CX champions often face challenges if they start new initiatives around customer services. It often isn’t as easy to see the value of customer experience as it is to see the ROI of other investments. However, customer experience is incredibly valuable. Executives often won’t invest in customer experience without “proof,” even if the writing is on the wall. Here is actual proof you can share with your teams. Without a customer focus, companies simply won’t be able to survive. We are living in a time where we face the commodity trap. Too many of our products and services are the same. To stand out in a sea of sameness, CX is the only way to do that. These statistics prove the value of customer experience and show why all companies need to get on board.

Companies with a customer experience mindset drive revenue 4-8% higher than the rest of their industries.

Companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%.

84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue.

73% of companies with above-average customer experience perform better financially than their competitors.

96% of customers say customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand.

83% of companies that believe it’s important to make customers happy also experience growing revenue.

Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience.

73% of consumers say a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties.

Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers.

Loyal customers are five times more likely to purchase again and four times more likely to refer a friend to the company.

Companies with initiatives to improve their customer experience see employee engagement increase by 20% on average.

81% of companies view customer experience as a competitive differentiator.

68% of customers say the service representative is key to a positive service experience.

The top reason customers switch brands is because they feel unappreciated.

64% of companies with a customer-focused CEO believe they are more profitable than their competitors.

75% of customer experience management executives gave customer experience a top score for being incredibly important to business.

Companies that use tools like customer journey maps reduce their cost of service by 15-20%.

Offering a high-quality customer experience can lower the cost of serving customers by up to 33%.

71% of the companies say the cloud has influenced the customer experience.

Customers are likely to spend 140% more after a positive experience than customers who report negative experiences.

A 2% increase in customer retention is the same to profits as cutting costs by 10%.

Data Source- Forbes

Listen to any company in almost every industry, and you’ll undoubtedly hear phrases like customer-centric and customer-focused touted as top priorities. But what does that exactly mean? When leaders of a company fail to explain or provide specific examples of what it really means to be customer-centric, employees often see these words as little more than corporate platitudes.

Companies feel obligated to go on record as being customer-centric. It makes sense. Which company is going to publicly announce that they do not care about customers and what they have to say? But the reality is that becoming truly customer-centric is about more than developing vague marketing statements. The more important question is this:

“As an organization, what can we do today to put the customer first?”

And to really make this really real, each employee at a customer-centric organization should ask themselves this question:

“What can I do today to create a better customer experience for our customer?”

The reality is that becoming truly customer-centric is more than developing marketing statements—it is a fundamental shift in a company’s mindset to focus on the customer.

The best way we know for companies to actually become more customer-centric is to consistently listen to the customer. It starts and ends there. We believe that the choice is simple—either listen to your customers or die. It sounds a bit dramatic, but it is true. Ask RadioShack, Blockbuster, BlackBerry, Kodak, and any other companies that were once on top and then stopped listening to their customers.

Becoming Customer-Centric

We recommend accomplishing customer centricity by using an organization-wide, customer listening program called Voice of the Customer (VoC).

Zomato has been at the helm of things in the past few days and by far became the most talked about Food app in India because of few interesting and thought provoking ads and incidents. CX was the central point in both the incidents. Just to refresh memories, Few months back a video went viral where  a delivery guy from Zomato eating food meant for delivery went viral which prompted a strong thought among the customers whether to trust and order food from such companies.

The customer experience was in question where this incident was considered as a breach in the company’s delivery strategies.

The company off course took massive corrective actions and went on a fierce damage control campaign to ensure that the customer trust was regained and Customer experience was perfectly delivered.

Moving on with the incidents, the latest incident where a customer refused to take the delivery of the food from a delivery boy owing to his religion. Considering the customer experience focused of the organization, the company including the CEO immediately swung into action by tweeting promptly that “Food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion”. A statement which found them in the middle of a lot of positive and negative reviews .  Infact the company refused for the refund.

Their CEO Deepinder Goyal even went further to quote that “We are proud of the idea of India – and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.”

A bold statement issued by a leading foodtech unicorn whose roots are firmly entrenched in India catering to  the people of all diversities and religions. Such was the impact of this that even Uber Eats a rival of this unicorn supported them.

While soon after its tweet, there was a positive response on Twitter, with users supporting the “secularist” stand, the negative comments took over soon. Since then over 100K tweets have tweeted against Zomato through the #BoycottZomato and #ZomatoUninstalled.

In a world where brands are specifically told to avoid intentionally hurting religious sentiments or even commenting on such matters, Zomato’ s stance is definitely uncommon, but even though its heart may be in the right place, the ensuing backlash on Twitter might just come back to bite it at a later stage.

A heart winning advertisement was placed which was very cute but a very thought provoking one.  The caption read : “A well settled smart and loving brand looking for those who can’t cook. The statement straight away stuck the right chord with the customers as there a millions who cannot cook.  It explains the superb level of customer focused of the organization immensely”.

What is important to note here is the fact that the customer experience cannot be compromised and by far the most powerful tool for any organization to flourish and stand out from the competition.

The ethics, the values and mode of operations can always differ. The most critical element is placing the customer at the center while building your product or product strategies and ensuring the deliverance of a perfect CX.

We strongly believe that Zomato has undoubtedly come out as a perfect winner in terms of offering unique values to the customers and so has been it’s superlative CX quotient.