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Written by Mike Hebert, Managing Director at MDT Training
Why your Business Should be Focusing on Customer Experience
Companies that offer a superior customer experience reap the benefits of repeat customers
and a loyal customer base who will choose your brand over competitors. It has become the
new main focus of many businesses as they realize this is the key to long-term success.
Not only does a good customer experience encourage loyal and repeat customers, but the
power of word-of-mouth from happy customers can introduce your business to new
customers as they endorse your products on social media and to friends and family.
When you think about the purchasing decisions you have made in the past, can you think of
what helped you make that decision? Was it the product itself? The price? The brand? The reality is, many different companies are offering the exact same products, with the same
features and benefits, for near enough the same price. When you’re a business with this
competitive set, how can you stand out from the crowd and win over these customers who are overwhelmed with choices? The answer – providing a superior customer experience.
Today, there are no longer businesses that are purely selling a product, and not providing
some sort of service or experience. And if there is, they won’t last long in this competitive
market. If you’re an online business, the experience is encountered through the online
website; the steps taken towards ordering products online, the service they are provided when they receive a confirmation email, how quickly and effectively is the products delivered to them, and is there any aftercare experience offered? If there is an issue, how well is it dealt
with?
As a business, you have to think about more than just the product itself to keep customers
happy. Due to the advancement in consumption and how brands are offering unique and
unforgettable experiences, consumers are becoming more demanding and harder to please as
the bar gets set higher and higher by monopoly brands.
A customer experience is co-created through client interactions and several service elements,
with every customer taking away a different experience from the next. There are no two
interactions that will be the exact same, and these interactions may vary between people
depending on their culture and social beliefs. This is also one aspect of customer experience
that employees must be trained on to ensure they are culturally aware of how to build
rapport with anyone, no matter the cultural background.
To be able to provide customers with an unforgettable experience, employees must be savvy
when interacting with existing and potential customers and must be trained on how they can
build meaningful client relationships which are most likely to lead to a loyal customer. It is
important for employees to be motivated to interact with clients for authentic relationships to develop. It was established that companies with highly engaged employees score better on
customer satisfaction
Customer experience carries a more important role than just competitive advantage, this
business strategy – if done right – will actually save you money in the long run. Businesses
must view training their employees as an investment which will bring huge benefits. As per a customer impact survey completed in 2010 by Rightflow technologies, 82% of customers who have stopped doing business with a company have recorded it was due to a bad experience. It is estimated that 80% of your future profits will come from just 20% of your existing
customers, and loyal customers make up for 65% of overall business at one time. It is well
known that customer retention is much cheaper than acquisition, so it’s not surprising that
there has been a shift in focus to provide great customer service and experience.
Explore MDT Training's client experience and relationship selling courses and case studies here to see how our customer experience training can help your employees exceed sales targets and build great customer relationships.
Sources
Frichou, F., 2018. 5 Reasons Why Customer Experience is the Pulse of Every Business.
Retrieved 26 July 2019, from https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/5-reasons-why-
customer-experience-is-the-pulse-of-every-business
Mansfield, M., 2018. Customer Retention Statistics – The Ultimate Collection for Small
Business - Small Business Trends. Retrieved 26 July 2019, from
https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/10/customer-retention-statistics.html
The Importance of Great Customer Experience., 2019. Retrieved 26 July 2019, from
https://managementevents.com/news/the-importance-of-great-customer-experience/