As creatures of habit, established customers will come back to your business unless you give them a reason not to. 92% of consumers will stay loyal and increase their business with a company when their queries are handled quickly and effectively. However, bad communication and poor customer experience is overwhelmingly (81%) the cause of clients taking their business elsewhere. With over 60% of companies citing customer experience (CX) as the best tactic for increasing customer lifetime value and loyalty, seamless communication is the key to addressing clients’ needs.
There is no big secret to treating your clients well: communication is king. Good customer service leads to more customer engagement with a company, while negative customer experience encourages consumers to find alternatives. Indeed, over 80% of UK consumers surveyed by Yonder in 2017 said they tend to take their business elsewhere if their queries aren’t answered quickly and effectively .
Yet despite this data, companies are still struggling to meet consumer expectations. Yonder Digital Group surveyed 2,000 people as part of their research on the quality of customer communication across a range of industries, from hotels to delivery services. When asked whether companies were easy to contact and if they resolved customer queries quickly and effectively, the answer was overwhelmingly “no” .
It is only a matter of time until such unhappy customers jump ship and look for alternatives. As a business, balancing efforts to grow whilst maintaining a happy customer base may seem like a tricky juggling act, but in reality, these go hand in hand.
Although retaining existing customers has been shown to be cheaper than increasing their numbers (depending on industry, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive), expanding an established client base is crucial for growing your business. To ensure that new customers are worth your investment, customer lifetime value – the net profit a customer will provide over the course of their relationship with a business – should be a priority. Since so many consumers have ended relationships with businesses due to poor customer service, communication stands out as the key to securing loyalty from your client.
Developing a lasting relationship with clients not only leads to brand loyalty, but brand advocacy, and what better way to expand than by letting your existing customers pave the way? Complacency leads to slipping customer service experience, whereas consistently delivering on customer expectations builds clients’ trust over time and increases customer lifetime value.
As established, a company’s customer communication capabilities are important, but we must never forget the value of communication amongst and between customers; 88% have been influenced by an online customer service review when making a buying decision. Whether these reviews bring new customers in or drive them away depends largely on the customer service experience a business provides.
So how should companies cultivate exceptional customer experience?
Listening to your customers is a good place to start. Research has shown that 70% of businesses that deliver exceptional customer experience use customer feedback to further improve it . Perfecting the experience that customers expect is more achievable than ever before, since tech tools allow businesses to understand their customers through ongoing analysis of purchasing patterns and consumer behaviour. Using such technology, companies can pinpoint how customers respond to innovations. By identifying reactions in this way, businesses can develop innovative strategies tailored to meet consumers’ specific needs successfully.
Customers increasingly demand the ability to get in touch with a company whenever, and as soon as, they need to. By providing customers with a variety of customer service options, such as automated online chatbots, telephone services, email, etc., customers know that they can reach a business through their preferred method of communication. In an age of instant gratification, limiting customer service during standard work hours is no longer an option.
The key to successful customer experience is for a consumer to feel like they are valued throughout their entire relationship with the business. To increase a company’s client base as well as ensure customer retention and loyalty, businesses must create a seamless communication strategy that allows its customers to reach them across a range of bases.
Guest Blog by Chris Robinson of Yonder Digital Group
References:
- ‘It’s personal – and that’s official’, Yonder Digital Group (February 2017)
- ‘Customer Lifetime Value: Building Loyalty and Driving Revenue in the Digital Age’, Econsultancy Report (April 2014)
- ‘The silent treatment: how UK businesses are giving consumers the brush off’, Yonder Digital Group (December, 2017)
- ‘The value of keeping the right customers, Harvard Business Review (October, 2014)
- Customer Service And Business Results: A Survey Of Customer Service From Mid-Size Companies’, ZenDesk Whitepaper (April, 2013)
- ‘50 Important Customer Experience Stats for Business Leaders’, The Huffington Post (December, 2017)
