Guest Post: Why Customer Experience Is Essential to Your Bottom Line

This week we feature an article by Sabio who explains why developing a customer experience strategy is essential for your business to improve its bottom line.

Developing a customer experience (CX) strategy for your business has never been more important. Every business can benefit. Whether you oversee a large contact center or teams in various locations, creating a CX strategy that works will improve your bottom line.

As a consumer, how do you feel when you receive a poor customer experience?

You’re most likely going to become a detractor. This means you will be less motivated to engage with this company again. Further, you may speak negatively about your experiences with other people.

Conversely, if you have a positive experience with a company, you may become an advocate. When we advocate for a business, we recommend it to other people. Positive recommendations are extremely valuable, helping businesses to grow.

Salesforce conducted a survey in 2018. They asked 6,700 consumers and business buyers about their buying habits based on CX.

The results are eye-opening.

• 80% of customers think the experience that a company provides is just as important as its products and services
• 57% of customers have taken their business to a competitor due to unsatisfactory customer service
• 67% would pay more for a better customer experience.

Reflecting on these statistics, it is clear that nurturing positive relationships with customers will bring value to your business. People invest in businesses when they feel positive about them. A large percentage would even pay more for a product or service if they’re guaranteed great customer care.

Despite the initial costs, the benefits of establishing a robust CX strategy will pay off. Customer retention and procurement will help to increase your bottom line. Improve your customer experience and you’ll quickly notice the financial impacts.

But where do you start?

First, let’s think about the three key elements that underpin good CX.

1. Customer experience should elicit an emotional response

Often considered the most important factor, it is important to understand how your customers are feeling at every step. Acknowledge how the customer feels, validate these feelings and partner with them to reach a resolution together.

2. Customer experience should be easy

It is vital to streamline your CX. Slick CX will benefit the customer and your business. Good CX requires minimal customer effort but achieves maximum impact. This should be the case regardless of the channel they are reaching out from.

3. Customer experience should be efficient in solving problems

Brilliant CX leaves the customer feeling satisfied that their issue has been resolved.

True resolution means that the customer does not need to phone or message back. The solution was great and effective long-term.

If a resolution cannot be met, why? Do your services need to adapt? Are you missing a trick? Evaluate your current processes to improve the resolution rate. This will benefit your business financially.

We know that customer experience should fulfill the customer’s need in terms of ease, efficiency and emotion. But how can you make meaningful changes to boost CX and, subsequently, your bottom line?

Read Sabio’s in-depth customer experience guide to learn about the insights required and solutions needed to delight customers. The long-form piece delves into collecting and measuring customer feedback, building customer roadmaps, monitoring your touchpoints and applying solutions with proven success rates.

This article was written by Sabio who provides the expertise and solutions you need to respond to the ever-changing needs of your customers. With our analytics and insight, we’ll help you improve visibility, responsiveness and control across all your customer-interaction channels.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes article: The Executive Gender Gap