The drive to provide a great customer experience is a key differentiator for today’s most successful businesses. Clarabridge has noticed three CX trends among CX leaders that organizations need to pay attention to in order to keep up.
1) Customer Experience is a strategic initiative.
In leading companies, CX is no longer a nice-to-have tactic for your customer service initiatives, but is instead driving business decisions. C-suite executives are starting to see the impact of their customer experience efforts on the bottom line, and they are acting accordingly.
A 7-point increase in customer satisfaction scores correlates to a 1% increase in revenue
Decreasing the number of detractors by 2% leads to another 1% increase in revenue
Companies with a focus on doing right by customers do 25% better on the S&P Index
Example: United Airlines
United uses customer feedback data to drive strategic improvements in the travel experiences it offers. As a result, United has consistently achieved top-tier, on-time performance among the four largest U.S. carriers every month since October 2015 and has earned a double-digit year-over-year improvement in overall customer satisfaction scores.
2) Customer Experience is a company-wide focus.
Instead of being merely the domain of a dedicated Customer Insights team or a Voice of the Customer department, customer experience is being emphasized throughout major organizations. For your CX strategy to be successful, it has to be important to everyone. Insights and learning come from the bottom up, from the direct interactions and touchpoints between employees and customers, while CX goals are set from the top down. When everyone is engaged, it creates a virtuous cycle, and decisions are made in harmony.
To truly make CX a priority for every member of the team, you have to make sure they all understand what is expected of them and empower each of them to make a difference. Use technology and create processes to get the right information into the right hands at every level. Ask “What does the customer think about this initiative?” whenever you make a change, and listen to what your employees have to say.
Example: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM)
By developing a focused strategy to become member-centric company-wide, BCBSM has seen increases in customer satisfaction for the website experience, customer service, and transparent communication. It’s Forrester Customer Experience Index (CXI) score went from below the industry average in 2012 to the second highest in the industry with the largest gain across all consumer industries in 2014.
3) Customer Experience is driven by customers.
Optimizing the customer experience you are currently delivering is not enough. You have to make sure you deliver the experience your customers actually want.
For example, how do you provide customer support? Millennial customers tend to want to interact with you via social, and to have plenty of do-it-yourself service options. Gen-Xers want options, and they want it to be easy to connect with you across all of your channels. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, tend to want to talk to a person through a call center.
These types of adjustments can apply to languages offered, types of content you place on your website, or any number of other variables. If you know who your customers are, you can focus your efforts on providing exactly what they want.
Example: Expedia, Inc.
Using the Clarabridge platform, Expedia has a multifaceted approach to improving the customer experience. Since 2014, the central content team has been able to pinpoint actionable customer issues in multiple languages. Through innovative applications of the platform, it has enhanced standards of excellence to elevate customer satisfaction.
Are you following these trends? Is your organization tackling the customer experience as a strategic focus, making it a priority throughout the organization, and following your customers’ lead? Check out these 6 additional skills for every CX team to learn more about CX trends.
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