Have you ever wondered why most people prefer to choose Apple products over its competitors? It’s not the features or the technology – it’s the customer experience that gives Apple an edge over its competitors. In today’s competitive market, it is the customer experience that differentiates the brands from its rivals. And if you are not investing your efforts in improving the customer experience of your brand.
Here are 6 reasons why you should do that RIGHT NOW!
1. To improve customer loyalty:
In today’s digital world, it is not very difficult to sell a product or service in the market if the marketing is done right. However, earning the loyalty of the customer is a different ball game altogether. If you have been a part of this industry for long, you may already know what the customer loyalty means to a brand.
Delivering a great customer experience to the users can help you earn their loyalty. You may convince the customers into buying your products or services by offering discounts, rewards and slashed prices, but none of those tactics is sustainable in the long run. If you are able to deliver flawless services the first time, customers are less likely to look for an alternative.
2. To reduce operational expenses:
If you are not familiar with the various stages of inbound marketing or don’t prefer spending more money on delighting the customers, you are actually missing the opportunity to reduce your operational expenses for the long run.
If you are focused on delivering better customer experience, and instruct the sales representatives to ask more contextual questions to the customer, you actually help reduce the element of unpleasant surprises for the users. In the process, you also get to avoid the recurring after-sales expenses and unpleasant customer grievances, which often increase the operational expenses.
3. To enable more customer retention:
The Customer Experience Impact report (2011) reveals the fact that 89 percent of customers chose a different service provider once they received a poor customer experience. 7 years down the lane, not much has changed in the customer behavior.
If your brand is delivering a great customer experience, you are more likely to retain the customers for the long run. As said earlier, when the customers are comfortable doing business with your brand, they are less interested in finding another service provider. It goes without saying that an increased brand loyalty means increased repeat-purchases and order sizes.
4. To promote word-of-mouth publicity:
It has become a common tradition among the users to review the product or service on the internet once they have had an experience with it. While a bunch of positive feedbacks can improve your brand image on the online space, receiving negative reviews from the customers can even destroy a brand in just a matter of days.
Delighting the user with positive customer experiences not only motivates him/her to share a positive feedback on the internet but also prompts the person to recommend the brand to his/her friends and colleagues. A study done by Nielsen suggests that 82 percent of the Americans look for recommendations from friends and acquaintances before making a purchase.
5. To improve the ROI:
Interestingly, a better customer experience can improve your return-on-investment in more than just one way. As mentioned earlier, a better customer experience allows you to cut the operational costs, allowing you to enjoy the same amount of return against a lesser amount of investment. Besides, the word of mouth publicity does the job of local advertisement for your brand.
In other words, a better customer experience helps you avoid a lot of expenses, allowing you to broaden your profit margin. As a matter of fact, if you are serving a great customer experience, you can even go premium with your offerings. This is what Apple does with their products. Even though the products cost a lot, people still choose to buy them as they offer great customer experience.
6. To stand out from your competitors:
According to Mr. Jerry Gregoire, CIO at Dell, “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” And there’s no denying it. While every other brand is adopting the same strategy to boost their sales in the market, it is the customer experience that offers the brands a competitive advantage.
Surprisingly, 88 percent of the consumers rely on the reviews to determine the quality of a brand’s customer experience. And while there are comparisons of products and prices, consumers are actually focusing on the service and customer experience before choosing a particular brand.
So, now you may have developed a decent idea about why you should be focusing on customer experience to succeed in today’s competitive market. Well, you may need to change your marketing and operational strategies a bit to attain this, but if you are able to pull that off, it will be worth all the effort.
