A company loses an average of 10% of its customers every year! While the causes may be varied (more needs to be solved, disappointment with the service, departure for the competition...), the result is the same: your company needs to find a solution to compensate for these departures and avoid losing sales.
When you consider the investment required to acquire new customers, reactivating your old ones is a strategic move! Because even if they no longer require your services, they already know your company, your expertise and your working methods.
As a result, they'll be more inclined to work with you again on a future project. Here are the steps you need to take to reactivate your former customers!
*Source: Harvard Business School
STEP 1 - Identify your lost customers
To set up an effective customer reactivation campaign, you need to be able to clearly identify which customers have left your company.
To achieve this, the daily use of a CRM is indispensable. It will give you a global view of your customers' history: when were their last transactions? How did your last exchanges go?
By using your CRM's various targeting filters, in particular on the date of activity of your customers, you'll be able to identify your inactive customers.
And thanks to the contact data collected for each customer, you can personalize your reactivation campaigns according to their expectations.
If you need help identifying lost customers in your CRM, check out our special CRM "Q&A" webinar!
Thanks to your CRM, you can calculate your attrition rate.
Also known as the "churn rate", the attrition rate refers to the percentage of lost customers in relation to your total number of customers.
Once you've measured the extent of your attrition rate, you can investigate the reasons for these departures and implement your win-back strategy!
💥 STEP 2 - Rework your value proposition
An essential step in a pertinent marketing approach, the value proposition is the simple and precise formulation of the added value of a product or serviceas perceived by the customer.
In other words, it demonstrates the profitability (savings made, revenue generated) of the proposed solution, and reassures you about the risks associated with the project. By making your proposal unique, it differentiates you from your competitors, and facilitates your customer's buying process .
If the value proposition is not clearly identified by the customer, it can be the cause of their loss. If this is the case, it's essential to rework the wording.
How do you build your value proposition?
Is your offer understood by your target customers?
Are the differences clear?
Is it easy for people in your company to talk about it?
These are the questions that will help you identify whether your value proposition is effective!
The cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than that of reactivating old ones. It can therefore be more effective for companies to win back lost customers. For this, relationship marketing is an interesting strategy for renewing contact and developing a privileged, lasting relationship.
The aim will be to understand customers' specific needs, preferences and behaviors, to encourage them to place their trust in you again, and ensure the future of exceptional customer service.
There are several ways to implement a relationship marketing strategy
to win back lost customers:
Customer segmentation: use the data you have on your lost customers to segment them into groups, according to their needs, buying behavior and preferences. This will enable you to tailor your win-back strategy to each group.
Customized communication: respond to specific needs, via social networks or emailing campaigns.
Loyalty program: consider setting up a loyalty program to reward returning customers and/or a referral system.
Customer service : offer your lost customers impeccable customer service, with a fast, efficient response to their queries.
Customer feedback: identify areas for improvement by sending out satisfaction surveys or setting up call campaigns.
By using these relationship marketing techniques to win back lost customers, you can also improve your retention rate and reduce the cost of acquiring new customers.
Acquiring a new customer costs 7 times more than retaining a existing one*.
While acquiring new prospects is essential to your company's development, customer loyalty must also be of prime importance to you.
Indeed, investing in the generation of new leads without ensuring that they stay with you once they've become customers is like filling a bathtub. At best, you'll need a steady stream of new prospects to make up for the loss of your customers. At worst, your investments won't be enough to maintain this balance, and your customer numbers will plummet!
What are the keys to building customer loyalty?
KEY No. 1 - Listen to your customers
But to find out if your customers are satisfied (or not) with your services and products, you need to listen to them! Because the " voice of your customers " is your most valuable asset! Their feedback can help you...
- Improve your customer experience - Identify problems before they get worse - Optimize the targeting and content of your marketing and sales strategy - Evaluate your new ideas before launching them
So all your company's departments can benefit from listening to your customers! How can you gather their opinions?
Voice of Customer
Voice of Customer " is a methodology for collecting the needs and opinions of your customers, throughout their entire customer journey. The aim of this approach is to be able to easily and regularly collect feedback from your customers in order to initiate optimizations!
Discover the key questions to ask yourself when launching a Voice of Customer strategy in your organization:
Would you like to initiate this process in your company? We can help!
At Kestioour Customer Success teams conduct annual customer satisfaction surveys using the Voice of Customer methodology.
The result? A customer satisfaction rating of 9.34/10 for 2022.
KEY No. 2 - Customer experience: the little extra that makes all the difference!
Customer Experience is one of the keys tooptimizing Customer Satisfaction. Based on perception and feeling, the customer experience is more difficult to measure for each individual customer. To improve it, we need to put ourselves in the customer's shoes and understand what they experience, or better still, observe them directly in their relationship with the organization.
What is the customer journey?
It's a succession of customer contact points. A point of contact is defined as an interaction between the customer and the company, via a specific physical or digital channel.
The interaction may be informative or transactional, and triggered either by the company (push) or by the customer (pull). For example, reading an advertisement online or in a magazine, receiving a promotional e-mail, visiting the company's website, entering a store, calling customer service, receiving a parcel, receiving an order confirmation e-mail, receiving an invoice, and so on. Please note: depending on the type of customer, the company may propose different customer paths!
