What Is Customer Experience and Why Does It Matter

What Is Customer Experience and Why Does It Matter

About 94% of customers across industries will buy more from a company that has a very good customer experience.

Did that grab your attention? It should because it provides a tiny insight as to why the customer experience is so important to your business.

The customer experience is every single touchpoint a person has with your business. The more they engage and have a better experience, the more likely they’ll buy and remain a customer.

Customer engagement is so much more than who liked a social media post. It’s how you turn customers into raving fans who can’t get enough of your brand.

Need more reasons why you need to focus on the customer experience? Read on to learn why customer experience and customer engagement are so important to your business.

Why Is Customer Engagement Important?

One of the top reasons why an entrepreneur gives up on their business is due to burnout. They’re stuck in a vicious cycle where they’re constantly pressured to get new clients in the door.

They want to grow, but they can’t retain customers. That leaves a void where they always need new customers to break even each month.

The best way to defeat burnout and grow is to provide a better customer experience. Let’s say that you have 50% of your monthly revenue come from repeat business.

That means you get to focus less time on customer acquisition. It costs a lot more to acquire a new customer than to retain a customer, too.

You’re in a much better position to grow because you know where your next customer is coming from.

A top-notch customer experience gives you a competitive edge. You could compete on price, but that only ensures a race to the bottom.

That eats away at your profitability, and you’ll end up relying on a lot of sales just to make ends meet. About 66% of companies compete on a superior experience.

People are willing to pay more money for a better experience. You can charge a premium for your product or service. You can serve fewer people and still have a healthy profit.

What’s the difference between customer experience and customer engagement? The customer experience is the perception a customer forms with each interaction with your company.

Customer engagement is your perspective. You create content designed to engage potential customers and move them through the customer journey.

What Is Customer Experience and Why Does It Matter

Assess Your Customer Engagement

Companies get stuck with creating a seamless customer experience because they don’t look at the big picture.

They only look at the results of one experience channel or department. Each department has its own metrics to determine success. The assumption here is that if each department delivers, then the customer will have a great experience.

That’s not always true.

Your departments can meet their numbers, but customers don’t engage because the overall experience is disjointed.

You need to assess where your business is now and then step back to look at the entire customer journey.

Look at every interaction that a customer has with your business. Look at how people answer the phone, answer questions, interact with your website, order products, and receive products.

Examine these things from every angle. Does your website have a good mobile experience? Make sure that it’s easy for customers to order on mobile and desktop devices.

There are metrics that you can use to measure engagement and customer satisfaction. Look at the time on site, conversion rates, repeat vs. returning customers, and average order value.

How to Improve Customer Engagement

Your assessment should tell you where there are holes in your business. You need to take the next step and make a plan to fix them.

Remember, you need to create a customer experience that is consistent across all departments and marketing channels.

A customer journey map helps you and your team visualize every interaction a customer has with your business.

Think about every interaction as a touchpoint. Someone needs to be in charge of each touchpoint. You also need to be clear about how potential customers are handed off from one department to the next in the customer journey.

Let’s say that someone learned about your business through a podcast. That’s a top-of-the-funnel marketing tactic used to drive awareness of your business.

The listener decides to check out your website. That shows that they’re interested in learning more about your products and services.

They want to know more, so they book a call with your sales team. At that point, the sales team takes over from marketing. You need to address how that transition happens so the experience is unified from the customer’s perspective.

Decide what the goals are with every interaction. Ideally, the goal is to move the customer to the next step of the customer journey.

Knowing your goals makes it easy to choose the most important metrics. You’ll need to follow your results closely and make any adjustments as you go.

Ask for Feedback

Engagement isn’t a one-way street. It’s actually a dance between you and your customers. Measuring results is incredibly important, but feedback is critical as well.

Survey your customers regularly to make sure customer satisfaction remains high. You’ll get a lot of feedback that you can put to use in your business.

Another avenue for feedback is to ask your employees. They often see things that you might not be aware of. For example, your customer service team reports a pattern of complaints about a website ordering issue.

You can correct the issue and immediately improve the customer experience.

What Is Customer Experience and Why Does It Matter

Don’t Underestimate Customer Engagement

Why is customer engagement important to your business? Your bottom line grows.

When people have a good experience with your company, they’ll tell their friends, buy from you again, and spend more money with your business. You don’t have to rely on discounts and sales to get customers to make a purchase.

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