As consumers assume the role of content generators and the shopping experience moves to the digital ecosystem, the customer experience (CX) is becoming increasingly important and is already positioned as one of the key points to streamline the sales funnel conversion, retain customers and, ultimately, increase profitability and drive business growth in the long term.
What Is The Customer Experience?
As its name suggests, CX is the complete experience that a customer has in relation to a brand, from the moment they contact the company until they complete their purchase. Therefore, the customer experience encompasses all stages of the customer journey.
6 Reasons Why Customer Experience (CX) Is So Important
1) Encourage Active Listening
When carrying out strategies to improve CX, it is essential to actively listen to their comments, opinions and experiences in relation to a brand. In this sense, working on the customer experience encourages organisations to listen more to customers, to get to know them better and, ultimately, to pay more attention to what they have to say.
Active listening to the voice of the customer (VoC) can be carried out in multiple ways. On the one hand, the collection and analysis of customer data at each contact point is essential, but also, the information and insights resulting from the analysis can be complemented with other methodologies such as surveys, focus groups, customer interviews key, etc.
2) Increase Customer Retention
The best way to build customer loyalty is by offering them a satisfying, unique and, if possible, unforgettable experience. A user who is satisfied with the purchase process and with the relationship established with the brand is a customer who, when they need the service or product again, will trust the company again and repeat.
In addition, customer experience strategies contribute to the growth of the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), a metric that is used by companies to determine the value or profit that a customer represents during a certain period of time, and the development of an optimal customer experience is one of the most fruitful and profitable forms of loyalty. Research from e-commerce and marketing consultancy Econsultancy shows that 64% of organisations believe that customer experience is the best strategy for improving CLV.
3) Encourages Customer Acquisition, Business Generation And Revenue Growth
Multiple market studies show that acquiring new customers is much more expensive than retaining existing ones, and Hubspot adds that in the last six years, the cost of acquiring a new customer has increased by 60%.
In addition to boosting customer retention, improving CX encourages existing customers to recommend the company to their acquaintances and thus also leads to new ones. In this sense, the American data and information company Nielsen conducted a study in 56 countries that confirmed that more than 91% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than advertising.
In addition, Forbes reports that organisations that care about customer experience achieve between 4% and 8% more revenue than other companies in the same sector and that 84% of companies that implement CX strategies report an increase in revenue.
4) Improve Commercial And Marketing Actions
Active listening to customers, obtaining insights and knowledge about who they are, how they act, what they want and what they need favours the optimisation of marketing and commercial strategies, actions and campaigns.
5) Optimise The Purchase Ticket
Taking care of the customer experience also tends to increase the value of the average purchase ticket, since users who are satisfied with the purchase experience and touch points are more likely to purchase more items. Likewise, CX can be an opportunity for companies to encourage the acquisition of additional or higher value products.
Forbes reports that brand loyal customers are five times more likely to make a repeat purchase, acquire more products or recommend the brand to someone they know.
6) Promotes Differentiation From The Competition
Brand differentiation is related to the differentiation of customer experiences. More and more companies take advantage of CX as an element of differentiation. Creating unique, original and impressive customer experiences is an agile and extremely effective mechanism to differentiate you from the competition and retain customers.