The 3 main phases of the customer journey :
For example, SNCF has been working hard on Customer Experience in recent years. It has facilitated the customer journey by multiplying the points of contact for buying a ticket according to the user's channel of preference: the website, the mobile application for smartphone users, the call center, ticket offices for customers who need advice, kiosks in stations, and so on.
At the same time, it is also working on emotion and comfort to create preference among its customers: welcome on board trains, TGV or other first-class magazines, frequent flyer reception areas... All these servicesshould improve the Customer Experience from a global point of view throughout the journey.
Your goal is simple: a customer who experiences a pleasant Experience that sets you apart from your competitors is likely to become a loyal customer, or even an ambassador for your brand. Customer Journey, as the path taken by all players, Customer Experience, your brand's distinctive travel experience.
How do you achieve this goal? To answer this question, let's compare the different types of Experience you can define and deliver to your customers, and their impact on the way your customers feel.
Your entire customer journey is located in theenchantment zone. You really take care of them, and never cease to surprise them at every point of interaction.
Ah! the sweet dream of every Customer Experience manager...!
Unfortunately, this Experience is very difficult to maintain over the long term: on your company's side,the efforts deployed to achieve this level of service are likely to generate costs that will potentially erode your margin. On the customer's side, this could have a perverse effect: they will quickly become convinced that they are paying for this level of service, and that the Experience offered is not exceptional, but normal from this point of view! As a result, his perception will gradually fall into the "neutral" zone as your interactions progress.
So, if this sales strategy isn't the Holy Grail, what Customer Experience should we aim for?
Before going any further, it is necessary to make an aside on the difference between Lived Experience and Memorized Experience. To illustrate this point, it's worth taking a look at a 1996 psychological study which examined the perception of pain (rated from 0 to 10) by different patients.
Here is an extract from the study:
Pain levels as described by 2 patients during surgery.
Any normally constituted being would prefer to experience what Patient A went through rather than what Patient B went through: a procedure that generates the same pain (peak to 8), but lasts much less time...
Except that when patients were asked to say after the procedure what their average pain level was, it had nothing to do with an average of the various peaks.
Instead, the average described by each patient was that of the highest peak and the last moment of the operation.
So, even though Patient B's operation was longer, and therefore certainly less pleasant, than Patient A's, Patient B has less "violent" memories of the procedure (although we wouldn't go so far as to say more pleasant...).
This phenomenon, highlighted by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, is known as the "pic-end rule": the memorization of an experience by individuals is linked to the strongest moment of that experience and the end of it. This aside sheds new light on what the Customer Experience must be to make it the best remembered (and therefore the one that will lead the customer to be loyal to you and become your ambassador).
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In the light of this study, one might think that a "neutral" experience would suffice to ensure a good level of customer loyalty. However, as we shall see, this is not the case, for a number of reasons.
The neutral Customer Experience is often what most customers experience. It doesn't build loyalty, and at the first opportunity presented by the competition, they'll gladly take their business elsewhere.
What's more, if there's an obstacle along the way, they'll retain a vivid image of it, and you're likely to have lost them for good.
Target important moments to delight the customer
As you can see, it's particularly important to ensure 1 (or even 2 or 3) key moments along the way when you're going to enchant your customers.
On the one hand, to differentiate you from your competitors, and on the other, to prevent the slightest problem from causing you to lose your customers for good.
In this example, the customer is likely to overlook afairly disastrouspurchasing experienceand congratulate himself on having bought this product, which brings him satisfaction every day.
The importance of after-sales service
The "peak-end rule" theory also explains why it's so important to have a high-performance after-sales service. It's potentially the last step in their customer journey, and will have a major impact on their perception of the overall quality of the Customer Experience you've provided.
In fact, when we run workshops on this topic and ask people in the room to give us real-life examples of positive Customer Experience, 80% of customers tell an anecdote about a problem that was brilliantly (or even surprisingly) solved by after-sales service.
And do you know why? Because it always makes a good story to tell.
Customer Experience Storytelling
All the stories we've been used to seeing and hearing since we were little include a hero who starts from a rather flat initial situation (neutral), goes through a moment of great difficulty (disenchantment) but ends with a happy ending (a moment of enchantment).
The story is often even more successful if a mini moment of enchantment precedes the great disenchantment.
To ensure that your customers remember the Experience you've given them, and that they tell their friends and family about it, it's a good idea to design your journey according to this scenario.
Of course, we're not talking about creating moments of disenchantment along the way, but about identifying the main stages at which a disappointing Experience can occur, so as to counter it as quickly and effectively as possible, so that your customers have a nice story to tell. : )
Did you know that 95% of your success is linked to your state of mind? To learn how to manage your emotional charge more effectively, discover the Triad method in this webinar:
Thedigital customer experience has become a key conversion factor. Today, over 80% of consumers seek information online before making a purchase. To capture their attention and accompany them through to the act of purchase, your digital device (website, social networks, mobile app) must meet their expectations at every stage of the journey.
At the risk of missing out on a major tool for improving the customer experience, and therefore transforming leads into customers! Are you one of these brands? To help you find out quickly, we've put together a checklist of customer expectations that your digital device must absolutely meet.
Here are the 5 fundamentals not to be overlooked.
1. Clear product information
Your digital device must above all respond to the searches of web users preparing a purchase.
This is of course if they're searching for your brand or products, but also if they're doing a more generic search on the types of products you sell.
