The most exciting business opportunity of 2019 attracting the most investment… Customer Experience. Those who bring it will establish a competitive advantage by converting more consumers with less advertising spend as word of mouth becomes integral.This is especially true as reaching consumers online only through digital ads increasingly becomes difficult to scale and provide the experience consumers are seeking.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience is your customers’ perception of how your company treats them. These perceptions affect their behaviors and build memories and feelings to drive their loyalty. In other words: if they like you and continue to like you, they are going to do business with you and recommend you to the others
In order for your customers to like you, you have to get to know them and their preferences to deliver personalized experiences across the entire customer journey to entice their loyalty. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re in – improving the experience for your customers is the key to increasing retention, satisfaction, revenue, and lowering customer acquisition costs.
What Happens If You Ignore Customer Experience?
Simple. Customers become frustrated and churn.
According to Esteban Kolsky, if a customer is not satisfied, 13% of them will tell that experience with 15 or even more people and share that they are unhappy. On the other hand, 72% of customers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people.
67% of customers mention bad experiences as a reason for churn, but only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain potentially making customer experience the silent killer of your business as the rest just leave.
Consumers Prefer Experience Over Product & Price
It seems that it was only yesterday that every business claimed the key to winning customers was in the quality of product or service they deliver. But, things have changed…
Customers no longer base their loyalty on price or product. Instead, they stay loyal with companies due to the experience they receive. If you cannot keep up with their increasing demands, your customers will leave you. In fact, all we hear these days is how important providing the best customer experience is. Do you know why?
When Econsultancy conducted their survey for Digital Marketing Trends, they asked companies to state the single most exciting opportunity for 2019. Customer experience (or CX) came in first (beating content marketing and mobile marketing!). The Temkin Group found that companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to earn, on average, an additional $700 million within 3 years of investing in customer experience.
That’s right. Investing in CX initiatives has the potential to double your revenue within 36 months. So where is this revenue growth coming from? A good customer experience means your customers spend more, with:
- 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience
- 73% of buyers point to customer experience as an important factor in purchasing decisions
- 65% of buyers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising
Plus, a Walker study found that by the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
So, what has to be done for you to become a winner?
Customer Experience is the New Battlefield
A company’s competitive edge is based on the experience they deliver to their customers.If you want your customers (dealers and consumers) to stay loyal, you have to invest in the experience. As a result, Gartner predicts that by 2019, more than 50% of organizations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations.
So, where should you start?
Omni-Channel Strategy & Platform
Customer Experience is all about building positive relationships with your customers. There are many ways to achieve this but the best thing to remember is that every customer is different, and allowing them to self-select their path to purchase demonstrates you understand their preferences and are more likely to do business with you. The fundamental building block to create better customer experiences for your retail brand includes an omnichannel strategy & platform.
Consumers are shopping between channels. In fact 82% of consumers shop between online, offline, and social media before transacting. Consumers have between 4 and 5 touchpoints required before buying, with physical retail being the most important touchpoint in creating an outstanding customer experience. As a result, building loyalty with your channel partners or dealers to work in unison online & offline is imperative for success. Many consumers prefer to buy from the comfort of their home but demand pre-purchase product access and post-purchase service support.
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Sell Everywhere Your Consumers Buy
Keep reading to discover the benefits a consumer experience strategy can have on your organization, but if you’d like an executive guide distilling everything, download The Enterprise Guide to Omni-Channel Ecommerce.
Inside, you’ll get one-pagers detailing …
Comprehensive data on the opportunities and threats
Merchant spotlights for insights on combining sales channels to create better CX
A checklist to consider when implementing an omni-channel program
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In fact, Aberdeen Group claims that companies with the strongest omni-channel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, as compared to 33% for companies with weak omni-channel strategies. Cross-channel shopping via a wide range of devices and interactions has made it difficult for companies to maintain consistency. Processes and technologies need to change in order to provide a consistent experience for your consumers and dealers across all platforms.
Conclusion
As companies are expected to compete mainly on the basis of customer experience (Gartner research), it is one of the foremost tasks to ensure the consistent omni-channel communication. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the demand for an omni-channel customer experience will be amplified by the need for near perfect execution, and the number of companies that invest in omni-channel has jumped from 20% to more than 80%.
With 89% of businesses soon to be expected to compete mainly on customer experience, organizations that take customer experience seriously will stand out from the noise and win loyal customers over. One thing for sure, in order to deliver an excellent customer experience, you have to know your customers better than ever before and this requires investments in an omnichannel retail platform.
