Why Customer Experience Matters: And How to Reduce Customer Churn

The quality of your customer experiences has a profound impact on your business growth and outcomes. With a plethora of options at their disposal, customers nowadays have the power. About 92% of customers will switch to another company after three or fewer bad experiences.

This is why businesses must provide a remarkable and satisfying experience that addresses customers’ specific needs and issues. Bear in mind that dissatisfied customers can affect your brand reputation with about 62% of them sharing their negative experiences with other people.

As a CS manager, you can improve your customer experience by delivering excellent customer service and improving accessibility. This is possible through partnering with an outsourced service provider to deliver consistent support even during peak seasons. Using onshore, outsourced services can be a more cost-effective solution than hiring more in-house agents.

Here, we’ll cover more about customer experience, its importance, and the strategies you can use to improve your customers’ overall experience.

1. What is customer experience? 

The customer experience (CX) is the overall impression your customers have about your brand, products, and services. It’s the result of the various interactions with your brand throughout the buyer’s journey.

During their journey, the two key touchpoints that significantly define customer experiences are people and products. Basically, do your products provide the solutions customers are looking for? How helpful is your support team to your customers whenever they need help?

Customers must be delighted and satisfied with the performance and solutions of your product. Your customer support should also be responsive and reachable whenever your customers have issues.

Today, continuously improving CX has become essential, and marketing leaders responsible for CX are under pressure to deliver results. They’re investing in omnichannel support, outsourced services, and experienced agents to deliver quality and consistent services.

2. Why customer experience is important

Be it product quality or customer service, customer experience has become a key determinant in whether customers buy from a business or not. This is because 77% of customers say that poor experiences affect their quality of life.

Bad experiences affect your sales, revenues, and customer base. In the UK, companies lose over £37 billion a year due to poor customer service. So, you don’t have to learn this the hard way, and taking the necessary measures to improve your customer experiences offers several benefits, such as:

• Improved customer loyalty and retention
• Better conversion rates
• Improved customer acquisitions, including referrals
• Reduced cost of marketing and service
• Increased customer engagement

Companies have realised the significance of delivering quality customer service to stand out in a crowded market. In fact, 84% of businesses that improve their customer experience report increased revenues. Also, customer-centric businesses are 60 per cent more profitable than those that don’t focus on customers.

Dealing with informed customers means businesses have to meet customers where they are by offering an omnichannel experience. Delivering quality and consistent experiences improves customer satisfaction and loyalty. Bear in mind that loyal customers are five times more likely to buy from you again.

Ultimately, a good customer experience reduces churn. By implementing proactive strategies, you’re able to anticipate and meet the needs of your customers. This allows you to develop and nurture long-term relationships with clients, improving loyalty, minimising churn, and boosting your customer lifetime value (CLV).

Strategies to help deliver a great customer experience

Companies that successfully implement a customer experience strategy report increased revenues, reduced churn, and improved customer satisfaction rates. It seems a win-win, right? But how exactly can you deliver an experience that’s rich, satisfying, and problem-solving?

Here are cost-effective strategies to help you:

Understand your customers

There’s immense value in taking ample time to discover your different types of customers and their unique needs. Recognising the fact that each customer is unique is key to delivering customised and personalised experiences.

You can do this by creating personas that represent your ideal customers. This means taking into account their interests, location, job roles, and other key demographics. Then, segment your customers based on your identified homogeneous attributes, such as company size and industry, to provide uniquely tailored services.

Listen to your customers

Listening to customers is all about connecting with them. About 91% of customers will be loyal to a business after a good service call. So, whenever you’re interacting with customers, be sure to stay patient and let them speak. Being empathetic is also important — research by Hiver found that over half of those surveyed expected increased empathy during their customer service interactions post-pandemic. Listening to customers helps to:

• Build trust
• Connect better with customers
• Lowers resistance

Remember to note down their problem and be attentive — most customers dislike repeating themselves. Also, connect with them on their preferred channels. Effective listening is key to getting customer feedback and acting on it to eliminate pain points and improve experiences.

Make it easy for customers to contact you

How easy is it for customers to contact you or get help from your support team? Customers prefer using different channels when engaging with brands, so it’s essential to offer multichannel support. This includes delivering support via live chat, social media, email, call, and self-service systems.

Bear in mind that Gen Z and Millennials (46% and 47% respectively) prefer using social media when interacting with customer service. On the other hand, Baby Boomers prefer making phone calls. So, ensure your “contact us” page and social media pages have all the channels that customers want. You should also indicate the best times for them to reach you.

Solve customer problems smoothly

It’s vital to solve customer issues smoothly, even when they’re irate or unhappy. Make it easier for them to get what they want, whether it’s a solution to a problem or information. Be sure to work with experienced and knowledgeable agents to deliver great experiences that they expect.

You can also offer self-service options to allow customers to get solutions to basic issues without contacting customer teams. About 67% of customers prefer self-service options over speaking to agents. This includes:

• Deploying chatbots
• Creating knowledge bases
• Offering password reset tools
• Creating comprehensive product training and manuals
• Providing flexible automation features

Even as 75% of customers find self-service a convenient way of addressing issues, it’s still vital to make it easy for them to connect with a human agent. Your self-service tools should include escalation options for customers that want to escalate issues or get more clarification.

Follow up with customers

What happens during and after customer-brand interactions determine if customers return to you or reach out to your competitors. As such, it’s always vital to follow up with customers to ensure their needs have been met or their issues have been resolved.

Following up with customers makes them feel appreciated and acknowledged. Use social media, email or calls when reaching out to clients to see if they’re satisfied with your products or customer service. The faster you can reach out to them, the better.

Pro Tip: When following-up with customers, be sure to appreciate them, provide more information, and show immediate value for being your customer.

Deliver consistently great experiences with outsourced customer service 

In today’s dynamic business landscape, providing end-to-end customer experience is a competitive differentiator, and up to 81% of companies believe so. Therefore, you should strive to ensure consistency in your customer service during both off-peak and peak seasons, and should consider eCommerce customer service outsourcing.

You’ll need to create an effective strategy that considers key customer service trends and guides your support team on delivering great experiences throughout the customer journey. As part of your strategy, you should consider making strategic partnerships with outsourced customer services like Odondo.

At Odondo, we believe in the agility of customer service functions, and we can help you perfect your strategy. We make it easy for your company to access trained and industry-specific agents on demand. Plus, our services are scalable, meaning you can scale up or down depending on your customer service demands.

Are you looking for an effective solution to improve your customer experiences? Be sure to get in touch with us today, or check out our customer service outsourcing pricing guide to get a better understanding of the different types of solutions available, and the associated prices.