It’s the age of the customer and the world’s biggest brands are duking it out every day for a greater share of our hearts, minds, and wallets. Customers hold more decision power than ever in an era where information about any company’s products and services is just a mobile search away.

Where does the Voice of the Customer (VoC) land in the priorities for your company’s overall strategy? Forrester’s Customer Experience Council survey shows that 79% of all respondents believe that measuring customer experience is a top priority.

Market research shows that the Customer Experience Management (CEM) market is estimated to grow from USD 5.06 Billion in 2016 to USD 13.18 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 21.1%.” If you’re not investing in CX, it’s very likely that your competitors are.

The stage has been set – now let’s jump right into the top Reasons to Invest More in Customer Experience (CX):

1. The ROI customer experience

Building customer loyalty and increasing revenue go hand in hand. When compared with customers who had negative experiences, those who had positive experiences were more likely to recommend, trust, try new products or services, purchase more, and forgive your company after a mistake.

2. What gets measured gets done

Measuring customer feedback is the first step to measuring up to your customers’ expectations. Whether you’re an advanced scorecard-driven enterprise or just beginning to think about CX, the most important thing to do is to start actively listening and measuring your customers’ feedback.

3. Time to set new customer experience goals

CX is not as fluffy as it may seem. There is real science and methodology to measuring and improving customer satisfaction (CSAT). There are many metrics to consider as part of your VoC program, but Bain & Company’s Net Promoter System and Forrester’s Customer Experience Index stand out as the gold standard top-line measures in the CX industry.

4. Elevate your operational performance

Operational performance and CSAT are inextricably linked. For example, it’s no coincidence that airlines with the best CX ratings also boast the highest percentage of on-time arrivals. The best CEM programs cause cross-functional customer-centric collaboration, which requires your company to break down organizational silos to be more valuable, efficient, and enjoyable to your customers.

5. Put the customer at the center of every decision

Your customers see you as one whole cohesive brand, regardless of how complex your organization, systems, and processes might be. When your customer interacts with your company, they don’t care about any bureaucracy, different divisions and departments, or roles and hierarchies.

6. Plug-in and empower your employees

Ready to take your CX program to the next level? Tap into your company’s most valuable assets – your people. The more customer-facing employees with access to a real-time view of customer feedback, the more awareness, focus, and unity there is around your company’s CX mission and goals.

The CX space has seen significant movement over the last few years – between multibillion-dollar acquisitions, advancement in AI, and continuously evolving core software, the industry is experiencing a renaissance.

Yet despite these technological advancements, it appears that many of those charged with leading these initiatives are too focused on polished, buzzword–laden tools, and are in turn losing focus of why these programs exist in the first place – to enhance the customer experience.

What do customers really want?

Customers want their interactions with your company to be as easy and friction less as possible.

They want to talk to empowered brand representatives who have the answers they’re looking for and the ability to solve problems quickly and efficiently the first time they call. They want your physical space to be welcoming with employees that are easy to find and identify.

Above all, customers want to feel empathy towards their buying experience. Using chat bots and employing staff without the authority or knowledge to solve problems, while scalable, is also the quickest away to erode customer loyalty.

Why are we measuring engagement but not resolution?

Almost every business has some sort of customer experience management (CEM) program. The majority are measuring transactions by using metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or CSAT.

However, these data points don’t always expose easy-to-action insights. If you want to marry CX feedback data with actionable insights, you’ll need to measure:

• What are you customers asking and how frequently?
• Are your customers getting the answers they need?
• When are your customers escalating issues or moving to another channel?
• Are your employees empathetic to customer challenges?

Uncovering the answers to these questions will lead your organization to improvement areas where specific and measurable actions can be taken.

Real-time customer experience is a vital driver of growth. Acting in real-time, armed with the most up-to-date information about your customer, can hugely improve customer experience.

To truly “do” real-time properly, you need to be able to listen to real-time signals from your customers, understand what these signals mean in the larger context of their relationship with you, and then identify and execute the right action to meet these needs.

It’s time for marketers to adapt. Whether adapting externally to customers’ unpredictable behavior or internally within a brand’s organization, the time has come for traditional marketers to become Adaptive Marketers—agile customer experience enthusiasts who take a customer centric approach to marketing instead of a channel-centric approach.

Adaptive Marketers focus on optimizing the context, speed and state of each customer relationship instead of each channel. They can simultaneously achieve a business objective while creating the best brand experience possible, regardless of the channel. And they are making it happen now.

Understanding the customer’s needs is a common challenge for many businesses and studies show that this will become a make-or-break benchmark for most companies. Salesforce conducted a survey of over 6,000 consumers and found that 76% of them expected companies to understand their needs and expectations. This doesn’t leave very much wiggle room for your marketing and customer service strategy to fail. If you want to deliver a sound customer experience, then it’s imperative that you create a customer-centric company that is focused on fulfilling customer needs.

