Customer satisfaction must be top priority for businesses. The more satisfied a customer is with your business, the higher the potential for the customer to make transactions with your brand. This, of course, also has the potential to turn them into loyal customers. There are many ways to the hearts of customers and one of them is by creating a memorable customer experience when they interact with your brand. To do this, businesses must first know what kind of customer experience their customers want.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer Experience (CX) is the perspective or assessment of customers towards the business. McKinsey also defines customer experience as the formation of a value which a customer forms towards your brand based on their journey as a customer. There are two important points that have the greatest influence on customer experience: the quality of your brand’s products and customers themselves.
The CX that each customer goes through is the result of interactions which occur between the customer and the business. For example, if a customer feels that all the experiences he receives during the transaction process are fun and leaves a good impression on him, then we can be sure that the customer will have a positive customer experience. Likewise, customers have the potential to face a bad customer experience if they feel the transaction process is unpleasant.
Apart from providing a good experience for the consumers, CX also plays a very important role in the sustainability of a business. Why? CX can directly affect purchasing decisions, customer assessments, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty.
Various survey and research results have also pointed towards the importance of CX for businesses. When it comes to purchasing decisions, PWC found that as many as 73% of customers consider CX to be an important factor influencing their purchasing decisions. Customer satisfaction is also very strongly influenced by CX because 59% of customers will make transactions elsewhere if they have multiple negative experiences. As many as 17% of customers will also look for other brands after experiencing even just one negative experience. In addition, good or bad CX that each customer goes through will inevitably affect customer loyalty towards the business.
The magnitude of the influence of CX on a business is a strong foundation for why businesses should pay close attention and design strategies to be able to create memorable CX for their customers.
Customers and Customer Experience
As previously discussed, CX describes the journey customers have when dealing with a business, which also makes the customer central to it. This means that CX cannot be judged from the perspective of the business but must be viewed from the lens of the customer. What is right and true according to the business is not necessarily the same assessment in the eyes of the customers.
To make the customer central to CX, there are several factors which need to be considered. Among them are the flow of communication with businesses, how difficult transaction processes are, as well as services provided by the businesses both before and after the transaction process has taken place.
Provide Easy-to-Reach & Responsive Means of Communication
For customers, communication is the first step they embark on when they are faced with a product or service offered by a brand. Therefore, it is important for businesses to provide communication channels which customers can use to approach your business. To decide on a digital communication channel that is concise, effective, and precise, read this article.
Communication channels are important factors that must be considered by businesses in order to provide customers with easy-to-reach means of communication. Customers will also be more inclined to contact businesses through the communication channels they are already using and familiar with such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, and Facebook Messenger. These four channels are communication channels that are currently widely used across many societies and communities around the world. Apart from choosing the right communication channel, businesses must also pay attention to the rate of customer service responses during the communication process especially now that we are entering the era of The Age of Assistance, where customers become impatient and demanding, have more curiosity, and demand businesses to be able to respond quickly.
How quickly customer service responds to customer enquiries is one of the benchmarks which can affect CX. According to Zingle, quicker response time is the main contributing factor that can increase customer experience.
Ease of Transacting with Businesses
Apart from the communication process, the transactions flow provided by business is also an important factor that can affect CX. It is important for businesses to be able to create effective and efficient transaction processes for customers. For customers, a difficult and long transaction process can make them too sluggish to make purchases. Research shows that as many as 74% of customers will look for other brands if they feel the buying process is too difficult.
Businesses also need to devise specific strategies that can ease customers in making transactions. For example, a business can create an automated payment system where customers don’t have to reconfirm after making a payment. In addition, businesses can also create automated notifications to customers such as payment notifications and product delivery notifications. This will ease the job of consumers because they don’t have to call the business again to enquire about the statuses of updates and product shipments of items they have ordered.
Another reason why CX is so important is due to the fact that it can influence customers’ purchasing decisions. 43% of customers will pay more to receive convenience while shopping and as much as 42% of customers will pay more for a friendly and welcoming experience. In addition, Salesforse states that 67% of customers will pay more to receive good customer experience.
Create a Memorable Customer Experience Now!
The magnitude of the influence CX has on businesses signifies how customer experience is a very crucial factor. All good and bad feedback given by customers based on their personal experiences will greatly affect the sustainability of and judgment of others on the business.
There are many ways businesses can create memorable CX for their customers. To discover which method is the most effective and suitable, a business must first evaluate all aspects involved in the processes of its customers’ journeys. As a provider of software-based communication technology, Qiscus has observed and conducted various research on the significance of customer experience for changes in consumer behavior, business communication trends, and how businesses should respond to them. To understand and discuss further, you can contact us here
