Customer experience is no longer just a buzz word for forward thinking marketers. What started as a concept to thoughtfully weave through disparate business functions to create a more seamless, differentiated buying experience, has evolved to become THE source and indicator of customer growth and loyalty. A survey by Forrester Research shows that companies leading with customer experience deliver 4-8% higher revenue growth vs. companies that don't. This study by HBR found companies with a strong customer experience can see an increase of up to 16% in customer retention.
From B2B to B2C, or B2B2C, smart marketing teams understand the importance of mapping, measuring, and marketing through the comprehensive customer journey. They are the ones outperforming their competition and consistently top the leaderboards for revenue growth and customer retention.
Just getting started? Categorize your strategy and team collaboration in three areas:
1. Customer journey mapping
Ever walked through a day in the life of your customers, particularly in all the ways they interact with your company? Your customers’ opinions and experiences are influenced throughout that journey, from searching goods & services online, to live interactions, digital experiences all the way to shipping and billing. The consideration of the entire experience is where your greatest opportunity to differentiate lies.
Whether using fancy technology platforms or simply white boarding with a cross functional team, your starting point is to map the actual and ideal customer journey identifying key touchpoints along the way. Paired with a deep understanding of your customers’ wants and needs, these touchpoints are the opportunities where thoughtful design and focused marketing can make a difference in influencing buying decisions and creating differentiated, delightful buying experiences.
2. Customer Feedback
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Many companies just getting started in this space make excuses for avoiding this step: not feeling ‘ready’, fear of asking questions they’re not ready to hear truthful responses to or feeling ill-equipped with technology or expertise in survey design.
The truth is, putting this off only exposes you to ongoing risk of a slowly bleeding churn rate, of being blindsided by problems that could be easily fixed, or of missing opportunities of doubling down in areas you’re actually doing great in. There are survey solutions available today from low cost/low fidelity to high powered platforms that move past measuring to enable automation, benchmarking, consultation, and predictive analytics. The bottom line: measuring customer experience is critical to success.
3. Application
This is where the real fun for marketers begins! Armed with key touchpoints and the ability to measure, you can confidently unleash your marketing department to curate a system of fun, effective, and engaging moments throughout your customer journey. High performing marketing teams are empowered to engage a cross-functional team to ideate, plan and ensure alignment with key departments. This includes sales, customer service, operations, billing and any other teams that directly or indirectly impact a moment in the customer’s journey. Some companies even incentivize staff using KPIs on the most important areas of customer experience- all of which ensures optimal alignment to drive customer satisfaction, revenue growth and retention.
With an onslaught of advanced technology and rapidly changing customer demands, it’s never been more important to OWN a deep understanding of your target customer and to curate a differentiated experience that leaves them resisting any temptation to look elsewhere for their wants and needs. To ensure you’re maximizing marketing potential, visit Nivalmi at www.nivalmi.com or contact us today at darcy@nivalmi.com.
Transforming success into legacy is the Nivalmi purpose. Developing leadership is our passion. Nivalmi is a carefully curated team of seasoned consultants helping unlock opportunity, improve efficiency, and guide the change necessary to create measurable improvements in people, culture and bottom lines.
Comments