In business today, the consumer holds the cards.
That’s great for consumers, who for years had little recourse if products and services failed to make the grade. What voice they had was limited, and usually went through the very business they were displeased with.
With the dawn of the internet age – especially mobile social media – a disgruntled customer is a swipe and finger taps away from broadcasting their dissatisfaction to an audience that includes customers, potential customers, and influencers. And although such power can strike fear into the heart of a brand, that same powerful customer can also add polish to a company’s shining reputation, helping to grow the client base, and establish company voice.
It all comes down to customer experience – and more specifically, how a company can turn sentiment from it into its most potent asset for growth and sustainability.
Review stars, comments, likes and comments are golden when it comes to your customers’ opinion about what it’s like to do business with you.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience is the non-specific, all-inclusive journey a buyer or client takes from start to finish with a business. It can start with the recognition of advertising messages or the first click to a transactional website. It can end abruptly at any point – but brands want this experience to continue happily beyond the cart and into that customer’s desire to share their thoughts on social media or other platforms.
Social listening has always been a valuable tool for understanding consumer sentiment toward a brand, says Scott Brandon, CEO of The Brandon Agency. But it’s also about being able to correct ongoing issues within a company.
“Issues often arise with customer service, product quality, marketing,” Brandon said. “Sometimes these issues are one-offs and sometimes they are systemic. Once we identify an issue we have a process in place to correct the issue within the company and with the customer.”
Why should a single review online matter to a business owner? Unanswered, it becomes the final word of someone who has had the experience someone else might want. Had the business responded, with an apology or coupon for a return visit, sentiment could be turned 180 degrees.
Why should you care about the customer experience?
By putting the customer first in every stage of the experience, you give them reason not only to come back – but also to share that experience within social circles. Often, that extends to review platforms, such as Yelp! and Google.
A positive customer experience accomplishes two key factors:
1. It fosters brand loyalty and affinity for your business
Customers hate buyer’s remorse. A Spiegel Research Center study reveals 95% of buyers read online reviews before the purchase. 95%! Plus, loyal customers crave the clout they earn by standing behind a brand or product that others flock to.
2. It keeps customers locked in for future purchases
Nothing burns like churn when it comes to building brand loyalty. A customer can be five-star giddy over your services, but if they don’t see the value in spreading the word, they’ll move on to rating the local sushi bar – or worse, one of your competitors who care more about the journey.
Where to start with a customer experience audit
Heaps of marketing dollars get thrown at efforts to attract customers. Although new growth is essential, the sweet spot for sustainability lies in people you have onboard now. Customer development from your base represents the most organic growth, more sharply culled to the type of following you can’t target, even with the cleverest marketing and ultra-developed customer personas.
Often, it’s the people within the business who make the biggest impact.
Hint: The key isn’t in a handful of positive comments or x-amount of likes on your most recent Facebook post. When you delve into your customer behavior and data, what do you see?
Buying Behavior | What your customers do now, and next
- What percentage of your customers come back for another purchase?
- Do you reward their first order with a coupon for their second?
- Do you deploy an email drip campaign to capitalize on user sentiment two weeks after they’ve used your product?
What it means: Think in terms of what a happy first-time customer wants: To feel like they’ve made the right choice. You can accomplish this by fostering the next steps of their journey.
Experience With Your Company | What it’s like to buy from you
- How are general inquiries to your contact us page handled?
- What percentage of site visits result in an abandoned cart?
- What are your customers saying about you on social media and review platforms?
What it means: Quick deployment of responses is key to preventing negative backlash on other channels. Social listening is also big: Monitor how your company is spoken about online.
Your Customers’ Beliefs or Needs | What their sentiment is about your company
- Do they consider your product even better than advertised?
- Do they see the return policy or customer-care response as lacking?
- What are they pleased about or complaining that they don’t get from you?
What it means: How customers frame their experience is how they’ll portray your company. If they love you, they’ll return – and even plaster your stickers on their car windows. Like Yeti.
Often, online reviewers add hashtags to give their posts traction in a crowded social media landscape. Popular customer-experience hashtags include:
- #custexp
- #customer
- #customerexperience
- #customerjourney
- #customerservice
- #experience
- #trends
Customer experience Key Performance Indicators
KPIs measure a company’s performance in a particular activity. They can help an organization understand the reaction to things they do in business and online.
The six most popular:
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
It’s a measure of loyalty in customer relationships and an option similar to customary satisfaction scores. Often, it correlates with revenue growth. Gauged on an index of -100 to 100, it indicates how likely customers would recommend a company to others. Companies accept this measurement to represent overall satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters to determine NPS. If 50% of respondents promoted the brand and 10% left negative reviews, the NPS would be 40.
Heather Groshon is an account manager at The Brandon Agency. She says it’s critical to establish many customer experience touchpoints to boost engagement and loyalty.
