Why Is Customer Experience Important for Your Business?

You may have heard it said that customer experience (CX) is of the utmost importance to businesses across all industries. But it might still be a hard pill to swallow. After all, you work hard to provide the best possible product or service at a great price, delivered with the utmost professionalism. Isn’t that enough?

In other words, why is customer experience important for a business? With all that you already do to make your company as great as it can possibly be, is it really necessary to invest the time and resources it takes to offering great customer service?

The short answer is yes—and, spoiler alert, we’ve got a great way to achieve excellent CX without the headache or expense you may be expecting. Here’s what you should know.

Better Customer Experience Means Higher Levels of Satisfaction, Loyalty and Retention

The more satisfied customers are, the more likely they are to stay loyal—and the less likely to jump ship to a competitor.
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Why is customer experience important? Because it directly correlates to customer satisfaction. The more satisfied customers are, the more likely they are to stay loyal—and the less likely to jump ship to a competitor. And that’s a huge benefit, considering that it can cost 25 times as much to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one (via the Harvard Business Review).

And in an era when it’s increasingly difficult to compete on price or quality alone, customer experience could be your best shot at earning that satisfaction and loyalty: According to Microsoft’s 2017 State of Global Customer Service Report, a whopping 96 percent of customers consider the quality of the service they receive to be an important factor in whether they’re loyal to a business.

“96 percent of customers consider the quality of the service they receive to be an important factor in whether they’re loyal to a business.” Click To Tweet

On top of saving you money by reducing customer churn, nurturing loyalty also means you’re creating die-hard brand advocates. And those kinds of customers are more likely to refer their friends and family to your business, which gives you the benefit of gaining new customers without having to make the considerable investment in sales and marketing dollars that usually requires.

Improving Your Customer Experience Leads to More Profit and Competitive Advantage

In recent years, there’s a great deal of data supporting the idea that customer experience is directly linked to a company’s profitability.
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In recent years, there’s a great deal of data supporting the idea that customer experience is directly linked to a company’s profitability: A cross-industry analysis of 1,351 organizations conducted by Dimension Data found that 84 percent of companies that worked to improve their customer experiences reported an increase in revenue.

That point is emphasized by the American Express 2017 Customer Service Barometer, which shows consumers in the United States are willing to spend as much as 17 percent on businesses that offer “excellent” customer service. On top of that, 33 percent of consumers say they’ll consider switching to a different company if they receive what they consider to be poor service.

“33 percent of consumers say they’ll consider switching to a different company if they receive what they consider to be poor service.” Click To Tweet

The Dimension Data research also shows that only 16 percent of companies in North America rate their customer experience as 9 out of 10 or better. That means there’s a big opportunity for businesses to distinguish themselves in their market by offering a better CX than the competition. And in industries and niches where it’s difficult to stand out on price point, that could be a game changer.

“16 percent of companies in North America rate their customer experience as 9 out of 10 or better. ” Click To Tweet

All of these trends outlined above are even more pronounced for younger generations, meaning that the importance of offering a great customer experience is only going to increase in the years to come.

Need Help Improving Your Customer Experience?

Offering a great customer experience means giving the people you do business with the best possible service.
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So, what does it take to actually offer a CX that customers will love? We live in a complex, interconnected world, where technology plays an ever-increasing role in the relationship between consumers and businesses. As such, offering a great customer experience means giving the people you do business with the best possible service on every possible touchpoint.

Voice, email and website interaction are the obvious priorities here, but it’s important not to neglect less prominent channels. Automated chat, social media messaging, even your website’s FAQs page—the quality of each and every one of these platforms can make a big difference in the quality of the CX you’re offering.

You might be thinking that offering top-notch customer care across all of these channels is a major undertaking, requiring continuous investments in cutting-edge hardware, software and IT security. And there’s also the service itself: Today’s customers demand lightning-fast responses, non-stop availability and a friendly agent on the other end of the line. And that’s just for starters.

So, how can a business possibly hope to deliver all of this in a way that isn’t prohibitively expensive? Luckily, the same technology that’s enabling the historic increase in customer communications channels has also made it possible and even cost-effective to achieve a great CX by outsourcing it to an off-site, on-demand service provider.

Outsourcing your customer service offers a variety of important benefits for your business. The bottom line, though, is that it helps you achieve the goal of offering an outstanding CX in a way that doesn’t break the bank. It also lets you implement other essential elements of great customer care, such as:

• Scaling up or down easily and smoothly to meet fluctuations in demand
• Improving your ability to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers
• Setting up an effective and customer-friendly complaint resolution process
• Applying contact center data analytics that help you continuously improve your CX
• Using highly skilled, onshore customer service agents
• Avoiding disruptions of service caused by severe weather events or natural catastrophes

With more than 20 years dedicated to excellence in outsourced customer care, Working Solutions is the provider of choice when it comes to building a superior experience. From humble startups to industry-leading FORTUNE 100 companies, from basic customer care to sophisticated IT and back-office outsourcing services, we offer everything you need to ensure a great CX.