80% of Internet users say they use the internet to get information before buying a product or service... a score that reaches 87% in the Paris region and 92% among professionals and senior executives, according to a study carried out by Ifop in December 2014, entitled "The impact of e-reputation on the purchasing process".1
Consumers need to be able to find rich, relevant information about the products or services they're interested in on your website and through your social networking pages. Information that will help them make the right choice, whether online or in-store.
Most websites fulfill this "duty to inform" and present their products and services, but is this presentation really useful and does it contribute to conversion? Is the product sheet sufficiently complete, with a structured argument and concrete elements? Is the price clearly displayed? And if not, is there a redirection to a quote request? Can visitors easily access informative content to help them make their decision (customer reviews, product tests, use cases, etc.)? For an e-commerce site, are delivery and return conditions visible and easy to understand, including from a mobile browser?
Enhance product data sheets to improve the digital customer experience
A simple description accompanied by a standard photo is no longer enough. Today, the key tooptimizing the user experience lies in the ability to accompany the customer in his or her projection: to make him or her understand the concrete benefits of using the product, to create an emotional bond, and to guide him or her through a fluid and engaging digital customer journey.
With this in mind, the product sheet shouldn't be a point of arrival, but a lever within a more global digital strategy. It can be enriched by complementary formats such as video tutorials on YouTube, themed blog posts shared on social networks, or inspiration galleries on Pinterest. All of this content supports a structured conversion tunnel, fed by an effectiveCRM and a logic of continuous personalization.
Finally, by combining these elements with a customer satisfaction-oriented approach and omnichannel customer service, you multiply the chances of accompanying the user at every stage of his or her reflection, and thus transforming him or her into a loyal customer.
Having a contact to easily reach customer service in the event of a question or problem seems obvious... and yet, on some websites, it can be a real obstacle course! So much so, in fact, that we sometimes wonder whether this is deliberate! It's not enough to "hide" the telephone number or e-mail address of the after-sales service to avoid questions and complaints. On the contrary, there's nothing like it to fuel customer impatience and irritation!
Particularly today, when the multiplicity of possible contact channels has made it essential for users and customers to have an easy and immediate way to reach a brand.
"While online shoppers are attached to traditional means of contact, they nonetheless want to have a choice when it comes to customer service," explains a CCM Benchmark / iAdvize study dated April 2015.2
E-shoppers are particularly aware of the usefulness of real-time assistance methods to help them during critical phases of the purchasing process: problems at the payment stage, stumbling blocks when identifying themselves or filling in the order form.
Facilitate online customer assistance to smooth the purchasing process
Let's not forget: more often than not, when a customer visits a brand site, it's not just because they want to buy or find out more about a product, it's because they're looking for help. The first step in helping them is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, which, if done properly, will prevent a number of calls to your customer service department.
In the same way, being able to download documentation on your products or access tutorials (video or not) will avoid a certain number of direct calls or solicitations on social networks.
Set up an omnichannel, visible and responsive customer service
Ideally, you should give customers a choice about how to contact you, and specify this clearly, as IKEA or Michel et Augustin, for example, do on their contact pages.
Once these basics are in place, you can offer a means of reaching your customer service department directly: e-mail, telephone, chat or social networks. Make the available channels immediately visible and easilyaccessible. Explain clearly who will receive the e-mail or who will pick up the phone. Confirm that a request has been received, and say how long it will take to process. In most cases, this "pedagogical" discourse is enough, or goes a long way towards lowering the tension level ofan unhappy customer!
Finally, don't neglect social networks. If you have a presence on Facebook or Twitter, make sure that the person in charge of these accounts (ideally your Community Manager), can quickly forward requests internally, according to an efficient and formalized process to enable a rapid and relevant response, and a shared and "historicized" follow-up. You can also create a Facebook page or Twitter account dedicated to after-sales service, so as not to mixengagementconversationswith customer service conversations.
3. Benefit from all services from a cell phone
In 2016, offering a "mobile-friendly" version of your website has become an indispensable prerequisite. Why is this? Because 1 in 3 of the world's population is now equipped with a smartphone.
More importantly:
"Traffic from mobile terminals has recently overtaken that from computers : today, more than 50% of Internet searches are carried out from a mobile terminal (smartphone or tablet).3
Half the time, your customers are looking for your products, consulting your site or your online content from their personal phone!
And there's nothing more frustrating on a mobile device than a site that's heavy and long to display, with tiny buttons that are impossible to click... So it's become difficult to do without a site adapted for consultation from a mobile device, all the more so for e-tailers.
Optimizing mobile navigation for a smooth customer experience
Meeting this customer expectation means paying particular attention to the hierarchy of information, the image formats used, page loading times and the ability to carry out key operations (such as online payment or downloading high value-added content) from a cell phone.
Search engines (such as Google or Bing, for example) now offer specific tools that enable you to quickly and easily test your website's compatibility with mobile devices.
Responsive design or mobile application: which is better?
Not everyone has the opportunity or the means to create a second version of their website, specially adapted for consultation from a mobile device. The simplest, most effective and least expensive solution is to design your main site in "responsive design": its content and presentation will automatically adapt to the device used.
