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As the pandemic has changed the way many companies operate, it's important that your company focuses on the CX to drive sales, profit and business growth.
The goal of marketing is to generate more revenue for the business, we have seen time and time again that businesses that aren’t customer-focused must play catch up to all the brands that are! Customers are the drivers of the success of a business, their experience is negative, then it will reflect negatively on both the brands’ public image and the metrics and revenue.
If you would like to know some of the benefits of focusing on your customers keep reading!
- Increased Customer Loyalty & Retention
When customers feel they are treated with care and like they matter, they will remember that experience whenever they think of your brand. Think about it, you don’t even have to market anything, and your brand is already in the consumer’s mind. The customers will be loyal to your brand as they are more likely to come back, not just for your goods & services but also for your service. Did you know that a happy customer generates at least 14 times more revenue than an unhappy customer! Happy customer, happy business!
- More Customer Acquisition
Many competitor brands sell similar products, Apple & Samsung both sell mobile devices, Ford & Toyota both sell motor vehicles. The only thing that matters is how the customer feels and experiences when dealing with each brand. As mentioned before a good customer experience leaves a long-lasting impression on customers, these impressions will be carried and passed on from customer to customer, essentially, indirect marketing. Instead of marketing yourself, the customers willingly market for you and more and more customers will hear about these positive reviews and visit your store. Do you really want to spend more money on acquiring new customers? Why spend 7 times more, trying to acquire new customers than satisfying current customers.
- Less Business Emergency
The title sounds a bit odd but stick with me here. The better customer experience you give to customers, they start to develop a friendship with you and become more understanding and lenient toward you. Take the pandemic, for example, many small businesses struggled to stay afloat due to the massive decrease in consumer consumption and for understandable reasons like not having enough for bills, being afraid of getting sick, etc. Some loyal customers went out of their way to purchase from a business that gave them a positive customer experience. Let’s imagine another scenario in which your business starts a new marketing campaign, and it causes backlash. Many customers may think poorly of your brand but the loyal customers who have had positive customer experiences will be understanding, and possibly even defend your brand against the negative press.
- Reduce Costs
As mentioned in point 2, customers will voluntarily market for you and talk about your brand without you or your brand must pump more money into your marketing efforts. Providing good customer experiences gives customers more reasons to come back, that is less you money out of your pocket that you must spend on marketing, and that amount compounds. A CX marketing approach provides more attainable data such as customer visits, to generate analytics for the business to use in future ventures. Through positive customer experiences, it will boost the lifetime value of a customer, greatly increasing the longevity of your business.
- Competitive Advantage
Having a better product than another business will give you a competitive advantage over them but then what if another business creates an even better product than you? Products are easier to improve upon thanks to research & development departments but providing a good customer experience is very hard to duplicate and forget about. Products come and go but experiences with brands are long-lasting, especially with the existence of social media. It is important that businesses are providing a unique and positive CX gives your business a competitive advantage by positioning you as the brand that truly cares for the customers more than any other brand. Being the go-to brand or business, to a customer is invaluable and cannot be topped, a staple business is guaranteed to have long-lasting relationships with the community a long life as a successful business.
- BONUS
Would you be happy if a business that you work night and day on, blood, sweat and tears shed just to have a customer give you a bad review? As business owners, we want nothing more than to see our ‘baby’ flourish, we are proud of our work and having external validation through happy customers is something we all want. In a way, having a customer-centric approach is the most beneficial for the business and a business owner’s self-esteem, because don’t you want people to brag about your baby?
The customer experience is the one defining metric of every company’s success or failure. Too many negative customer experiences will result in unwanted attention to your business and cause it to lose its revenue and eventually may even be forced to close. Too many positive customer experiences, however, will result in your business having too much money (oh no!).
Focusing on the customer experience gives you and your business a clearer goal to measure and improve upon and will result in the most yield for your time and efforts. Just remember that happy customers bring your brand wherever they go.
Image: Unsplash Christiann Koepke
