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5 tips to make Customer Experience a real profitability driver

Reducing the price and/or increasing the offer to distinguish oneself from the competition only provides a one-off favourable position and produces perverse effects:

Quality levelling down, loss of product value and increased pressure on suppliers (On this point, see our previous article Stop lowering prices... Focus on the Customer Experience!). Generating profits through increased turnover and improved customer retention is sustainable, and it requires focusing on your customer experience. Today, the companies that make profits and generate value overall are those that have understood that the customer is their primary asset, and therefore the primary lever to be activated.

 

Are you wondering how to become one of them? Here are 5 tips to follow, based on an analysis of the winning strategies developed by companies at the forefront of the Customer Experience field. On your marks, get set...Perform!

 

1. Personalise the customer experience through intelligent use of data

Never before have brands had access to so much information about their customers as they do today. The term "Big Data" is on everyone's lips and refers to the mountain of data that companies are amassing, and it is still clearly underused.

 

A 2015 eConsultancy study[I] found that nearly 80% of consumers say that brands do not know them as individuals.

 

How can this be changed? By appropriating this data and using it to improve the customer experience. Here are a few guidelines to help you:

    • Build multi-channel campaigns that are no longer based solely on the brand's desired messages, but on data from customer insight
    • Carry out individualised nurturing by looking at behaviour, buying patterns, interactions
    • Involve your customers in the design of products, solicit their suggestions and ask for their feedback on prototypes, using collaborative platforms and social networks
    • Improve the customer experience on an ongoing basis by using the many methods oflistening to and analysing the voice of the customer that are now available: semantic analysis of what is said on social networks, real-time field observation, satisfaction surveys and cold statistics, predictive analysis of behavioural data, etc.

 

This work of personalisation must be combined with an effort to rethink the messages and the marketing pressure you will have to apply. Individualising the customer experience increases the trust your customers place in you and therefore their loyalty.

 

2. Be responsive: master multi-channel to adapt to customer choices

Consumers now have the ability to access your products and services wherever they want, at whatever time they want, through whatever channel they want. Multi-channel is no longer an option, but a reality.

Your entire company and all your services must therefore become "responsive"[II] :

    • Your strategy, first of all: adapt your offer according to the demands and new uses of your customers. Test small series, adjust and scale up.
    • Your customer service, of course: after-sales service and technical support must be consistent (in terms of discourse and identity), and easily accessible by all means: from the website to the telephone, via chat, video tutorials and paper instructions. Adapt the messages and service provision according to the media, but always with a view to the overall consistency of the customer experience
    • Finally,your services : do your customers like to order online and pick up at the point of sale or vice versa? Give them that option. Only a third of brands (34%) allow their customers to start a journey on one channel and finish it on another[III]. III] This is a crucial practice for a more fluid customer journey.

 

3. Facilitate a community of customers

Your customers want to be involved and share their experience! You don't think so? However, in the age of collaborative consumption, and with digital word-of-mouth having a multiplied impact (both positive and negative...), there are real opportunities tointegrate groups of customers and unite them around shared emotions, passions, places or desires.

The key to this community marketing is to encourage exchanges between consumers of a brand around common values. Communication takes place between "supporters" of a brand. Not only via social networks: also think about creating "quality groups" with representative customers to constantly rethink and improve their shopping experience.

 

Proposing to your community of customers to develop a link based on passions or desires, and not only on raw information about your products, is a very strong loyalty lever, much more powerful than loyalty cards. The customer feels "committed" to the brand and therefore becomes your most effective ambassador.

Going beyond the logic of reward linked to the level of purchase, creating a feeling of belonging to a group that likes and shares the same interests, developing a real community relationship... these are all levers that will engage the customer with you.

 

4. "Enchant your customers: simplify and script the customer journey

A good customer journey is a simple one! The trend, particularly through the use of new technologies, is to "relieve" consumers by making it easier for them to understand the customer journey.

 

According to the3rd AFRC Customer Effort Barometer[I], out of the 9 different sectors studied, 69% of the routes evaluated by the French did not require any particular effort

 

A sign that brands are making progress in solving problems. There is no shortage of examples of simplified shopping processes, regardless of the channel used;

This reduction in customer effort by optimising the key stages of the customer journey removes the constraints that slow down purchasing or limit loyalty. Efficient customer journey, satisfying customer journey!

 

This wave of simplification will become even more pronounced in the months and years to come with the arrival of connected objects. Because they will be inviting themselves into consumers' homes, certain connected objects will serve as a link, a gateway between the brand and its customers, in order to quickly resolve a problem, intervene, provide information... or re-order!

Improving the customer experience can also be achieved through small gestures, based on personalised marketing: your customers are sensitive to the small gestures that you make to them. A surprise box added to a parcel, a humorous message placed on a shelf, an unusual fragrance... These little touches will offer a surprising customer experience, a source ofenchantment.

 

Hence - here again - the need to pay particular attention to the proper use of the data collected! Customers know that they are entrusting you with personal data: they may be delighted by a relevant message sent at the right time... and conversely, a message that is too intrusive, that shows clumsy use of the data, risks provoking a refractory attitude.

 

5. Consider the customer as a real "asset" of the company

You must consider your customer as an asset of your company, in the sense of a resource, in the financial sense of the term. The discourse heard, read and seen everywhere, which consists of "putting the customer at the heart of our concerns" must be translated into reality, because the impact of the customer experience on the acquisition and retention of customers, and therefore, in fine, on your company's revenues, is real (for a reminder of the link between the quality of the customer experience and the performance of companies on the stock market, read our article : Stop cutting prices... Focus on the Customer Experience!)

Companies that claim such a concern in their annual report and do not offer connected customer journeys, or use the customer data they collect, are saying something that nobody believes. Not even them.

 

How does a company's willingness and ability to make this shift, which positions the customer as an asset , really translate? Through projects and investments aimed at improving the quality of the customer experience (particularly on the various themes seen above) and through the implementation, monitoring and analysis of real performance and return on investment indicators.

The quest for continuous improvement of the customer experience can only be achieved if you have these indicators, which allow the company to adopt a strategy, and take directions, based on facts. Quantify and qualify your efforts. Develop metrics to measure your progress, tailored to your goals, your industry and your company's customer experience maturity.

 

i] Customer experience: the perception gap between brands and consumers - Infography E-Consultancy and IBM

ii ] Refers to a website with a responsive design, i.e. one that has the ability to adapt to the reading terminal so that it can be consulted on several different media.

iii] Barometer of digital practices 2015 Sia Partners / Econocom / Ifop

iv] AFRC Customer Effort Barometer 2015


 

For the past 10 years, KESTIO has been helping companies - from SMEs to large groups - to improve their customer experience in order to optimise customer loyalty and acquisition. In particular, we offer support programmes and exclusive methods for :

 

In the field of customer journey improvement, KESTIO has developed the exclusive WELCOME EXPERIENCE© method, based in particular on the expertise it has developed with companies in the Leisure, Sports and Events sector.

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