You can also offer your customers a mobile application. This must offer real added value in relation to your website, and in particular provide solutions to customer needs in a mobile context. In order for it to be downloaded and used, your customer must also find an interest in using it on a regular basis. If the service offered by your application is a "one shot" service, then it's best to set it up on your site in responsive design, optimizing the SEO of the page linked to this service.
4. Find your nearest sales outlet
Your website, whether an e-commerce site or a showcase site, must act as a bridge between your online presence and your physical presence.
Before making a purchase on the Internet, over 77% of 18-24 year-olds say they will evaluate or try the product directly in a store. This figure rises to 79% among 25-34 year-olds.1
Conversely, before making an in-store purchase, 73% of French people surveyed consult online consumer reviews on blogs, forums or consumer websites.
In short, physical sales outlets and websites are more closely linked than ever, and do not cannibalize each other.
Connecting website and point of sale for a consistent customer experience
It is therefore important to provide a list of your points of sale, or if you don't distribute your products yourself, a list of your distributors. Ideally, and in keeping with the logic of presence and use in a mobile context, helping your customers to quickly locate the point of sale closest to their current location represents a real value-added service.
Geolocation and mobile services: helping customers find your store
You've probably already geolocated your stores on Google Maps. But today, in addition to giving you access to a complete, interactive map of your stores, it's also useful to be referenced by the many mobile applications that allow you toautomaticallyreceive a store's current promotions on your mobile when you're in the vicinity (Groupon City Deal), or to collect points/bonuses when you enter a store (Shopkick). Or compare prices for the same product in all the stores selling it near your current location (Géocompare)!
5. Benefit from a personalized and, if possible, "enhanced" experience
When customer information is clear and structured, contact is simple, mobile navigation is optimized, and store location is made easy, a major differentiator for your site will be theintegration of "personalized" functionalities.
Personalization: a powerful lever for enriching the digital customer experience
Acknowledging your customers as they enter the site by greeting them by their first name, or prioritizing product offers in which they have already shown an interest, are all ways of re-creating"proximity" online.
My FeelBack, for example, thanks a person by their first name and mentions the name of their company in the message it displays after downloading one of its white papers.
Create a unique customer relationship with customized features
You can also offer content that adapts to the customer's profile and browsing history, send a personalized message with a specific promotion following a "cart abandonment", or create areas reserved for "premium" customers, giving them access to value-added content... or create areas reserved for "premium" customers, giving them access to value-added content...
Or offer a "different experience" through original design and original messages, as Michel et Augustin's site does so well.
Or simply offer them the chance to subscribe to a themed mailing list, enabling them to receive key information in advance (launch of season ticket sales for a soccer team, for example).
Features like these enhance the user experience, enable you to fine-tune your performance even further and, above all, have a strong emotional impact on your customers .
But before you consider deploying this latest stage of the digital rocket, don't forget the fundamentals detailed in this article: to generate the "wow" effect by anticipating your customers' conscious expectations, you first have to meet their first expectations on the must-have points!
Did you find this article useful? Share it 🙂
The impact of e-reputation on the purchasing process, IFOP, December 2014
Online shopping behaviors and customer engagement, CCM Benchmark - IAdvize, April 2015
Uses and expectations of hyper-connected French people, Google - IPSOS, 2015
You have certainly implemented good practices, you have surely been inspired by certain great models to always satisfy your customers. And so, perhaps like 80% of companies, you consider that you offer a “superior or excellent” quality of service to your customers…
The problem is that only 8% of your customers agree! (Lee Resources study). That says it all!
There is a real gap between your vision of satisfaction and the concrete perception of your customers.
How can you be sure that you really satisfy them? Kestio offers you a list of four key fundamentals to master for an efficient customer experience.
1 – Get to know your customers
What is customer satisfaction? The customer's assessment of the service provided by the company . When the customer feels that the quality of the service offered meets or exceeds his expectations, everything is fine. Customer satisfaction is therefore determined by his own expectations, and his assessment of the commercial performance that he perceives from the service. Not all of your customers have the same expectations of you, nor do they have the same vision of the efforts you make for them. Thus, a relationship that is identical in all respects will not be judged in the same way by two customers.
Having made this preamble, we perceive how essential it is to know your customers well. Not in a global way, but on the contrary in a more detailed, individualized way . Depending on what he is, what he experiences, what he expects from the brand, a customer will not have the same judgment on your service. Having a "customer-centric" approach, placing customer knowledge at the heart of your efforts, is therefore essential to improve your satisfaction score.
Studies such as focus groups, customer surveys, and also feedback from employees in direct contact with your customers, provide an initial overview of these elements. Tools such as personae, studying expectations, or defining customer journeys are all useful approaches for sharing and maintaining customer focus. Better still, having framework documents and compiling information from the field is essential for… structuring your listening approach !
2 – Listen to your customers!
Evaluating the quality of service (both real and perceived) inevitably involves... listening! Are you making efforts to structure your sales pitch? Do you have internal procedures for your customer relations and your points of exchange? That's good. But also think about listening to your customers . Why is this listening effort so essential? Because nearly 98% of negative experiences do not result in any complaints. Customer "complaints" are therefore far from representing the level of satisfaction of all your customers. A low volume of complaints is not a sufficient indicator to prove that your customers are satisfied with your services. A restaurant that has no (or few) comments on a customer review platform does not necessarily inspire confidence. The same goes for your business.