“User-generated content is extremely important,” Groshon said. “We know that nearly all consumers search online to find local businesses, and they trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations.”
A 2018 Nielsen consumer study with Bright Local revealed that 97% of consumers search the web for businesses; 85% put stock in online reviews as much as recommendations they get from people they know.
2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
This indicates how products and services meet or exceed customer expectations. It’s the criterion for determining how customers feel about how they’re treated. Similar to NPS, it takes into account loyalty and brand advocacy, which affect sales.
Divide all the positive responses by the total number of responses, and multiply by 100. This gives you your CSAT percentage.
3. Churn Rate
It is a meter for the number of individuals moving out of a group during a period. It’s a factor in determining the steady-state level of customers a business can support. A solid churn rate for a SaaS company that targets small businesses, for example, is 3-5% monthly. Organizations targeting bigger businesses require lower churn rates because the market is smaller.
Churn calculations are simple. Divide the number of customers lost last quarter by the number of customers you began with last quarter.
4. Retention Rate
It’s used to count and track customer activity, independent of the number of transactions or their dollar value. It represents the ratio of retained customers to the number at risk.
Businesses often focus on existing customer relationships. By creating repeat customers, they can try to increase the average volume per purchase. The retention rate is the most common metric used to gauge progress.
Calculate churn by subtracting the number of customers acquired during a period from the number you have at the end. Divide that by the number of customers at the start of the period, and multiply by 100.
5. Customer Life Value (CLV)
It’s forecasting the net profit attributed to the future relationship with a customer.
Let’s say a new customer costs $50 to acquire. If their lifetime value is $60, they’re considered profitable. A company would welcome many such acquisitions. CLV also indicates customer equity, the total combined customer lifetime values of all customers for a business.
Calculate CLV as Sale Price minus the Cost of Goods Sold.
6. Customer Effort Score (CES)
It’s a single-item metric that measures how much a customer has to do to resolve an issue, have a request fulfilled, a product returned or a question answered. Companies often focus on negative responses for specifics to improve customer experience.
This metric is determined in a variety of ways. One is with customer response, commonly on a 7-point scale. Scores of 5 or higher would be considered good scores. High scores suggest a product or service and customer experience is user-friendly and well-designed.
Customer experience best practices
Scott Brandon says that in most cases with The Brandon Agency clients, he’s seen an increased focus and appreciation for enhancing the customer experience at every touchpoint.
“Clients have doubled down on acquiring and keeping customers and making sure they can optimize the customer’s lifetime value,” Brandon said.
No matter how deep (or shallow) your dive into metrics, here are 3 best practices to improving customer experience after your audit. Your strategy should be a deliberate effort to identify, document, and execute a plan that aligns with your business objectives.
1. Strive for predictable retention and renewal
A Qualtrics and Forrester study revealed that companies that have successfully addressed customer experience saw 5 times the growth of businesses that didn’t prioritize it. Satisfaction in the customer experience powers those numbers. Good experiences drive that outcome. Customer service becomes your second marketing department.
2. Adopt a customer-first focus
Putting yourself in the customer’s place not only gives you insight into what their experience is, but also alerts you to blind spots from the inside out. The mantras “outside-in” and “start with the customer” help frame the mindset. One app developer distributed the beta product to the team and implored them to “break it” so that they could see what could be improved.
Especially during a pandemic and in the aftermath, attention to CX and digital transformation shouldn’t be on the back burner, or worse, a victim of cost-cutting measures. Soon, an adaptation of new policies and strategies will naturally flow from that customer-centric view.
3. Get to know your customers
No matter the scope of your business, you want to make your customers’ lives a bit easier. Amazon, one of the Big Four tech companies in America, anticipates customer needs and makes suggestions to address them.
A proactive approach creates an alliance between the company and consumers to improve the quality of life. Data and customer behavior fuel this effort, which enhances the connection for future transactions and beyond.
What can The Brandon Agency do to help brands with CX audits?
Cary Murphy is Charlotte Regional President & Content Director at The Brandon Agency. He’s proud of what the agency does with website user experience for clients.
“It could be seen as a big part of customer experience for our e-commerce clients,” Murphy said. “Through social media, we are also able to provide customer service and support.”
The Brandon Agency does this primarily by monitoring a brand’s Net Promoter Score, which they measure daily by methods such as surveys at checkout, post purchase emails, and more. The Brandon Agency can also help with customer experience in branding – in all scope of detail, from brand voice to improved signage.
“We often help companies align their internal branding and improve their messaging across all consumer touchpoints,” Murphy said. “That leads to improved customer experience.”
The Brandon Agency brings blue-collar work ethic and an entrepreneurial spirit to its work. We understand that customer experience isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it proposition. Talk to us today about how we can formulate just the right strategy to help you through today – and set up exponential growth for tomorrow.