Nowadays, customers want more than just competitive marketing prices for the products or services they purchase, and they want a good customer experience as well, and if you fail to provide it, then the customer will immediately rush to your competitors. If someone think this is an exaggeration, always, consider that just over 50% of customers will stop doing business with a company after just one negative feedback.
Clients define a negative customer experience in various ways, including those of
- Poor customer service
- Difficult purchasing process
- Lack of information about products or services
- Overpriced products
- Poor quality products
- Feeling unappreciated as a customer
As you can witness, negative customer experience can have a devastating impact on your sales department, whereas, a positive customer experience appears to be a real boon to your ROI as well. According to the experts it is often witnessed that near about 65% of consumers do consider the customer experience to be a crucial factor than the price of a particular product or service. On the other hand, consumers are willing to pay more, if the customer experience appears to be excellent by nature, even if you find industry or market to be competitive enough. According to small business trends 87% of consumers now read online reviews for local businesses. Thus, delivering a great customer experience can mean the difference between gaining or losing a strong loyal customer.
What Do You Mean by Customer Experience?
In literal terms, customer experience is the impression that you have of an organization you choose to do business with, and as an owner of a particular business, it is solely up to you to ensure that a customer or client has a good customer experience from the beginning of their customer journey till the end, or you risk of losing your business forever. Imagine that someone walked into a store, navigating to the aisle where their product is located in the shop, then they purchase the product at the checkout lane, and then goes home. What kind of experience was this? One got exactly what they wanted without any fuss, so it’s safe to say that they had an okay experience, but there was nothing special about it.
Whereas in some cases, one exactly doesn’t know exactly where their product was, and it was very difficult to find a customer service associate to help them regarding their product, or suppose someone did help them but didn’t appear to be very knowledgeable regarding the particular product they are searching. Suppose the cashier was moving very slow, causing an individual to wait on line for longer than it should be necessary. Suppose none of the employees really seemed like they wanted to work there, or the store was dirty, cluttered, and products were highly overpriced. Any of the above criteria does cause an individual to have a negative customer experience and make them think twice about shopping there again.
For an instance, if you were greeted in friendly manner upon entering a super market, and sales associates were smiling, knowledgeable, and helpful. However, the store was well-lit and organized, and the cashier was also friendly, one would definitely have a great customer experience, and would frequently visit the store again. In a similar way, customer experience is the crucial factor for any business to thrive in, and this rule applies especially for online brands as well as that of brick-and-mortar establishments. Businesses of all sizes, in all industries, are striving to improve the customer experience, and many are seeking to push the envelope in order to stand out from their competitors, providing extraordinary customer experiences via various advanced technologies or by improving product functionality via product configurators as a whole.
Four reasons Why Customer Experience is Important for a Particular Business?
In the recent research it has been found that, nearly 70% of business devote their focus solely on improving the customer experience, and it is also believed that the satisfied customers are the loyal customers. This isn’t an earth-shattering concept by any means, but in recent years, as competition among both brick-and-mortar stores and the online marketplace has seemed to increase exponentially, thus, client satisfaction is more important than ever before. This is because in a technology-driven world, one customer having a negative experience can share their story with potentially thousands of others within seconds, and it often appears to have devastating experience on a particular business. Whereas, customers having a positive experience can also do the same, and often go so far as to promote the business on their own, which makes them a valued customer and a key marketing asset. Some of the other benefits of providing a positive customer experience are as follows:
1. An Increase in Brand Recognition and Brand Loyalty
Nowadays, client’s base many of their buying decisions on what they experience throughout their customer lifecycle, and delivering a positive vibe all the way definitely improves brand recognition. Thus, ultimately having a good brand loyalty within the customer journey concludes in a superior manner as a whole.
2. Free Marketing That Potentially Increases Your Customer Base
Consumers often go through the reviews that are posted by others before availing anything, so positive reviews by the satisfied customers have the potential to convert new prospects. Treat your new customers just as well, and as the cycle continues. Thus, it appears to be a critical component to the success of a company, and gaining new customers can cost seven times more than maintaining your existing customer base. On the other hand, if your satisfied customers are doing the work for you, thus, delivering a positive customer experience has become significantly more cost effective by nature.
3. You Stand Out from Competitors
It never matters whether you manufacture auto parts or medical equipment, if you provide home improvement or construction services, or if you manage a large industrial plant, chances are there you’ve got competition and it is increasing on a day-to-day basis. In the previous years, competitors often fought for their share on the target market via price wars, but such tactics in the recent period appears to be outdated in every possible way. Today, it is the customer experience that makes all the difference, and what you exactly do for your customers, and how you treat them, how you greet them, how you show them that you value them as a customer, can truly separate you from the herd and propel you forward to success.
4. Increase Your ROI
It is the excellent customer experiences and achieving all of the above generally results in a massive increase to your ROI. Then the question that arises is, why struggle with redundant marketing plans and strategies that don’t deliver optimal benefit when the key is simply making sure your customers are as happy as can be? One should focus on customer service and fulfill the wants and needs of your target market, as well as meeting and exceeding their expectations. As a result, it will create a team of consumer advocates that do a significant amount of the marketing for you.
Delivering a Positive Customer Experience Online
More often a common question arises, what is the customer experience in online appears to be? and some of the answers to this question appears to be the same even in offline marketing just as a storefront makes a first impression on a consumer, so your website does in the online marketing. Similarly, in offline marketing, a customer in a brick-and-mortar store wants to find the product they are searching for on an asap basis, so does the visitors to your website want to quickly find the information that they seek without having to navigate through too many webpages. Thus, there appears to be numerous ways to improve the customer experience online, from always delivering high quality images, video, and sales tools, to being able to meet consumer demand and bring new products to the market swiftly as soon as possible. It may appear that most of your competitors are already doing this, so what unique you can do to outdo them, and deliver a superior customer experience that will assists them to get new loyal customers talking about you and your products.
Online consumers, especially the millennial market, place a lot of product order through online platform, and they are hesitant to purchase products or services from unrecognized corporations that don’t seem to place any value on the consumer as a whole.
Instead of that, they want to engage with the company on a more personal level, with the aid of social media posts, augmented reality (AR), and interactive sales tools. All of this help to create a great customer experience and it can even be tailored to provide a more personal level of engagement that really resonates with the consumer.
Customers also serve to build a relationship of trust, another critical component in building a long-lasting relationship. Consider how you can leverage the ever-advancing technology that one has at their disposal today to better connect with your target market, and one will be able to maintain a strong edge over their competitors and increase their customer base and revenue.
