4 Elements For Delivering A Better Customer Experience

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In today’s world, businesses who deliver the best experience to customers will outperform the broader market and generate more revenue. Watermark Consulting studied the total returns for two model stock portfolios comprised of the Top 10 (“Leaders”) and Bottom 10 (“Laggards”) publicly traded companies in Forrester Research’s annual Customer Experience Index ranking for the 6-year period from 2007 to 2012.

The Customer Experience Leaders in their study outperformed the broader market, generating a total return that was three times higher on average than the S&P 500 Index.

There are great rewards for delivering better experience to your customers today, however there are key elements that businesses need to focus to acheive tangible improvement in experience delivered to customers. 

In this article I outline 4 key elements for delivering a better customer experience as a business. 

#1. Pay Attention to Employee Experience

You cannot deliver a great customer experience no matter how noble your efforts and intentions are if your employees do not feel good about working for your business.  Employees who are engaged and satisfied are more productive and more likely to go beyond their job functions to help customers meet their needs.

As J.W Marriott once said;

“Take care of associates, and they’ll take care of your customers.”

Pay attention to the factors that affect employee wellbeing and put processes in place to gather feedback from your staff on what’s working, and what’s frustrating their efforts on the job. 

Rewarding employees when they perform excellently or earn your business positive feedback from customers is a quick way to boost staff morale , dedication, and productivity. Recognizing excellent service from your employees not only boosts productivity, it reinforces the actions of the employee and sets an example for other staff in your organization. 

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#2. Identify Your “Must-dos”

Are you in tune with your customers’ needs, preferences or pain-points with your business? It is important to set-up a system which allows your customers share feedback on their experience patronizing your business. 

This creates an opportunity for you to make impactful decisions that positively improves customer experience guided by customer feedback. A good Voice of Customer program will create a steady stream of customer feedback data & actionable insights on what needs to be done. 

#3. Improve Speed & Ease

COVID-19 heightened the need for businesses to provide customers with easy means to access their products and services.  In a post COVID world, more businesses are leaning on digital channels to improve speed and ease of doing business.

  • Can your customers pay for your products on your website and get it delivered (in one piece) to their homes in as little time as possible? 
  • Is your website or mobile app functional and fast?
  • Do your customers’ requests really need to get 3 approvals before being fulfilled? 

Today’s customer has little time to spare and is increasing looking for instant gratification. This makes is imperative to eliminate any unneccessary obstacles, bottlenecks and bureaucracy to enable your customers meet their goals quickly and easily.

#4. Invest in technology

The Gartner Board of Directors Survey found that 69% of boards of directors say that the effects of the pandemic crisis, the economic crisis and the social crisis are accelerating digital business initiatives.

The pandemic has shown us that companies that were responsive and digitally enabled were able to better handle the effects of COVID-19 and lockdown.

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New age technology such as Chatbots, Artificial Intelligence, Data & Analytics are key enablers in elevating CX in your organization. Now is the time to invest in the data, technology, and systems required to deliver exceptional experiences to your customers.

Putting in work on these 4 elements will go a long way in driving improvements in the quality of service experience offered to your customers and in return, higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

 

Kelechi Okeke
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