Le last report survey of digital marketing trends conducted by Econsultancy and Adobe indicates, for the third consecutive year, that customer experience is the most important element for companies. This in front of the content strategy, the mobile strategy, the personalization of the offer and the social strategy.
This result does not seem so surprising. Indeed, customer experience is particularly important for companies because those who have successfully implemented a customer experience strategy achieve higher rates of customer satisfaction, reduce the rate of attrition and above all, increase their revenue!
Additionally, a study by American Express found that 60% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. Something to make companies dream!
Preamble: What is the customer experience? Whatever ?
The customer experience is defined by the set of interactions between a customer and a company. An interaction can very well take place in the phase of research of information, in the discovery of the product, in the purchase or even in the after-sales service.
Customer experience is an integral part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and remains particularly important because a customer who has a positive experience with a company is much more likely to become a customer who will repeat transactions with the company and who will be loyal.
In fact, a study by Oracle found that 74% of senior marketing executives believe that customer experience impacts a customer's willingness to be loyal and loyal to the company. And the statistics don't stop there… If you want your customers to remain loyal to your products and your company, you must invest in creating an original and unique experience!
In other words, a happy customer is a much more loyal customer. The more satisfied you are with a brand, the more likely you will come back to its site or store. And so, therefore, if you ignore your customers' emails, they're much more likely not to stay with you. That's why companies that provide superior customer service and the best customer experience outperform their competitors.
How is customer experience different from customer service?
Often, a customer's first real point of contact with a business is an interaction with an employee (either by visiting the store or calling on the phone). This gives you a tremendous opportunity to provide excellent customer service. However, customer service is only one aspect of the customer experience.
For example, if you book a vacation over the phone and the person you speak with is friendly and helps you with your booking, that's good customer service. Also, if you receive your reservation by email quickly, it's a good customer experience.
It is obvious that the customer experience has changed in recent years. It represents much more than the usual service. Thanks to technology, companies are able to get in touch with their customers more easily and more frequently. For example, using software CRM, you can view customer purchase history and predict future needs. Having the ability to predict a future need will allow you to be proactive and thus for example:
- Provide related products based on purchase history
- Create and deliver targeted email marketing campaigns
So, customer service is still as important and even more important than ever. However, this is no longer the sole object of the customer experience. For example, the customer experience encompasses issues related to multichannelling. Consumers must be able to have a frictionless experience via any channel of the company on which he seeks information, compares, reads reviews, buys, makes a complaint, etc.
A survey conducted by Bloomberg Businessweek revealed that “providing an exceptional customer experience” has become a major strategic objective. And a recent survey on customer relationship management found that 75% of leaders rated customer experience as a high priority!
When Bain & Company asked companies to rate the quality of their customer experience, 80% of them believe they provide a superior experience. However, only 8% of customers believe that they receive an excellent customer experience.
A 2016 study on customer experience conducted by Temkin showed a sharp drop in satisfaction related to the customer experience. The percentage of companies offering a good or excellent customer experience fell from 37% in 2015 to just 18% in 2016.
This study shows that customer expectations are growing faster than companies can improve their customer experience.
5 Ways to Create an Optimal Strategy for Your Customer Experience
Let's look at seven ways to create a great customer experience strategy that will improve your customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and increase your revenue.
- Develop a clear vision of the customer experience
The first step in your customer experience strategy is to have a clear vision that you can communicate to everyone in your organization. The easiest way to define this vision is to create a set of statements that will serve as guiding principles.
Once these principles are in place, they will drive your team's behavior. Each member of your team will therefore need to know these principles and integrate them into the way they interact with consumers.
- Create different "typical profiles" of customers
In order to really understand the needs of your customers, you must create typical profiles. Each profile must correspond to a character with a name and a personality. For example, Anne is 35 years old; she loves new technology and is experienced enough to follow a video tutorial, while John (42) prefers to follow clear instructions on a webpage. Thus for each profile, it is a question of finding answers to the needs and the requests which could be carried out. It is obvious that Anne and John will not have the same type of answer for the same question for example because Anne is certainly more autonomous on the web.
By creating characters of this type, your team can better recognize the different customers it is confronted with and above all know how to respond in the most effective way possible to each of them.
- Create an emotional connection with your customers
The best customer experiences are those created when a member of your team creates an emotional connection with a customer.
A study conducted by Journal of Consumer Research revealed that more than 50% of an experience is based on an emotion, because emotions form the attitudes that influence decisions.
Customers become loyal because they are attached to the emotion you gave them during their shopping experience.
According to a recent study by Harvard Business Review, emotionally engaged customers are:
- At least three times more likely to recommend your product or service
- Three times more likely to buy back from you
- Less likely to check out competitors' products
- Much less price sensitive
- Capture customer feedback in real time
How can you tell if you are providing a quality customer experience? The best thing is to ask! Ideally, answer this question by collecting real-time feedback. Ask individuals to complete a satisfaction survey, leave a review, etc.
These reviews and comments should then absolutely be forwarded to the customer service team. Team members will see how they make the difference!
- Measure the ROI linked to the optimization of your customer experience
Measuring customer experience ROI is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses. Some companies use the "Net Promoter Score" (NPS), which consists of asking consumers "Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?" ".
On the other hand, you can also ask your consumers if they are satisfied with your website, if they need more services, if your cross-channel strategy is clear, etc. Carry out a qualitative study with focus group where a group of consumers discuss your e-commerce site, etc. can also turn out to be a very good strategy.
As consumers become more and more digitally savvy, they always expect more service and satisfaction when it comes to customer experience. It is up to you to make strategic efforts in this direction. The positive results will then not be long in coming: better loyalty and increased income!
Source initial information, in English.