It is therefore important to set up a complete listening system that corresponds to your business. You need to find the right moments, the right themes for questioning, the right media and associated channels. What matters above all is that the elements captured are recorded effectively to be used. Listening alone is not useful. The feedback must then be used to change your habits, to develop behaviors, or even your products and services! These developments or considerations must also be visible to the customer to enhance their intervention.
3 – Place satisfaction at the heart of your efficiency
Placing customer satisfaction at the heart of your organization and making it a factor of efficiency and motivation for teams is an innovative challenge for your business strategy. It is not recommended to isolate the measurement of customer satisfaction and make it an indicator "like any other", monitored too occasionally. On the contrary, making the information collected from customers usable and concrete is essential. This openness effort allows you to:
Lead teams and raise awareness of customer culture throughout the company . Sharing indicators, which results in an adaptation of the remuneration system, allows, for example, to involve everyone in the required efforts;
Manage and improve a consistent quality approach and processes throughout your sales management . With open data, the effort is collective, and the solutions proposed are adapted and corrected thanks to customer feedback. We do not play alone, but within a real "team" at the service of the customer.
Optimize marketing campaigns through more precise targeting (specific emails to dissatisfied customers in order to win them back, promotion of satisfied customers who know your quality, etc.);
Develop an offer that is truly and constantly adapted to the target via increased knowledge of customers . Knowing your customers better means better understanding their needs, and therefore optimizing all key indicators (conversion rate, order rate, recommendation rate, average basket).
4 – Use suitable tools
Good customer satisfaction monitoring also involves choosing the right tools. Tools for measuring, collecting and processing information, but also for sharing data . Good dashboards, easily readable and available, will help you streamline exchanges and make customer satisfaction this famous shared indicator, seen by all.
The choice and implementation of tools is a subject in its own right that we will develop in a future dedicated article... To be continued!
To learn more about this topic, we invite you to discover and download our White Paper:
Quality is being driven down, product value is being lost, and pressure on suppliers is increasing (On this point, see our previous article Stop lowering prices... Focus on Customer Experience!). Generating profits through increased sales and improved customer retention: this is sustainable, and it requires focusing on your customer experience. Today, the companies that make profits and generate overall value are those that have understood that the customer is their primary asset, and therefore the first lever to be activated.
Are you wondering how to become one of them? Here are 5 tips to help you do just that, based on an analysis of the winning strategies developed by companies at the forefront of the Customer Experience movement. On your marks, get set...Perform!
1. Personalize the customer experience, thanks to 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", which is on everyone's lips, refers to this mountain of data that companies are amassing, and it's still clearly under-utilized.
A 2015 eConsultancy study[I] reveals that nearly 80% of consumers say that brands don't know them as individuals.
How can we change this? By appropriating this data, and using it to enhance the customer experience. Here are a few pointers:
Establish multi-channel campaigns that are no longer based solely on the brand's desired messages, but on data derived from customer knowledge.
Carry out individualized nurturing by focusing on behaviors, purchasing patterns and interactions.
Involve your customers in product design, solicit their suggestions and ask for their opinion on prototypes, thanks to collaborative platforms and social networks.
Continuously improve the customer experience by drawing on the many methods now available forlistening to and analyzing the voice of the customer: semantic analysis of comments made on social networks, real-time field observation, satisfaction surveys and cold statistics, predictive analysis of behavioral data...
This personalization work needs to be combined with an effort to rethink the messages and marketing pressure you need to apply. By personalizing the customer experience, you can increase the trust your customers place in you, and thus their loyalty.
2. Be responsive: master multi-channel to adapt to customer choices
Today's consumers can access your products and services where they want, when they want, through the channel of their choice. 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 and foremost: adapt your offer to your customers' demands and new uses. Test small series, adjust and scale up.
Yourcustomer 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 messages and service provision according to the medium, but always with a concern for the overall coherence of the customer experience.
Finally, your services : do your customers like to order online and collect in-store, or vice versa? Give them this option. Only a third of brands (34%) allow their customers to start a journey on one channel and finish it on another[III]. Yet this is a vital practice to ensure a smoothercustomer experience.
3. Create a customer community
Your customers want to be involved and share their experience! You don't think so? Well, 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 community marketing is to encourage exchanges between consumers of a brand, around shared values. Communication takes place between a brand's "supporters". Not just via social networks: think about creating "quality groups" with representative customers to constantly rethink and improve their shopping experience.
Proposing to your customer community to develop a bond based on passions or desires, and not just raw information about your products, is a very powerful loyalty lever, far more powerful than loyalty cards. Customers feel "committed" to the brand, and become your most effective ambassadors.
Going beyond the logic of rewards 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 the customer journey and create scenarios
A good customer journey is a simple one! The trend, thanks in particular to new technologies, is to "relieve" consumers by making it ever easier for them to find their way around the store.
According to the3rd AFRC Customer Effort Barometer[I], of the 9 different sectors studied, 69% of the courses evaluated by the French did not require any particular effort.
A sign that brands are making progress in problem-solving. There is no shortage of examples of simplified purchasing processes, whatever the channel used;
Reducing customer effort by optimizing the key stages of the customer journeyremoves constraints that slow down purchasing or limit customer 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 are destined to find their way into consumers' homes, certain connected objects will serve as a link, a gateway between the brand and its customers, to quickly resolve a problem, intervene, provide information... or re-order!
