their service, being humble and embracing change; all elements that contribute to their culture.
Once these principles are established, they will determine the behavior of your organization. There is no doubt that everyone on your team should be aware of these principles and apply them in all areas of training and development.
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Make sure you understand who your customers are
To leverage these principles to improve the customer experience, the next step is to show how these principles apply to the different types of customers dealing with your customer service teams. It is essential that your organization is able to empathize with the challenges and issues your customers face to truly understand what they need and want from you.
To achieve this, one option is to segment your customers and create customer personas (or profiles). Make sure each persona has a unique name and personality. In this case, Ana is 35 years old; she likes new technologies and is tech-savvy enough to follow a video tutorial on her own, while Juan, who is 42, needs to be able to follow clear instructions on a web page.
Creating personas will help your customer service team recognize who each of your customers is and understand them better. Creating personas is also one of the first steps to becoming truly customer-centric.
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Create a connection with your customers on an emotional level
You know the phrase “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”?
A good customer experience is achieved when a member of your team is able to create an emotional connection with the customer.
Here’s a great example of how Zappos has created an emotional connection with its customers:
Following the death of a customer’s mother, the customer was late returning a pair of shoes. Zappos immediately made sure the shoes were returned and had them picked up by a courier at no cost when they discovered what had happened. But that’s not all Zappos did for the customer. The customer arrived home the next day to find a bouquet of flowers and a note from the Zappos Customer Success team sending their condolences to the family.
In a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research, it was found that more than 50% of an experience is based on emotion, as emotional reactions shape attitudes that, in turn, affect behavior.
As a result of emotional attachment, customers become loyal to the brand they use because they remember how they feel when using a product or service. Companies that optimize emotional connection outperform their competitors by 85% in terms of sales growth.
In addition, according to a recent Harvard Business Review study titled “The New Science of Customer Emotions,” emotionally engaged customers are the following:
At least three times more likely to recommend your product or service to a friend or colleague.
They are more than three times more likely to buy again (!!)
They buy less frequently (44% of respondents said they rarely or never buy)
There is much less price sensitivity (33% of respondents said they would need a discount of more than 20% before defecting).
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The ability to capture customer feedback in real time.
What are some ways to know if you are delivering a WOW customer experience?
It’s critical to ask questions. And ideally, you want to do this by getting real-time feedback.
If you use live chat tools to engage in real-time conversations with customers, you can send a follow-up email to each customer using post-interaction surveys and similar customer experience tools.
Of course, there is the option to make outbound sales calls to customers to get more in-depth feedback from them.
In addition, it is important to tie customer feedback to a specific customer service agent, which shows everyone on the team how they are making a difference in the organization.
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For your team development you should use a quality framework.
After following the above steps, you now know what your customers think about the quality of your service compared to the customer experience principles you have defined. The next step would be to identify the training needs of each member of your customer service team.
There are many organizations that evaluate the quality of phone and email communication; however, a quality framework goes a step further by scheduling and tracking the development of your teams through coaching, eLearning and group training.
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Respond regularly to employee feedback
Almost every organization has an annual survey process that is used to gather overall feedback from your team; their level of engagement and their ability to deliver exceptional service.
However, what happens in the 11 months between these survey periods?
In most cases, nothing happens. I believe it is for this reason that ongoing employee feedback can be extremely useful, through the use of tools that allow employees to share ideas on how to improve the customer experience, as well as allowing managers to see how their employees feel about the organization.
For example, project management software or social networking tools can be used to create a closed environment where the organization can leave feedback in real time.
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Measure the ROI of delivering a great customer experience.
Finally, how can you be sure that all this investment you’ve made in your teams, processes and technology is paying off?
There is a direct correlation between business results and the answer to this question.
Make sure the customer experience is as personalized as possible.
You can give something away for free and you don’t have to give a reason.
Make sure you are proactive. Prevent problems from occurring in the first place.
Every customer complaint you receive should be treated with gratitude. There is always something to be learned from every complaint.
The best way to celebrate your best customers is to acknowledge them publicly and personally.
Give the gift of omnichannel by giving the gift of omnichannel.
Make sure your response times are as short as possible to maximize the customer experience.
It is very important that you listen and learn from every single review your business receives.
Respond to customer requests in a timely manner.
It is important to make your mobile presence known.
The customer should be considered your brand ambassador.
Make customer feedback surveys an important part of your business by giving them more importance.
Make it easy: Make the customer journey as easy as possible.
Get to know your customers by asking them questions, no matter how small they may seem.
It’s critical to monitor calls: Pay attention to peak times, call spikes and other trends. Give employees the tools they need to improve their performance.
Never put a customer on hold when it’s avoidable.
Invest in the growing and changing AI technology that appeals to younger customers, so you can create smarter AI.
Let’s change things up with chatbots.
It’s important to say “thank you.”
