How many times have you sworn to avoid that corner restaurant like a teenager avoids his bullies, just because of a one-time poor service you received from a member of their waiting staff?
This shows that besides our need for the final product, one of the biggest determinants for why we engage with certain businesses and avoid others is how they treat us, from the door when we arrive, to the parking lot on our way out.
Therefore it is important to create compelling, memorable, and pleasant experiences for every single prospect at every stage of their customer journey. This is possible with customer experience marketing.
What is customer experience marketing?
Customer Experience Marketing (CXM) is an approach to marketing that places the needs of your prospects and the process of providing value far ahead of making sales. The rationale here is that, even if they don’t purchase or subscribe to your product, they will only have good things to say about your brand when pressed by other people in their network.
It’s a quality over quantity approach in marketing and it ensures that each prospect on their customer journey feels attended to and is having an overall positive experience with your brand.
Importance of customer experience Marketing
Delighting your prospects at every stage of their customer journey turns them into your biggest promoters. This has many long-term benefits which include, stronger brand loyalty, better customer retention, and increased margins from the free promotion of your brand.
Here are some interesting stats outlined in a Forbes article.
- 73% of consumers say a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties.
- 77% of consumers say inefficient customer experiences detract from their quality of life.
- Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers.
- Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience.
If these don’t scream the importance of CXM to your business, I don’t know what will. But let’s delve deeper. We cannot begin to appreciate this wonderful marketing strategy if we don’t understand what drives it in the first place – Customer experience.
”I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou
What is customer experience?
Customer experience is the overall impression your customers have about your brand in light of all direct interactions they have with the brand. People form opinions about your brand on a myriad of factors including what they hear from their friends, family, the news, forums, and so on. But their interaction can change a good opinion into a bad one. Conversely, a terrible opinion can become a glowing review after a quick interaction. That is why every single touch point with a customer on their journey is important.
Customers want to feel seen, heard, attended to, and desired and are alert for any signs of the contrary when interacting with your brand. Customer experience has become an even bigger differentiator than price or product features. The options are endless in today’s global market and to stay competitive, your brand must be aggressive in curating those experiences that will keep the customers engaged and longing for more.
Another key thing to note is that customers are more likely to stay quiet or give negative feedback about their experiences with your brand if you don’t go above and beyond and treat them better than your competitors would.
That is why it is so important to wow them with your sensitivity to their needs and excellent communication right from the get-go.
So, what are we shooting for? How do you measure your customer experience to ensure continuous improvement?
How to measure customer experience
Certainly, they are not an answer to everything. The key feature of a website generator lies in universality. In principle, they should meet the requirements and expectations of the majority. When it comes to situations when you require something special or unique, this isn’t the option for you. What’s more, often the builders fail to provide all the essential stuff free.
1. Analyze Conversions on all touch points with customers
Conversions give a broad view of how receptive your customers are to your message. It can show you what is working and where there are hiccups that need to be addressed.
If your conversion rates are less than optimum for any marketing channel you use, it might be time to tweak the message. Look for any ambiguous terms in your copy. A lack of clarity can easily translate into your prospects making extra google searches, contacting customer service, or simply clicking off.
Sometimes, the problem is that you are offering too many options at the early stages of the customer journey. There is such a thing as decision paralysis and the overwhelm new customers experience when going over all options available to them can be off-putting.
It isn’t always about the messaging. Other technical issues such as website speed and intrusive ads can ruin the experience for many customers.
Conversion metrics are a great way to detect issues. Paired with other troubleshooting techniques, it will prove to be a vital piece of creating amazing customer experiences.
2. Conduct customer satisfaction surveys and analyze results
Conversion analytics don’t tell the whole story. If they point at what is wrong, customer satisfaction surveys point out motivations (the whys) for customer behavior or response to your brand.
You can create simple forms using google, or use more enterprise software such as Hubspot to gain valuable insights about how your customers experience your products, service, or, brand.
3. Use the Net Promoter Score
Another way to measure customer experience is the Net Promoter Score or NPS. This measures how eager or indifferent your customers are to recommend your services or products to their network of family, friends, and business associates.
Using a scale of 1-10, NPS allows you to segment your customers into three groups: Promoters (9-10), Passives(7-8), and detractors (0-6). A fair rule is that you are doing something right if more than 20% of your customers are in the promoter’s range. If Pareto’s principle is anything to go by, they will drive more than 80%of word of mouth sales. If detractors are far more than the sum of passives and promoters, Houston, we’ve got a problem!
Because NPS is a leading indicator of growth, it provides the best estimates for customer experience satisfaction. NPS should be used with other metrics and insights from various points along the customer journey. That will provide a comprehensive, actionable view of your customer experience performance.
4. Encourage customers to share ideas for new products or features they would enjoy
Set up a platform for your customers to recommend tweaks to your product or service. It gives them a sense of ownership when they know that your company takes action on their ideas and is committed to improving things with them.
A lack of ideas may be interpreted as you are doing things perfectly, however, that is hardly ever the case. Human wants are insatiable and as long as your customers remain human, there are improvements to make. A safer assumption would be that your customers don’t care enough to engage with you on that basis and are simply coping with what you have to offer now until something better comes along.
What do you do then?
Involve them in the innovation process, and have conversations with them. Get to know what their biggest pains are and watch them suggest ways in which you could relieve them and win the customer satisfaction battle.
5. Identify the reasons that account for your customer churn rate
Customer churn is as sure as wear and tear on high-friction machine parts. Still, it does not help to simply accept that and not do anything to reduce it drastically. To do that, you need to learn from your former customers, what made them leave you?
Remember, it’s not them. It’s you. (Even when it’s them).
Ask those you can interview directly. Follow up on what they say on your competitor’s forums and other review sites. Figure out what the issues are and be proactive in dealing with them to reduce the churn rate.
6. Analyze customer support ticket trends.
If a customer raises a support ticket, consider it strike one. Ideally, they should have a smooth transition with as few hiccups as possible from the stage of awareness to when they are fully engaged with repeat customers/promoters. This is inevitably flawed.
So when customer support tickets are raised, take note of the issues they are raised about. Analyze them, look out for recurrent issues, and put measures in place to solve them permanently.
Conclusion
Customers hold all the power in brand relationships today. The internet, globalization, and other modern innovations have spoilt them for choice and changed how business is conducted today.
It is not enough to have the best product on the market. It’s not enough to have the lowest price. Price and product quality differ only slightly from brand to brand.
The one true differentiator today Is customer experience and customer experience marketing is one of the best investments for any growing business today.