The customer experience or often referred to as CX is one of the key factor in any business’s long term success. By definition the customer experience (CX) is the interactions and experiences a customer have with a business throughout the customer journey. It starts from the introduction or first interaction and it continues till after sale services and a customer becoming a loyal customer of the brand. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE most of the businesses owners and senior managers think that they should increase their investments in customer experience and keep doing it for at least 5 to 7 years in future. The customer experience improvement can significantly increase the revenue by up to 70% over the course of three to five years. That is huge and what makes it even more important is that only 40% to 45% of businesses and enterprises are planning to invest in customer experience in the next year. It could provide you a great competitive edge. Mostly only big businesses, enterprises and large companies consider investing in the customer experience, however, it is equally important for SMEs and local businesses to offer a great customer experience which can help them obtain customer loyalty and increase their revenue over the time.
Furthermore in Dubai and all around the UAE the competition is very tough and the customer demands and market trend also demand a business to think out of the box and implement innovative technologies to improve customer satisfaction. Every business strives for customer loyalty and good feedback from them. However, it is the customer experience that will make them happy, encourage them to recommend your brand to others and make them loyal. The customer loyalty means more business from them. Most of the time businesses don’t realize how crucial it is to obtain customer loyalty. Studies have revealed that it is 5 to 25 time more expensive to acquire a new customer comparing to selling to an existing customer. That could make a huge difference in the long term. If you keep selling to existing customers and also acquiring new on a steady pace, you can boost your profitability and revenue by ten folds in the next five years. Here are key points that can help businesses in improving customer experience.
Understand the Impact of Customer Experience on Customer Loyalty
The customer experience (CX) is the most important part of customer relationship management (CRM). Only the customer who have positive experience with the brand become loyal customers and do repeated business. The customer with the bad experience are more likely to switch. The customer experience have huge impact on customer loyalty. Around five years ago, the customer experience was just a thing for the multinational companies and large enterprises. Now a days a customer weight their experience (CX) far higher than ever before. Even customers are willing to pay extra if they know they will get a better customer experience. That means if a business succeed in delivering satisfactory customer experience they will going to get a loyal customer else the customer will move to another business. Customer satisfaction doesn’t mean low price, discounts, promotions, etc. But it means excellent service too. The customer experience is a collective measure of various different factors that make your customer happy. Let say you have arranged a free parking for them, there is a free smartphone charging station in the waiting area, which could make them happy.
For the digital customer interaction it is extremely important to be proactive in digital communication. The customer support emails should be responded as quickly as possible. Their issues has to be solved in a timely manner. Your business website should be able to satisfy your customers. Your mobile application meet their needs and expectations. Offer them interactive solutions, self-service and multiple channels to communicate with you. Be active in social media and quickly respond to private messages or comments that you are receiving from your customers of audience. This will improve their digital experience. When their experience is improved they start trusting the brand. Once the trust is established the account managers or customer care teams can easily establish a long term relationship which can generate a huge repeated business. Furthermore the loyal customers are always good brand advocate. They not only defend your brand but also help promoting it through their friends, family, colleague and social media. This is great for your brand image and brand reputation. It attracts more customers as well. Businesses with a loyal customer base can easily accomplish their long term goals and objectives.
Understand Customer Experience and Customer Service
Most businesses often confuse customer service with customer experience. However, both are not the same. Usually here in Dubai and al around the UAE a company staff or customer service agent is the first contact of the customer with the business. Hence the first impression very much depends on that interaction. However, the customer experience is not just customer service, in fact the customer service is just a small part of the customer experience. The customer experience consists of all touch points where a potential customer or existing customer can interact with the business. The customer experience starts from the very first interaction which not only include visits at a physical store but it also includes interaction in the digital via online. The customer experience is far more than a person-to-person interaction. It includes customer relationship management and with the help of modern tools and technology it become easier and more effective.
Software tools like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) have capabilities to collect and process data. For example if a business wants to see the past purchase history of a customer then they can understand the customer behavior, their preferences and they can also predict what the customer could need next. Furthermore the businesses can understand various market trends and streamline data in their product development process to develop the products their customer will most likely to admire. Businesses can further utilize this data to personalize customer experience. These days customer love personalized experience. That doesn’t mean the customer service is not as that important. In fact the customer service is as much important as it could ever get. A small bad experience at customer service could completely ruin your all other efforts. That is why the customer service is also extremely important but the businesses should have to understand the difference between the customer service and the customer experience and treat them as two separate process or functions.
