What’s the real return on improving your customer experience? Find out CX’s value – and how to harness it – in this article.
CX can be a tough sell in some industries and organizations. There are many reasons why, starting with a poor understanding of CX. Ultimately, CX to these people can feel like a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. So how can CX professionals communicate the importance of their craft?
CX Value by the Numbers
We can start by emphasizing how CX can save and make money. Stats are your friends here. Take a look at these:
- Increased revenue: 86% of customers are willing to pay up to 16% more if there’s a great customer experience. Customer spending increases by up to 140% following a positive experience.
- Reducing costs: Improving CX can shave 33% off customer support spends.
- Brand reputation: 64% of customers are more likely to recommend a brand that offers amazing experiences. [Source: CX Index]
- Customer retention: 66% of businesses that prioritize customer experience see increased retention. [Source: HubSpot]
- Customer engagement: 64% of consumers consider customer experience to be more important than price. [Source: Zippia]
And there’s another key fact about customer retention: It costs six times more to make a new customer than to keep a current customer.[Source: Customer Service Manager] Good CX is essential to keeping customers.
So just how does CX work its magic?
Making Money by Reducing Friction
CX, by its very nature, works to make a better customer experience. By eliminating pain points along the customer journey and making transactions as smooth as possible, it makes it easier for customers to achieve their goal.
Let’s borrow an example from basic physics. Imagine you’re pulling a heavy box across a rough surface. The friction between the box and the surface slows you down. It makes it much harder to move the box, which means you exert more time and energy.
But once you get that box on a smooth surface, you can move it along easily. Your task is the same, but the process is much less demanding. You feel better about the whole thing. You might even volunteer to slide the next box along the floor because it was so easy.
In essence, this is exactly what CX does: it removes friction, making completing the task easier. Thus, it increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. It can also increase employee productivity for exactly the same reason – when their jobs are less complicated, people can complete more tasks using less time and effort.
Good CX Starts with Listening
Let’s shift focus slightly to the User Experience side of things. There are two golden rules in UX:
- Always make decisions with your user in mind.
- You are not your user.
These apply equally well in the closely related field of Customer Experience. For “make decisions”, we could substitute any customer-facing activity – designing, writing, marketing, advertising, building, developing. The key here is that whatever we do must be done with the customer’s needs, circumstances, and perspective in mind.
Most of us intend to keep the customer in mind. We think we do center our actions around the customer as much as possible within the business goals and constraints we have to deal with. But this is where Rule #2 comes in:
We are not our customers.
Our circumstances, goals, outlook, and needs are different from those of our customers. Even with the best will in the world, we are bound to make mistakes in customer understanding – unless we take the time to listen to our customers.
This is fundamental to a good customer experience. And it also happens to be very budget-friendly.
That’s why we can still work on creating a better customer experience during slow economic times. At its core, CX doesn’t have to be wildly expensive. Connecting with and listening to customers will give you a lot of insight to work with. How you do it will vary; it could be by survey, direct conversations, social media outreach, analyzing your existing customer data, or some combination of methods. But improvement need not be expensive. And it all starts with asking and really listening.
Investing in Good CX Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive
In tough times, customer experience can be the deciding factor in whether a person does business with you or your competitor. We can’t afford to neglect CX or put it off. Fortunately, improving CX can be done at whatever level and budget you have. Start where you are, and start by listening to your customers.
