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

Understanding the various touchpoints you have with your customers is key to delivering a memorable customer experience.

Once you’ve mapped out your touchpoints, it’s often helpful to group them into channels. That’s the focus of this blog post.

The most common channels

Websites: refers to customers visiting websites to gather information about a company. Can include both mobile and regular versions of the website.

Native Mobile App: refers to customers who download a company’s iOS or Andriod app, and feedback is gathered about their experience with it.

Contact Center: an important touchpoint where customers call for more information or assistance. Online chat is another part of modern contact centers.

In Location: refers to an actual in-person customer experience, such as a retail store, restaurant, or hotel.

Field Services: customers interact with a company in their home.

Mapping your touchpoints

When you look at all the touchpoints on your map, each of them will likely fall into one of these five channels.

No matter how your customer interacts with you, the ultimate goal is to have a consistent “omnichannel” experience.

When your in-location experience is different from your web experience, or when your web experience is different from the experience a customer has with your native mobile app, this inconsistent CX will create problems.

Customers might feel like the company cares about them after a positive field service experience, but if the contact center fails to provide the same level of experience, the customer will be disappointed.

Keep in mind that if you’re working with a premium brand, all channels will need to deliver an outstanding customer experience. If you’re working with a mid-tier, value-oriented brand, the goal may be to achieve a certain standard throughout each channel, such as professionalism or efficiency.

Gathering omnichannel feedback

If you want a consistent omnichannel experience, make sure you are listening to your customers in each channel! You can gather feedback from these five channels in various ways.

For example, you might ask about their most recent experience with a field services representative through an email survey. How satisfied were you with our technician’s most recent visit to your home? Why? Were there any problems? If so, please describe them.

Or you can gather feedback via methods that are channel specific.

For website feedback, pop-up surveys can ask the customer for feedback while they are on the website or after they leave.

When a customer uses a mobile app, a survey can be embedded into the app asking them to provide feedback.

An interactive voice response (IVR) survey or a computer-generated survey can be used after a customer interacts with a contact center—the system directs the customer to the survey when the call is complete.

We are also seeing more and more text surveys, or Short Message Surveys (SMS), these days as a substitute for email surveys.

The goal is to obtain feedback from the customer in whichever way they prefer to provide you with that feedback.

It will largely depend on the customer. If your primary customers are millennials, they might prefer a text message survey. If you’re working with baby boomers, they probably prefer completing a survey via email at a time that’s convenient for them.