Improving the customer experience can also be achieved through small gestures, based on personalized marketing: your customers are sensitive to the little attentions you pay them. A surprise box in a parcel, a humorous message on a shelf, a unique fragrance... These little touches create a surprising andenchantingcustomer experience.
Which is why - once again - you need to pay particular attention to the proper use of the data you collect! Customers know that they are entrusting you with their personal data: they may be delighted by a relevant message sent at the right time... and conversely, an overly intrusive message, which demonstrates clumsy use of data, risks provoking a refractory posture.
5. Consider the customer as a genuine company "asset
You need to think of your customer as a company asset, in the resource and financial sense of the term. The rhetoric we've heard, read and seen everywhere about "putting the customer first" must be translated into action, because the impact of the customer experience on customer acquisition and loyalty, and therefore, ultimately, on your company's revenues, is real (for a reminder of the link between the quality of the customer experience and companies' stock market performance, read our article : Stop lowering prices... Focus on Customer Experience!)
Companies that claim to have such a concern in their annual report, but don't offer connected customer journeys, or make use of the customer data they collect, are talking an empty talk 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 geared to improving the quality of thecustomerexperience (particularly in the areas mentioned above), and through the implementation, monitoring and analysis of real performance and return-on-investmentindicators.
The quest for continuous improvement in the customer experience can only be achieved by adopting these indicators, which enable the company to adopt a strategy, and take directions, based on facts. Quantify and qualify your efforts. Equip yourself with indicators to measure your progress, adapted to your objectives, your industry and your company's customer experience maturity.
[ii] Se dit d’un site internet au design responsive, c’est-à-dire qui a la faculté de s’adapter au terminal de lecture pour être consulté sur plusieurs supports différents.
For the past 10 years, KESTIO has been helping companies - from SMEs to major corporations - to improve their Customer Experience, with a view to optimizing customer loyalty and acquisition. In particular, we offer exclusive support programs and methods for :
Thus, many French people point to a relationship with brands that is now more fluid than before, according to the 2015 edition of the AFRC Customer Effort Barometer. And yet, French brands still seem very unconvincing when it comes to Customer Experience, as shown by the latest Customer Experience Index published by the Forrester institute... Explanation of this apparent paradox.
1- Simplifying the customer journey, a first step on the right track
"For 60% of French people, the customer experience in France has become simpler, for the first time in three years," says the AFRC study conducted by Médiamétrie.
This is really good news, rewarding the efforts of many companies committed tocontinuous improvement in customer relations !
69% of customer journeys required no particular effort, according to those surveyed. This is a clear improvement on the figures for 2014, when only 60% of French people felt that brands made their lives easier. A 9-point gain over one year is a significant improvement, and a cause for celebration!
Beware, however: this figure masks major disparities between sectors and according to the stage of the journey assessed. No single sector stands out as the "big winner" in this improvement trend, but several are benefiting from it, particularly in specific areas such as :
the use of loyalty cards for supermarket chains
online shopping in e-commerce,
activation of a bank account
or signing a new energy contract (electricity or gas).
We can see that, while companies have taken great care to reduce the effort required of customers at the subscription and purchase stages, the same cannot be said of the cancellation stage! For 41% of customers, this remains one of the most difficult parts of the process, particularly in the insurance sector!
2- Multi-channel is seen as an enabler, not a killer of stores
If customer journeys seem simpler today for many French people, this is due in particular to the facilitation provided by multi-channel. In 2014, the AFRC noted that omnichannel was making inroads into everyday life, but that it was giving rise to a number of fears: the disappearance of physical and local retailing, and the complication of purchasing paths due to companies' poor mastery of different channels (lack of coherence between them).
Today, these fears seem to have evaporated, and consumers are asking for more, according to Eric Dadian, President of the AFRC, speaking in the columns ofcolumns of Les Echos newspaper :
" The freedom of choice has multiplied. The range of possibilities helps consumers to find the paths that are best suited to them. The barometer also reveals that a proportion of them would be prepared to pay more for better customer service ".
Consumers have more choice thanks to a variety of channels, but are not turning their backs on physical stores. While the web channel is cited first by 59% of information seekers, visits to retail outlets (18%) are nonetheless on the rise. This return to the store is palpable in certain sectors, notably telephony. When it comes to renewing their cell phones, the French prefer direct, personalized contact .
3- Yet the Customer Experience is still far from satisfactory!
Does this mean that all is well in the best of worlds? That customer journeys are at last perfectly in tune with consumer expectations thanks to multi-channel, and that their experience has been significantly enhanced as a result?
Not according to the latest Customer Experience Index published by the Forrester Institute... quite the contrary! This annual barometer ranks 203 European brands from eight business sectors according to the quality of their customer experienceand consumer loyalty.
In France, the winners don't get off scot-free, as 55% of brands are rated "mediocre", and not a single one of them delivers a superior experience: MAIF, Yves Rocher and Crédit Mutuel Assurance, the three French brands ranking highest in the index, are gratified with a mere "acceptable". Mediocre results shared by other European countries such as the UK and Germany.
A disappointing finding, especially when you consider that 3/4 of French managers say that improving the customer experience is one of their top strategic priorities!
4- Why this apparently paradoxical result?
