Customer experience refers to the customer’s overall perception of your company or brand. It can be the result of single or multiple interactions with the brand involving all stages of consumption. It encompasses every feature the company is offering, like packaging, advertising, customer care, and other service features. Customer experience is a holistic approach, taking into account the overall journey of a customer over a long period of time.
Customer experience prioritizes the relationship between businesses and their consumers. It gives importance to every interaction, however brief or unproductive, like contacting a call center, paying a bill, or watching an ad. Every small and big interaction between the customer and the business will help to either build or destroy the relationship between them. This makes it crucial to have knowledge about the sum total of all the experiences to gauge how the consumer views the company.
Difference between customer service and customer experience
Customer service is a small part of the customer experience. In customer service, a company provides relevant support to its customers in the event of an issue during and after purchasing its products and services. Customer experience is not a one-time interaction. It involves all the interactions between the company and its customers.
Customer service is a reactive aspect of a business. This means that a company can communicate with its customers only when there is an issue. On the other hand, customer experience is proactive. This means that the company can take measures to improve the consumer journey before the occurrence of an issue.
If seamless customer service is provided regularly to consumers, it will eventually benefit the image of the brand and customer experience.
The importance of customer experience
Customer experience is extremely crucial for all businesses, irrespective of their size. The satisfaction of your customers will make or break your brand. In an era of fierce competition, having loyal customers is the only way for businesses to stay afloat. Some of the reasons for prioritizing customer experience include:
Reinforcing brand preference
Personalized experiences are always a delight for the customers. Focusing on providing such personalized customer journeys will reinforce the brand preference among consumers and improve the brand value.
Decrease customer churn
Customer churn is a serious issue that many businesses face. With a large number of options available in the market, customers will easily drop a brand if they are not satisfied with it. The cost of acquiring new customers is higher when compared to retaining old ones. This makes it necessary to develop a good customer experience to retain your loyal customers.
Encourage customer advocacy
Happy and satisfied customers are the best advocates or promotors a brand or company can hope for. The experiences of happy customers will attract new customers without any extra effort.
Boost revenue
Satisfied customers will be interested in doing more business with the company. This will help improve the revenue. Similarly, positive word of mouth will add more value to the brand, thereby further improving the profits.
How to provide an excelent Customer Experience
Every business is unique, and so are the target customers. This means that there is no universal rule for achieving a satisfactory customer experience. You can use some common tricks to provide a good customer experience for your consumers:
- Always listen to your customers, be it issues or suggestions.
- Understand your customers from the feedback they provide.
- Collect and analyze the feedback you receive from customers and make decisions to improve the weak points.
- Solve customer issues efficiently and swiftly.
Reasons that lead to a bad Customer Experience
- A company may sometimes create a poor customer experience by causing issues like:
- Unresolved issues
- Untrained and rude employees
- Too much automation
- Non-personalized experience
- Long waiting periods
Customer experience is by far one of the most important aspects of running a business. When done correctly, a business can establish itself to be a long-term player in the industry.
Whatever the size of your business, iMovo has customer experience management solutions tailored to your needs. We also have an experienced team that implements the tools you need and trains your teams to get the most out of them. Book a free consultation here.
