What is Customer Experience? Learn Why It’s Essential for Brand Success

It is essential to offer excellent customer experience to ensure customer satisfaction and encourage repeat purchases. It also promotes word of mouth publicity that helps attract new customers in addition to establishing goodwill in the market. Research shows that as many as 52% customers are likely to switch to a brand’s competitor because of poor customer experience. Contrarily, businesses that prioritise customer experience reportedly witness an 80% rise in their revenue. But what is customer experience exactly? What is its role in brand success and how to achieve it? Let’s find out answers to all these questions and more.   

Breaking Down Customer Experience

Customer experience refers to the way a customer feels when they interact with a brand or uses its products/ services. This includes one-way and two-way interactions. It can be through various mediums like a business’ marketing campaigns, billboards, customer service, social media platforms, or public statements issued by the company’s representatives. The store or website’s appearance also plays a part in it.

However more importantly, it involves the kind of experience customers have when they use a company’s products or services. These interactions with the brand and its offerings shape consumers’ perception about it. The better the experience, the better the perception! This is why it is imperative for businesses to offer a brilliant customer experience. 

Some of the ways in which a brand can create a good customer experience are:

• Offering high quality services
• Providing excellent customer support service to address any issues or queries promptly
• Ensuring transparency in its dealings
• Designing an intuitive website that loads quickly and is easy to navigate
• Setting realistic expectations about its offerings through its endorsements and interactions
• Giving importance to customer feedback and working on it

Conversely, businesses are likely to create a bad experience for their customers in the following cases:

• Frequent delays in product deliveries
• Poor product or service quality
• Failure to address customer complaints in a timely manner
• Lack of personalised services 
• Inability to answer customer queries correctly
• A slow-loading website that does not have clearly demarcated information/ categories
• Hidden charges or unclear pricing information
• Inconsistent information across different channels
• Complicated return and refund processes

In a survey, 49% of loyal customers that had left a brand reported poor customer service as the reason. 

The Role of Customer Experience in Brand Loyalty

Customer experience plays an important role in building brand loyalty. In a study, 73% of the respondents mentioned that they prioritise customer experience while making a purchase. A company that offers a positive experience is likely to build a loyal customer base that seldom looks elsewhere. How? Let us look at the impact of positive interactions and engagements:

Builds Trust

When a business consistently ensures good product quality, timely deliveries, instant complaint resolution and transparency, it earns customer trust. And trust breeds loyalty. Repeat purchases become common as a result.

Word of Mouth Publicity 

Happy and satisfied customers contribute to word of mouth publicity, thereby adding to the business’ clientele. It has been observed that people value brand recommendations provided by friends and family. They are more likely to try the products and services recommended by them compared to picking an item based on a social media endorsement or TV commercial. As per a survey, as many as 84% customers trust personal recommendations.

Improves Customer Retention

As already stated, good customer experience encourages return business. It has also been noticed that, in such a case, many customers tend to overlook minor issues that may occur at times. They still stick to the brand, reducing its customer churn rate and improving retention.

Finding the Best Customer Experience Strategy for Your Brand

Here are some effective strategies that can help create a brilliant customer experience:

Seek Feedback

By seeking feedback and acting upon it, you show your commitment towards fulfilling clients’ needs. It creates a delight factor among customers and they look forward to using more of your services.

Provide Personalised Interactions

This is another way of making the customers feel valued. By understanding their needs and preferences and offering them personalised resolutions, businesses can enhance their experience.

Ensure Instant Response

Addressing customer queries and working on their feedback is almost pointless if the process is delayed. Quick and prompt action is necessary to enhance customer satisfaction.

Streamline the Buying Process

A lengthy buying process that involves multiple steps and confusing prompts can lead to frustration resulting in cart abandonment. It is important to streamline the buying process to create a pleasant user experience and encourage sales.

Create an Omnichannel Experience

Providing consistent service across all touch points is necessary to enhance customer experience. It can be achieved by integrating different communication channels, including those employed in-store, on social media platforms and mobile application.

Do Not Compromise on Product Quality

Pleasing interactions, fast loading website, and timely deliveries wouldn’t be able to create a positive impact if they aren’t backed by good quality products. This is one arena that businesses cannot compromise on at all.

Exceed Customer Expectation

Whenever possible, try to exceed customer expectation by creating a delight factor instead of just ensuring satisfaction. This can be achieved by offering solutions proactively, giving unexpected upgrades, and providing special reward points.

Tools and Metrics to Gauge Customer Experience

The above mentioned strategies can significantly contribute towards improving the customer experience. However, even if you adopt all or most of these strategies, it is crucial to monitor the kind of experience you are offering. Simply implementing them may not create the kind of impact you are aiming. It is important to find out whether customers are genuinely satisfied or are expecting more. The only way to understand this is by gauging customer experience with the use of right tools and metrics. Here are some of the ways in which you can measure it:

CSAT Surveys

This survey shows how satisfied customers are with your products, services and interactions.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Through this, brands inquire how likely their customers are to recommend their products to others. High NPS percentage shows that customers are happy with the brand.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

It measures how easily a customer gets resolution in case an issue arises.

Customer Feedback

This is an effective way to identify how satisfied customers are with a business’ offerings. It also helps understand their expectations and needs. This information can be used for improvisation. Feedback can be collated through forms and surveys. Customer service staff also receives feedback which they mostly enter in customer management software. 

Social Media and Website Analytics Tools

They provide a better measure of the customer experience by showing data in the form of numbers.

Churn Rate

Customer churn rate can be a powerful tool to assess your brand’s performance. A high churn rate indicates dissatisfaction among clients.

Shiprocket Engage 360: Drives Engagement and Boosts Conversions with Ease

Shiprocket Engage 360 is a customer communication management software that enables seamless interaction with clients. It facilitates communication via automated WhatsApp communication s. With the use of analytics, automation, and personalisation, the platform communicates effectively with the customers and engages them the right way.

By providing information about every step of the process, including order placement, shipping, and real-time shipment location, it enhances customer experience. It helps offer a personalised shopping experience and lowers the chances of returns, thereby reducing the operational cost.

In addition to engaging the existing customers through efficient communication, the platform helps acquire new customers. It does so by running automated marketing campaigns to grab the attention of your potential buyers.

Conclusion

Customer experience plays a key role in establishing brand loyalty. By consistently offering a positive experience, brands can encourage customers to come back for more. It has been observed that brands that are customer-centric generate 60% higher profit compared to those that don’t focus on customer experience. Eventually, they build a loyal customer base that helps them generate profit month on month. These customers also show their loyalty for the brand by recommending their products to others. Some of the ways businesses can offer a brilliant customer experience is by providing reliable goods and services, offering excellent customer support, ensuring timely deliveries, and maintaining transparency. It is equally important to monitor the customer satisfaction level consistently to know you are on the right track.