Your customers do more than just buy your products or use your services. They experience your brand. Good experiences lead to higher revenues. Deliver a lousy experience, and you may end up lining the pockets of your competitors.
Customer experiences are the interactions your company has with the buyers you depend on for revenue. It encompasses more than just call center responses. It’s how your website works, the warranty you offer, and your public image. It’s every possible factor that might influence the way your customers interact with your brand.
The Emphasis Shift to Customer Experience
A competitive market becomes more intense for suppliers as buyers start refining their demands. Product offerings start to become less and less distinguishable, and your customers begin to take more notice of your service habits.
Market research confirms the following insights:
- Customers make their buying decisions based primarily on how they feel.
- Most consumers report being willing to pay more for a better experience.
- Customer experience will replace price as a critical predictor of consumer behavior by 2020.
Your customers will throw their support behind companies able to deliver higher quality interactions. The demand signal from the market shows that the experiences you provide matters.
Now, most companies report that improving customer experience is a top priority, but few leading firms really know how to go about achieving such a lofty goal.
The Current Demands of Buyers
Customer service is just a small part of the overall experience. The way your business advertises and follow up with potential buyers is also essential.
Businesses need to adjust their habits to take advantage of the market’s new demand for complete experiential treatment.
Here are some common points of failure in the business/customer relationship:
- Making customers repeat themselves when attempting to get concerns resolved
- Forcing customers to wait more than five minutes for assistance
- Leaving questions unanswered
- Failing to disclose pricing information
Customers are twice as likely to report a bad experience to their friends than share a positive one. To make matters worse, it requires more than ten times the effort to overcome a negative experience and rebuild lost trust.
Customers are willing to give your competitors a chance and often abandon transactions entirely. Poor customer experience accounts for higher rates of customer churn.
Omnichannel Product Delivery
Technology drives the market by opening new channels to distribute goods. In addition to store fronts, businesses must also be ready to sell products through online markets, web pages, and cell phone apps.
Customers demand consistent positive experiences across platforms, but many companies are not keeping pace:
- Failure to integrate data gathered through different sales channels
- Customer service agents unable to resolve complaints from multiple media sources
- Unprepared to address customers using multiple channels at the same time
Those firms able to coordinate their different channels and provide a consistently positive experience have the best chance of retaining the most business.
Customers demand quick answers and consistent responses regardless of how they try to purchase your products. Many buyers in stores carry mobile devices and price check your goods before heading to the checkout counter.
Gathering Customer Experience Data
Knowledge is the key to developing a successful customer experience strategy. ETECH Insights helps you gather the data on your operations you need to make better decisions.