Customer experience vs customer service
Think about your recent customer experience. How was it trying to purchase a product or a service? Was the customer journey pleasant or unpleasant? Will you return to the same product or service provider again?
Enjoyable customer experience has become a norm and not only a requirement for businesses. Nowadays, customers not only look at the price and quality of products and services, but they want the full customer experience.
Before, to achieve success and competitive advantage in the market, companies competed with different strategies than they do today. Traditional strategies as low prices and high quality of products were predominant. Today these strategies are simply not enough. To make the most out of your business, you must be customer-oriented not just profit-oriented. In another words, customer experience is also consumer interpretation of the company. Multiple researches have confirmed that only 8% of companies provide superb customer experience.
Why is customer experience so important for sustainability of the company?
Buying is not only related to people’s needs anymore, but wishes also. Those wishes are correlated to the wanted customer experience. Customers who enjoy their shopping experience won’t exclusively shop online; they will go to physical stores to continue their experience.
So, you get the picture. Customers extremely value their experience when they spend their money. The question every company keeps asking is what are the other benefits? Why should they keep investing in customer experience?
Customer Loyalty
The first and the most important reason for investing is that good customer experience equals customer loyalty. Research has showed that over 89% of consumers are willing to pay the higher price if the customer experience is satisfying. Also, customers are willing to switch to your competitor if the consumer experience is not good enough. So, the takeaway is to listen to your customer’s desires and implement some of them to your business successfully.
Profitability
On the other hand, every business wants to be profitable and the keyway to do it is establishing good customer experience. To achieve high profitability for your business, you must invest in customer experience. Investments can be in the form of consumer care specialists, technological innovation and additional time.
You must have in mind that some of your customers won’t enjoy the buying process as much as others. Therefore, you must have efficient, fast and experienced customer care specialists.
Brand image
Next obvious benefit is improved brand image. Researchers have also stated that customers that get their problem resolved in a quick matter, will likely share the outcome with 4-6 people. This process of sharing, turns quickly into positive word-of-mouth which is free advertisement for your company.
Also, over 67% of people make purchases after seeing the recommendation on social media such as Facebook and Instagram. So, keep investing in your customer experiences and retain brand ambassadors and supporters.
Customer knowledge
The most important advice for succeeding in valuable customer experiences is really knowing your customers. That means understanding them and knowing their needs and wants on time. Real success is when you can optimize your services according to customer needs.
You can think of this process as a known term “customer journey map”. This will help you find the experiences that customers value the most so you can repeat them. Not to mention improve your existing customer care representation. Customer knowledge give you the advantage to tailor the customer experience and far much more.
Final Takeaway:
After reading this blog and while thinking of your next company goals and moves. We want you to remember that companies that rank customer care services as their top priority are six times more likely to surpass their customer retention goals.
So, do take time in improving your customer knowledge, customer loyalty, profitability and brand image. It is well worth the benefits and advantages. For more insight and advice feel free to check out AVIANET blogs.