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Customer experience (CX) is more than a buzzword: it is a decision to understand your customer, place their needs at the center of your business and use the insights it creates to drive growth. With more data, tools, methods and sources than ever before to accomplish this, it can be both easier and more overwhelming at the same time.
We see the opportunity to get to know the customer, a chance to build meaningful relationships and test hypotheses. This practice is at the center of everything we do.
CX is becoming an essential component if you wish to gain and retain customers, and those who do not employ it would miss out on major opportunities to improve the efficiency of their onboarding process and the lifetime value of their customers. In 2017 businesses lost $75 billions to competitors due to poor customer experience only in the US. If you are not fully convinced, here are some numbers that shows the importance of CX:
CX-leaders outperform the CX-laggards by 75% over five years — Watermark Consulting https://bit.ly/38bXW0g
Client-centric organizations are 60% more profitable — Deloitte https://bit.ly/34TN7xF
Revenue growth of 10 to 15% through journey mapping —Genesys https://bit.ly/33P3I4p
Lower cost to serve by 15 to 20% — McKinsey https://mck.co/2DV7633
Customer Satisfaction up by 20% —Genesys https://bit.ly/33P3I4p
The average Net Promoter Score is 10.6 points above industry average — Qualtrics https://bit.ly/2Lqsbqe
On average, companies can gain $775 million over three years by modestly improve the experience they give to the customer — Qualtrics https://bit.ly/2Lqsbqe
1,9x higher order value, 1,6x higher customer retention and 1,5x higher employee satisfaction — Forrester https://adobe.ly/3681sqE
CX ‘masters’ experience 2X return on investment – Accenture https://accntu.re/355Ef88
While 80% of businesses believe that they will compete mainly based on CX, according to Forrester, only 31% of businesses are experience-driven. That means an opportunity for your company to allocate resources on a category that’s proven to perform, and will give you a competitive advantage.
Benefits of a CX approach
The benefits of a CX approach are beyond just financial. They align the company and its leadership helping to strengthen product market fit, and enable companies to build understanding between marketing, product and leadership teams in the company. The CX approach can be applied company wide; it can also apply to particular initiatives, such as developing and executing content strategy and conducting meaningful research that informs new product development.
Where to Start
Start by building data-rich personas that clarify who your customer is, their motivations, needs and wants. Next, develop journeys to visualize how they progress. Remember the journey isn’t just a snapshot of how they use your products and services, but also an artifact that captures what your customers are trying to accomplish in their lives to satisfy their pains, gains and jobs. There are many choices for how to do this well and a few things matter: That the assumptions are based on data, and that the team is aligned on how to use personas and journeys to drive meaningful outcomes for the business.
This approach is useful for your entire customer journey, and small improvements can have a big impact. In fact, only a 5% improvement in customer retention will have a major impact of between 25 to 95% increase in profit growth.
In all cases, good CX starts and ends with customer understanding.
Source: Hotjar (https://www.hotjar.com/customer-experience/trends-and-stats)
If you’re ready to take the first step to customer centricity and a CX approach, let’s talk. We’ll guide you from curiosity to action, or if you’re an experienced company, product or marketing team, we’ll show you the latest methods for developing, and applying, this approach to strengthen your company. Let’s talk: hello@refineandfocus.com
Thank you Ole Bondevik for contributing to this article with exceptional research and strategic thinking.
Thanks to Phuong Tran for making this photo available freely on @unsplash
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