When customers discover a delightful customer experience, it’s likely that they’ll want to return to it again. Dimension Data even found that 84% of companies who focus on improving customer experience are reporting an increase in annual revenue. This is because these companies are gaining more customer loyalty which is highly valuable to the brand. Loyal customers make repeat purchases and offer recommendations to other potential leads who then become ambassadors as well. If you’re looking for new ways to increase your company’s profit margins, invest in bettering your customer experience.

Customer Experience    Customer Centric Approach    customer relationship   customer’s needs    customer service strategy    customer loyalty    Loyal customers

No matter what services your company provides or what communication platforms you use, customer experience (CX) needs to be at the core of everything you do. With all the tools that are available to help brands engage with their customers — from social media to artificial intelligence-based resources like product recommendations and chatbots — there are more opportunities than ever to create powerful customer experiences that build loyalty and drive sales.

But these tools aren’t going to use themselves, nor will a CX-focused culture spontaneously arise on its own. Brands need to make CX a priority at every level, from the first moment a consumer decides to explore their products online to the final step of the customer journey to the ongoing relationship that may last for years or even decades.

Great customer experiences are all about the way consumers feel when they interact with your brand. Are their needs met swiftly and effectively? Are they treated like individuals whose concerns and priorities matter? Are your digital channels easy to navigate and fully integrated with one another? When customers answer “yes” to these questions, it means your brand has established a solid CX platform that provides satisfying experiences across the board.

Brands Should Have An Explicit Focus On CX

When it comes to CX, brands should never be complacent. Even customer loyalty that has been cultivated over many years can be severely damaged by unpleasant experiences. According to a 2018 PwC report, 32% of customers say they’ll “walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience” — a reminder that CX needs to be top of mind at all times.

Customer Experience    CX    Customer Journey   CX Platform   Customer Loyalty

Customer experience is hard to measure with a KPI or a specific number, but it has an outsize impact on whether your customers are happy and loyal to your brand.

That’s why it’s so important to be mindful of trends in the space so you can quickly adapt your strategy to the latest industry insights and create a beloved customer experience.

While the concept of customer experience is timeless, the research being conducted on it is still fairly new. Every year, new studies reveal insights into important trends that are influencing businesses across the world. To some, these statistics may feel like conversational fun facts, but in actuality, they can help your customer service team capitalize on timely opportunities to improve customer experience.

If your team is looking to stay up-to-date on the latest trends occurring in customer service, consolidating your information is a great way to start. Below, we compiled a list of customer experience statistics.

1. 76% of customers expect companies to understand their needs.

Understanding the customer’s needs is a common challenge for many businesses and studies show that this will become a make-or-break benchmark for most companies. Salesforce conducted a survey of over 6,000 consumers and found that 76% of them expected companies to understand their needs and expectations. This doesn’t leave very much wiggle room for your marketing and customer service strategy to fail. If you want to deliver a sound customer experience, then it’s imperative that you create a customer-centric company that is focused on fulfilling customer needs.

2. Less than 50% of executives prioritize employee feedback.

A report conducted by Temkin Group revealed that while 73% of large companies survey employees, only 45% of executives seriously consider their employee’s feedback. Executives strategize for the business and make key operational decisions that guide the company. However, their day-to-day experience doesn’t often confront them with many customer interactions.

Frontline employees like customer service reps engage with the customer on a daily basis, making them valuable resources when researching the customer’s journey. They’re constantly engaging with new customers and gather customer reviews in everyday workflow. Executives and upper management should be craving their feedback when looking for new ways to improve the customer experience.

3. More than 80% of companies who prioritize customer experience are reporting an increase in revenue.

When customers discover a delightful customer experience, it’s likely that they’ll want to return to it again. Dimension Data even found that 84% of companies who focus on improving customer experience are reporting an increase in annual revenue. This is because these companies are gaining more customer loyalty which is highly valuable to the brand. Loyal customers make repeat purchases and offer recommendations to other potential leads who then become ambassadors as well. If you’re looking for new ways to increase your company’s profit margins, invest in bettering your customer experience.

4. More than half of all customer service reps do not plan on staying in their role.

Building an awesome customer service team is a challenge all its own, but keeping it together is another story altogether. Customer service is a unique career path and it’s quite common for people to transition in and out of service roles quickly. In fact, HubSpot Research found that 58% of customer service reps plan on leaving their current role in customer service. With the increased focus on building a positive customer experience, it’s imperative that you maintain the high-quality personnel on your customer service and customer support teams. These employees have a difficult job and won’t be afraid to look elsewhere if they feel they aren’t valued.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE   CUSTOMER SUPPORT    CXREFRESH      CX         CUSTOMER LOYALTY              CUSTOMER REVIEWS     CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STATISTICS