Do You know How Much the Customer Experience Can Affect your Business?

When it comes to business, your customers should always come first. Here's why customer experience strategy and customer experience management are so important.

Okay..so you've built your “brand strategy” to differentiate yourself in the marketplace?

You've created an exceptional logo and memorable tagline. You've designed a functional and attractive website with solid SEO that drives traffic from search engines. You are now viewed as the Trusted Adviser in your space.

So, what's wrong? Why aren't you reaching your sales goals and client retention rates?

Hmm…The problem could be with your customer service experience strategy may be off. If you don't have a dynamic customer experience strategy in place, you're missing something big. What is the journey they go through to arrive at a place to buy?

In a competitive market place, your customer experience (CX) and customer experience management efforts can make the difference between success and failure.

Here's why customer experience strategy and customer services management matters. We have gone so far as to effect everything from when you get placed on hold when you call us. No really call us and just ask to get placed on hold (713) 592-6724.

Increases Customer Satisfaction

Forrester's Customer Experience Index reports that 82% of brands received a score of average or worse from customers. That's a problem for executives who want to retain customers.

Customer experience is essential to meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

In order to provide excellent service, companies need to be reliable, provide accuracy, and deliver the service they promised before checkout. 

When brands pay attention to customer experience, they can make a huge shift in customer loyalty and sales.

A consumer who is totally satisfied spends 14 times as much revenue on products and services than an unhappy customer.

By learning customer opinions from feedback and surveys, a business can devise the touchpoints to surpass customer standards. One way this is achieved is by being aware of the complete customer journey.

Through each step along the buyer's journey, brands can ensure that positive customer experience is consistent.

A Customer Experience Strategy Transforms New Customers Into Loyal Buyers

It's six times more expensive to win a new customer than to keep an existing one. When companies create a customer experience with a smart customer experience strategy, it shows in sales profits. 

When you invest in the customers you already have, it manifests into a positive brand. And motivates customers to continue doing business with you.

But what do you do when a customer is dissatisfied? One way to address an unhappy customer is by proactively responding to their complaint. This impacts your brand more positively than ignoring it.

Addressing complaints is an important step in building brand loyalty. It affects what unhappy customers will stay with your brand. While brands would prefer to receive great feedback from every customer, We know this isn't possible.

However, addressing complaints with sincerity and concern can have a successful outcome and even impress the customer.

The way to address negative feedback is to respond in a polite manner and ensure the consumer that you'll do your best to resolve the issue. It pays off when the consumer feels heard and attended to.

Builds Relationships Between Brands and Customers

In a landscape where thousands of brands compete for customers daily, how can we build solid relationships with consumers?

The answer lies in customer experiences. Through content touchpoints such as email marketing, blog posts, and other content strategies, brands can make customers and leads feel important and cared for.

By building relationships on social media as well as other channels and platforms, today we have more opportunities to create trust than we ever had before. This is a big one that people miss!

Your Customers Become Your Best Marketing Tool

When we build trust with customers and we've won them over, they become one of our best marketing tools. A happy customer can be one of the greatest marketing tools. We get a ton of referrals this way. Actually just had a client believe in us so much that he had a company that he was investing in just give us the investment money and say you need to hire these guys to do your marketing and I will pay for it. (Thanks Peter if you are reading this, I love the faith!)

When customers value and appreciate your service, they tell their friends, family members, and the people in their communities. This word-of-mouth advertising is much more effective than traditional advertising.

With social media sharing opportunities, online reviews, and other ways to interact online and in person, consumers become advocates and boost sales.

By going above and beyond and brainstorming ways to design stellar customer experiences, brands have the potential to turn happy customers into advocates.

Improve Customer Experience Strategy with Customer Experience Management

The way to improve the customer experience is to take action. By putting an effective customer experience management strategy in place you can learn the steps you need to take to deliver customer satisfaction. You need to also think about hiring not a customer service person, but a customer experience manager, which is a very different thing!

Always measure your strategies to gauge their success. Adjustments may need to be made to ensure improvement.

By examining your customer experience management strategies, you boost value, cut costs, and stay ahead of the competing brands who don't have efficient customer experience strategies in place.

How to Ensure Your Customer Experience Management Strategies Work

Personalization, customer journey maps and assessing channel interaction assure your CX strategies are successful. Here's what you need to know if you are a CMO, Brand Manager, or own a small business:

Deliver a Personalized Experience

For a customer experience strategy to be successful, it needs to offer a personalized experience to customers. Businesses who can tailor customer needs will rise above their competition.

A winning CX strategy always applies customer insights for each touchpoint and keeps customers' needs front and center.

Design Customer Journey Maps

Knowing where a customer is in the customer journey is essential for brands to achieve success. That's why it's important to identify the touchpoints of interaction with your customer.

This enables a brand to deliver a CX that's consistent and on target. Having this foresight in advance by creating a customer journey map will help your customer arrive at the intended destination through the lifecycle of the customer.

Stay Abreast of Platforms and Channels

It's important for brands to be aware of where customers interact with their brand. 

Are they responding to an Instagram pay-per-click advertisement? On your blog? On YouTube? Or do they interact with you more with email marketing?

Knowing the platforms and channels of interaction will aid you in your strategy. It's also important to notice if their communication preferences change during the customer journey.

A customer can be originally engaged on your Facebook Business Page but may change their preferences when they become a customer.

Perhaps now they prefer email communication. Being aware of their journey is key to customer satisfaction.

The Bottom Line on Customer Experience Strategy

Now you know the importance of setting an effective customer experience strategy in place. Apply these recommendations to build trust, increase loyalty, and to increase your bottom line. 

So much more to tell I could write a book about it! Oh, yeah I have but seriously this a really important piece of the equation in growing a business that people miss. Call your business as a mystery shopper or have a friend do it and see how it goes. Super eye-opening!

Our Houston-based company provides successful strategies, tools, and resources to grow online businesses and we also do workshops now and them. Like us on facebook at https://facebook.com/bestseopodcast or contact us for a free 15-minute consult to learn how you can take your business to the next level.

Check us out!

Matt Bertram, CPC

CEO, Digital Market Strategist