The Forrester study indicates that the most important vector for the quality of the customer experience is the emotional factor. Taking this "emotional" aspect into account in customer interactions and relationships is what differentiates the notion of customer experience from that of customer satisfaction, for example (for a reminder on this subject, you can reread our article Are you sure you've mastered the 3 key approaches to building customer loyalty?).
It seems that this is where the problem lies for our companies, which have above all seized on the "efficiency" lever in their efforts to improve the customer journey. Emotion is certainly a notion they find harder to grasp: it is by definition less "rational" , and therefore seems difficult to control and measure.
And yet, it's the systematic and sustained application of this approach that produces the most tangible and striking effects in terms of customer loyalty! Some sectors have been aware of this for a long time, and are faring much better: this is particularly true of the insurance and mutual insurance sector, which accounts for 7 of the 13 top-rated brands in the Forrester index!
While an important step seems to have been taken in terms of simplifying customer journeys, there is still work to be done when it comes toimproving the customer experience. A challenge that presupposes careful consideration of the subject of listening to and understanding customers too: in the USA, a study published by IBM in the first quarter of 2015 thus indicated that 81% of companies surveyed believe they have a complete view of their customers, but only37% of them confide that the company really understands them... So the gap is very real, even if the gap is narrowing.
KESTIO works with a large number of companies (from small businesses to major corporations) on these issues:
Collecting customer data is no longer enough - you have to act on it!
"2016 promises to be a lively year when it comes to customer relations. It will be a year in which companies that develop real efforts to improve customer relations will be rewarded, while those that have been downplaying their customers' needs for years will begin to wither away," confides Forrester in its study " Top 10 Success Factors to Determine Who Wins And Who Fails in the Age of the Customer " (1).
According to the report, customers will reward companies that anticipate individual needs and make use of the data they collect. On the contrary, companies that constantly have to ask for basic information, and are unable to "recognize" a customer, will start to lose them.
In short, Business Intelligence must create added value! Data collection must truly serve the customer experience!
Customers will no longer tolerate companies with amnesia when it comes to knowing their preferences.
explained Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner, at the Gartner Customer 360 Summit in September 2015 (2). It is therefore imperative for companies to recognize their customers and provide them with relevant content that demonstrates real effort.
Respect for confidentiality and privacy as a differentiating value
Consumers are used to brands collecting data, and are more or less in favor of it... But one thing is certain: if personal information is collected, then these consumers expect it to be useful!
Consumers demand that brands use data before they interact! All your customers know that you collect data, and they'll accept the idea more readily if it serves the experience they have with your brand.
To act, you need data. But be careful how you collect it. Data confidentiality and privacy have become key issues. We can no longer confine ourselves to the simple "legal" aspect, or even see data collection as a risk. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's a real opportunity to stand out from the crowd. We need to explain what the data collected is used for, and how it can be used to personalize our offering.
Customer involvement will thus become a lever for improving the relationship! In other words? According to Forrester, brands that get their customers more involved - through their loyalty programs, for example - will see the benefits.
Companies that launch customer-focused operations will gain real and lasting differentiation. Business as usual is doomed to failure.
Customers need to be involved in defining the brand and designing its products and services: who's in a better position to know their needs than they are? This is something our customer Castorama has understood very well: by means of questionnaires delivered via in-store touch-screen terminals, some of its sales outlets collect the opinions of their customers directly. This has enabled them to adapt the working hours of their teams, further improve customer service and develop new ideas based on reliable data obtained in real time.
Since the heart of customer relations is based on the personalization and contextualization of the offer, the consumer must be strongly involved, ideally at a very, very early stage. This is what our consultants contribute to, particularly when they implement a customer experience improvement coaching program.
But where to start? What actions should you take, and what objectives should you set? Discover here (in macro vision) the five key steps that will enable you to design and deploy an effective action plan to improve the multi-channel customer journey.
1. Define the perimeter
To begin with, no improvement plan can be drawn up without first taking stock of the current situation! To improve the quality of the experience delivered to your customers, you first need to measure the current level of quality and define the expected target level.
The first task is to define the scope of the project, i.e. :
target customer segments,
which stages of the multi-channel customer journey you wish to prioritize,
the channels involved.
2. Formalize the route
Once you've gathered all this information, formalize the different customer paths (one for each segment) with all their stages and contact points. You need to identify the key stages and be able to visualize each of them immediately and clearly:
customer actions, and the channel used for each of them
different levels of customer needs (explicit and implicit)
the choices faced by customers and their selection criteria
For each stage of the customer journey, the possible actions for the customer and the level of response provided by the brand must then be detailed in great detail and evaluated according to a scoring system.
You will then create :
your Optimal Experience repository, which describes all the actions that can be taken to best meet customer needs,
an observation guide to observe and rate the quality of the Customer Experience
4. Measure the quality of the Experience delivered
The quality of the customer experience can be measured using a variety of observation, analysis and scoring methods. For more details on this topic, we refer you to the article: Do you know how to measure the Customer Experience delivered by your brand?
Depending on the context, the resources available, the customer segments studied and the channels analyzed, some or all of these different methods may be used: in-store observation of the customer journey by store teams, mystery visits, analysis of visit statistics and website navigation, analysis of verbatims and customer opinions on the Internet (social networks, forums, etc.) or eyetracking, etc.
In all cases, the various studies carried out will finally be consolidated and analyzed to extract the average scores awarded to each stage of the journey.