The Customer Experience Become the Top Strategic Goal for the Market Leaders
Several studies have been done which revealed that the customer experience has become the top strategic objective of the businesses. No matter which industry or market sector we take, whether it is B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumers) business, for all market leader in their respective industry are aiming to improve their customer experience by making it the top priority strategic objective. There are four key component of the customer experience which these market leaders are categorically prioritizing from anything else, and these factors are convenience, relevance, reliability and responsiveness. It means that a business must provide products and services that are relevant to the customer’s problems and their needs. The products and services must provide a reliable solution. The solution should be convenience, it means from acquiring information to interacting with business and making a purchase the entire customer journey process should be very convenience. The forth and even more important component is responsiveness.
When a customer decides to purchase a product or acquire a service, they need the vendor or service provider to respond to them immediately. Making improvements to all these four factors can enhance customer experience and boost your sales.Remember the customer experience is not just a reactive approach but it is a completely proactive approach. The customer experience is mostly driven by the feelings. It is crucial to understand what your customers are feeling and the steps or actions you are taking, how they could affect their feelings in future. The customer experience is a collective measure of the overall performance of the entire business including all its functions. The common matric for the measuring the customer experience is NPS Score and NPS surveys. The NPS means Net Promoter Score. A customer will promote your business only if they are satisfied with each and every interaction with the business.
Understand Customer Persona and Create a Clear Customer-Focused Vision
It is extremely important to understand your customers. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE businesses use various different tools and CRM to gather valuable business intelligence data. Furthermore the business can also build customer profiles on the bases of geographic and demographic data it have. Furthermore the modern digital tools are very capable in collecting and processing data. Businesses can also analyze the data to determine popular purchase trends and patterns and on the bases of those trends along with additional demographic and geographic data a business can easily create customer personas. Usually the marketing and communication department utilize customer personas to improve the marketing ROI. However, the same with added information can be utilize to create customer personas and profiles which help management to understand customers in a better way and help them making customer-friendly strategies.
Businesses can utilize the data and these customer profiles to create a highly customer-focused vision for the future and according to that vision strategies can be formed and strategic goals can be established. This will help improving customer experience and also performance of the business and various relevant internal processes.
Create a Strong Emotional Connection with Your Customers
Emotions shape the attitude and the attitude drives decisions. According to several studies almost 50% of the customer experience is based on emotions. The customer loyalty based on the emotional attachment a customer have had with the brand. Customers do care about the features and value proposition of the products or services but at the end of the day it is their emotion which drives their decision. The customer acquire and purchase what they feel is a right choice and it could be based on comparison, the strong USP or value proposition or brand message that you are offering them. But the decision is heavily influenced by their emotions. That feeling and emotional driver is the experience they had with your business. In the long run it is the customer loyalty that matters the most for the business’s success and growth. The customer loyalty is also driven by the emotional attachment and the feeling a customer have about the brand. The customer service or customer support team plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction and help business obtaining customer loyalty.
If a customer develops an emotional connection with the business due to the exceptional service they will most likely to stick with the brand for a long time. Businesses have to be a little bit of creative and innovative at this stage in order to establish a strong emotional bond with its customers. This happens only when the business is capable of understanding its customers. When a customer thinks the business understands them and is trying to meet their expectations they start liking it. Thus it is easier to gain their trust and make them loyal to your brand.
Collect Customer Feedback on Regular Bases
The customer feedback is a great tool to add in your customer experience strategy. It can provide very detailed information about customer’s liking/disliking and their preferences. Businesses can use multiple channels and survey types to collect customer feedback data. The online surveys via emails or website along with in-store survey are the great medium to collect high quality and quantity data. For customer feedback it is important to collect as much data as possible. For example, only 1% of the product users can’t provide enough data to accurately understand the opinion of the rest of the customers. In-store customer feedback collection is also a great way to collect customer feedback data in bulk quantity. Businesses usually install small touch screens or interactive kiosks to execute customer feedback campaigns. Furthermore the businesses can segment that data on bases of various variables to understand and patterns and trends.
For example, the data be divided as age group 20 to 25, gender female, and location Sharjah branch, feedback about a particular aspect of the products or service. This way businesses can understand a lot about various business processes, employees, quality of the products and services and much more. This data can be utilized in the policy making, strategy building and product/service development process. Businesses can make more informed decisions and they can also evaluate the impact of those decisions on the customer happiness and customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
The customer experience is getting more important with each passing year. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the market is becoming more competitive and the customers are becoming more demanding with higher expectations. Several studies have revealed that a modern day customer put experience (CX) almost equal if not higher to the quality of the product or service they are acquiring. More customers are willing to pay extra if they are sure they will get a better service and experience. The customer loyalty is almost totally dependent on the customer experience. If the customer experience is good the customer will become loyal and they will do repeated business. If their experience is bad they will simply move on to the next business. In this blog we have discussed a few key points that can help businesses in building the customer experience of the future. RSI Concepts is a well-known brand for customer satisfaction solutions in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you need our help to build you customer satisfaction and business intelligence tools, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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