A well-trained, fast-acting agent makes for a repeat customer, and repeat customers translate into repeat revenue.
The key to engaging your agents is to ensure a mutually supportive environment for staff.
Happiness is not contagious.
Improve internal communication with #CoffeeTalk.
Make sure your general managers are on board with the culture of putting the customer first.
Complaints can be used as a learning tool.
Make sure you leave a lasting impression.
It’s important to remember your customers’ faces and locations.
Examine the data closely. Gather customer information from all channels.
It is important to read and listen to customer feedback. Pay attention to what they have to say. Don’t take it personally.
It is possible to mine gold from customer data.
Apply what your customers want to see in the world: You are the change they want to see in the world.
Keep your promises: Deliver what you have promised.
Does your customer complain about the same thing over and over again? Do you feel you have to cut to the chase and find out what the problem is?
Every day is an opportunity to learn something new.
Create communities: Invite your customers to join through webinars and interactive tours.
Make sure you are up to date on CX technology (or you will perish).
It’s never a good idea to rush a customer to hang up the phone.
Apologize to upset customers: Try to empathize with their situation.
You should never be afraid to ask for help or advice.
You should offer your customers the option to design or customize their experience with your brand.
It is important that all employees are on the same page about what your brand stands for.
Get rid of jargon and speak clearly to the customer.
Offer customers the option of online self-service.
Hire people who are passionate about serving others.
Use technologies that support both the customer and the agent.
Reassure customers by calling them back.
Listen.
It is important to create a quotable company mandate that everyone can get behind.
Maintain high standards in your work.
Study companies that excel in customer experience and take note of their successes to emulate them.
Maintain a positive attitude at all times. Providing a positive experience for your customers is the most important element in making your business successful. Make sure you are willing to solve their problems. Keep in mind that it is important to maintain a long-term relationship with each customer. A good reputation will lead to repeat business.
Actively listen to the customer’s needs, concerns and frustrations. Before you begin to act, verify and clarify what you have heard from your customer. There is nothing more annoying to the customer than having to repeat yourself because the employee is not listening to what you have to say, or because you are wasting time (my experience at a printing company).
Keep in mind that your customers may be very frustrated and not at their cooperative best. Don’t lose sight of your goal, which is to solve the problem.
In your communications, be sure to be honest and clear. Acknowledge when your company has caused the problem and provide unwanted information in a direct, friendly and positive manner when necessary.
It is important that you acknowledge the customer’s frustration. Do not criticize the company when your own company is responsible for the problem.
Look for solutions that allow for a win-win situation. It is not acceptable to blame customers for their mistakes; sometimes we, as customers, make mistakes.
Verify that the customer’s agreed-upon solution and the organization’s customer service objectives are in line with the proposed solution.
Solve the problem. Make sure you deliver what you promised to do, keep the customer informed and follow up with them to ensure their satisfaction.
Make sure you go above and beyond what the customer expects.
Always thank your customers for their cooperation. To achieve your organization’s strategic objectives, you must treat them as valued partners.
Describe the basic principles of customer service. Every time I walk through the doors of my favorite office supply company, I am greeted with a smile. It’s always a cheerful, energetic greeting that makes me feel welcome.
Make sure all employees (both customer-facing and non-customer-facing) know the organization’s goals and values as they relate to customers.
Here are some additional ideas for improving customer service
Get to know your customers and go beyond their expectations… make them say “WOW!”. “”””
You must be passionate about the relationship you have with your customers.
It is important to remember that only extremely satisfied customers are truly loyal; repeat customers are not necessarily loyal customers. Having a positive attitude toward your customers doesn’t mean you have a reciprocal relationship with them (you may be the only one in town…right now).
Customers who feel appreciated, respected, valued and recognized are more loyal to your company because they have an emotional connection to it.
Use only technologies that support your relationship with your customers.
You must hire the best people to become the best: train and develop them and make sure you do everything you can to keep them with your company.
The services you offer must be above the norm within the industry in which you operate.
It is important to see mistakes as opportunities and not failures.
Try to experience your own business from your customers’ point of view (have you seen Undercover Boss?).
In my opinion, you are probably not as customer-centric as you think you are (check your customer interfaces from all levels).
Take note of the small details: anticipate your customers’ needs before they even realize they have them. You will be able to impress your customers if you listen carefully to what they say.
It’s no good if your customers are satisfied. Being loyal to your customers is priceless.
The foundation of good customer relationships is in your culture, not in your programs or initiatives. As an example of this, how you treat your employees is a direct reflection of how you treat your customers.
It is important to design a customer-centric strategy that cultivates a relationship with customers that nurtures engagement and cultivates lasting loyalty (both ways). In other words, it’s an attitude based on respect for the customer that relies on genuine and expressed respect from the employee. It is a way of extending your brand and instilling trust, confidence and reliability in your customers.