What is customer experience management (CEM) and why is it important?
Customer relationship management is a collection of processes your business uses to track, organize, and oversee every single interaction between a customer and your business throughout the customer lifecycle. (Source: SearchSalesforce)
So you need a process in place for your business to manage customer experience.
Do you have one in place for your customer experience management?
If not, you need one. After I share some statistics with you I will show you how to implement a simple process to manage your customer experience. Make sure to stay with me and read all the way through.
Sound fair?
Here’s some research statistics from Esteban Kolsky founder and principal of thinkJar. This is part of an annual survey Esteban conducts on customer experience management. (Source: Huffingtonpost.com)
Research shows that 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience. Kolsky points out the word ‘guaranteed’, noting customers are no longer satisfied with just being promised a good experience.
86% of consumers are willing to pay more for an upgraded experience. Air travel and hospitality are examples where upselling better experiences can generate incremental revenue and bolster customer loyalty.
84% of consumers are frustrated when the agent does not have information.
Customer frustration leads to the following: 13% tell 15 or more people if they’re unhappy.
Conversely, 72% of consumers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people.
67% of consumers site bad experiences as reason for churn.
Kolsky researched and surveyed business leaders to find other critically important trends regarding customer experience including:
Only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain. The rest churn. A lesson here is that companies should not view absence of feedback as a sign of satisfaction. The true enemy is indifference.
91% of unhappy customers who are non-complainers simply leave.
It is 6-7 times more expensive for companies to attract new customers than to keep existing customers.
65% of companies are able to successfully upsell or cross-sell to existing customers.
Only 12% of companies are able to successfully upsell or cross-sell to new customers.
75% of brands do not know what engagement means – but are measuring “it.”
50% of customer experience naturally occurring churn every 5 years.
Research on customer retention further validates the importance of customer experience. Kolsky found that:
66% of consumers who switched brands did so because of poor service.
85% of customer churn due to poor service was preventable.
11% of customer churn could be prevented by simple company outreach.
67% of customer churn is preventable if the customer issue was resolved at the first engagement.
70% of companies that deliver best in class customer experience use customer feedback – versus industry average of 50%, and 29% for laggards.
Customers are thirsty for more information and knowledge.
56% of customers just want the right answer, but 64% of customers do not trust the information.
44% of customers confirm that they have received the wrong answer.
Social customer survey results:
55% of customer requests for service on social media are not acknowledged.
84% of social media service interactions are escalated to other channels.
13% of companies claiming that 25% of service requests start socially.
72% of Facebook interactions are never completed, in any channel.
67% of escalated social interactions go back to channel of origin.
What are your thoughts?
Eye opening statistics.
What we’re going to do now is discuss some of the statistics and talk about what you can do to help improve the customer experience within your business.
Sound good?
Over 55% of customers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience.
Ask yourself.
What are your customers experiencing when they do business with you?
Is that experience positive or negative?
Do you even know that?
You should.
3 step process to improve your customer experience management
As a small business owner it is vital that you have a process in place to manage your customer’s experience so you can improve it.
Implement customer relationship management software (crm) so you can track each of your interactions with a customer. So you analyze those interactions to see what can be improved.
Make each customer feel special. Treat them like they’re your only customer in each interaction – whether that interaction is in person, on the phone, email, and social media.
Ask your customers how you’re doing. They’ll tell you that’s for sure. Remember it is all about them. So if you send out a survey or email asking for information – make it all about them, not you.
That’s all you really need to do to make sure you’re doing everything to make sure your customers have a positive experience when doing business with you.
Can you implement that 3 step process in your business?
When you follow those 3 steps your
customer service will be unmatched, which increases customer loyalty and fortifies customer relations
I am not going to regurgitate all of the other statistics, but here are some important common sense points you need to remember and use every day in addition to the 3 step process I discussed above.
A happy customer is your best referral source. Why? When they’re happy they will tell all of their friends and if their friends have a positive customer experience they’ll tell their friends. So on and so forth.
In light of the digital age you live in the best form of marketing still is word of mouth. Recommended Reading: The Secret Sauce in Growing Your Online Business
If your customer has a bad experience they’re more than likely to tell twice as many people about it.
What would that do to your business?
It would probably hurt your revenue and ultimately your profits!
It costs a lot less to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.
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The customer is always right. That is indisputable. You and I can debate that if we want to, but I hate to tell you my friend this is a fact!
You need to be customer centric. What do I mean by that? Everything you do in your business needs to be done with your customer in mind. Also, your customers keep your business running, without them you’re screwed in plain English!
One last point here. What do customers ultimately buy from you? A product/service that you sell which is part of a solution to their problem? Yeah, sure.
They’re buying an experience. How much will a customer pay you for an experience ?
A lot!
What are your thoughts?
Make sense?
Conclusion
Do you have a customer experience management process in place?
How is that process working for you?
If you could improve that process, would you?
If you answered “No” to any of these questions, you and I should chat to help get you on the right path?
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