We can then model the brand's typical customer journey, and determine for each stage whether the customer's experience corresponds to :
A disappointing moment
A neutral moment
A moment of enchantment
The key moments identified when defining the customer journey will be studied with particular attention. The average scores thus established make it possible to identify the gap that exists between the typical customer experience offered by the brand, and the target customer experience it has set itself.
5. Prioritize key moments!
Finally, the gaps identified make it possible to target priority areas for improvement. For each of these, recommendations must be made and an action plan drawn up. Teams, mobilized as early as the customer journey definition phase, then during the observation phase, can and should also be called upon to build action plans in "workshop" mode.
Deploying and implementing the action plan across the different stages of the customer journey, for each customer segment and on each channel, requires the full involvement of the various teams at every stage of the project. Prior awareness of the importance of the issues at stake and the positive impact of these actions is therefore of crucial importance.
(If you haven't already, we invite you to rediscover the reasons why customer experience is a strategic topic and how customer delight affects your profitability!) You probably even already have an idea of the target customer experience you're aiming for, a vision and an ambition for it... But do you know where to start to achieve it? The starting point is invariably to define and optimize your customer journey. Here's a look at the fundamentals of customer journey design and evaluation, the prerequisite for any customer experience improvement project.
1. By the way, what is the Customer Journey?
The customer journey is all the stages and points of interaction between a customer and a company, from the start of the purchasing process through to complete consumption of the product.
To simplify, there are 3 main phases in this process:
BEFORE: all preliminary stages, from active or passive awareness of the offer through to the purchasing process, including the purchasing decision phase
DURING: the "delivery" process, integrating all the stages involved in making the service or product available and consuming or using it.
AFTER: After-sales processes, including customer service, measuring customer satisfaction, and the entire relational process for maintaining contact and building customer loyalty.
The challenge is to smooth the loop from AFTER to BEFORE.
In this sense, and even if they partially overlap, the customer journey differs from the customer lifecycle.The lifecycle is a much more macroscopic observation of the successive passage from prospect to active customer to lost customer. It may therefore contain several iterations of the customer journey, or even several journeys, depending on the change in the customer's state.
2. What is the purpose of customer journey modeling?
When it comes to improving the customer experience, modeling the customer journey is the first necessary step.
This makes it possible to :
identify all stages of the customer journey and all points ofcontact between the customer and the company,
determine the importance of each contact point in the customer experience,
assess the company's level of response at these contact points,
define and implement the improvements needed to meet the company's ambitious response levels.
While this approach was first deployed for companies in the BtoC sector, it is increasingly being replicated and adapted to companies in the BtoB sector.
3. Define the customer journey
There isn't just one customer path. Depending on its customer typology, a company can offer different customer paths: this is the case, for example, for companies with an intermediary clientele comprising distributors, specifiers, installers and end consumers, or for those who want to offer a very different path to their best customers.
A touchpoint is defined as an interaction between the customer and the company, via a specific physical or digital channel. The interaction can be informative or transactional, and triggered either by the company (push) or by the customer (pull).
For example, reading an advertisement online or in a magazine, receiving a promotional email, visiting the company's website, entering a store, calling customer service, receiving a parcel, receiving an order confirmation email, receiving an invoice, and so on.
The customer journey stage is not systematically linked to a point of contact. It can be experienced in the customer's journey without direct interaction with the company. For example, a recommendation by a third party on a social network, a trip and a mode of transport to the company.
4. Evaluate the level of importance of the stage of the journey
Not all stages of the customer experience are created equal. It's often said that the first and last points of contact in the customer journey are the ones that most shape the customer's feelings, whether positive or negative. There are also other stages, often the most delicate, which together with the first and last impressions left represent the key stages.
We call these "moments of truth" key stages which, depending on how the company handles them, can turn a customer into a loyal customer... or a lost one.
The challenge is to meet and exceed expectations at a critical moment for the customer.
A few examples: the receipt of a parcel or the return procedure for an e-commerce company, the presentation of the invoice for a garage, the welcome on arrival for a hotel, the availability of the product for a store, the presentation of a proposal for a service company, the accessibility of customer service for a transport company, etc.
Satisfactory coverage of customer expectations at these stages is an anchor for loyalty. Failure to cover them encourages customers to leave.
5. Evaluate the level of response to customer expectations
It's important to assess the level of satisfaction delivered, taking into account the expectations and needs of different types of customer. Because not all customers are the same, it is necessary to detect and create customer segments according to their expectations, and in some sectors even to personalize the customer journey.
A family doesn't have the same needs as a couple in a ski resort, a DIY enthusiast doesn't have the same expectations as a professional in a tool shop, an SME doesn't have the same expectations in its car fleet management with a rental company.
It is also essential to consider the multi-channel dimension of the customer journey, respecting the customer's choice of preferred channel(s), and the "omnichannel" dimension of the customer journey, enabling customers to pursue their customer experience seamlessly, across all relationship channels and with all the company's contacts.
At all stages of the customer journey, and particularly at the moments of truth, we help companies measure their level of response to customer expectations, so as to define effective and relevant actions to be implemented to improve the customer experience and generate delight.
The WelcomeExperience® method proposed by KESTIO makes it possible to
- define multi-channel customer paths - assess the criticality of interaction points - assess the level of satisfaction delivered
to develop an effective plan for improving the customer experience.
