We’re living in an experience-driven economy. More than anything else, the support and guidance a business provides its customers determines whether that brand will be successful.
Numerous studies from many market researchers highlight this. For instance, a recent ContactBabel report found that 48 percent of businesses note CX as their most significant differentiator.
As such, preserving excellent experiences is one of the best ways for companies to drive customer retention and survive an economic downturn.
A study published by Ipsos Mori supports this. It notes 70-75 percent of customers say they’re more likely to continue purchasing from businesses forced to raise their prices when they know they will get a great experience.
Preserving excellent customer experience ensures that companies will retain their customers during difficult periods, increase their sales, and outshine their competition.
Preserving CX on a Budget: How to Get Started
Reduced budgets may be unavoidable in today’s complex economic environment, but companies can still preserve excellent experiences while protecting their financial health.
To thrive, business leaders need to find ways to strengthen and differentiate their brand without necessarily investing in expensive new initiatives. Here are a few ways to get started.
1. Focus on Customer Retention
One of the easiest ways companies can excel in customer experience while keeping costs low is to focus on customer retention rather than just prioritizing customer acquisition. Countless studies have shown that retaining customers is cheaper and more cost-effective than seeking new ones.
With this in mind, companies should rethink their approach to customer success, with a focus on generating success for existing customers. Delivering excellent onboarding and training experiences when clients purchase a new service will ensure they can rapidly discover a solution’s value.
Listening to the voice of the customer with surveys, reviews, and testimonials ensures business leaders can make intelligent investments in CX based on what clients actually need.
2. Use Data to Pinpoint CX Priorities
For companies to get the most out of their CX strategy, they need a clear understanding of which solutions generate the most benefits for both customers and the business. Leveraging voice-of-the-customer data such as feedback and testimonials – see point four below – can help with this. But it’s also worth diving deeper into various forms of crucial data.
By analyzing each aspect of the customer journey carefully, business leaders can determine which channels, solutions, and technologies they should be prioritizing. For instance, if customers benefit most from interactions with agents enhanced with video, a company can increase its investment in video technology and reduce the use of other, less valuable channels.
3. Prioritize Brand Differentiation
Studies suggest falling budgets and other factors mean CX differentiation will begin to erode in around 75 percent of industries going forward.
As a result, companies that separate themselves from their competitors with customer experiences effectively have an increased opportunity to thrive during difficult economic times.
While lower-performing brands focus on solving fundamental CX problems to align themselves with other competitors, the top performers look for ways to truly innovate.
For instance, investing in human-led, personalized customer experiences – which leverage co-browsing tools, live video interactions, and smartphone-first conversations – can help companies stand out from the crowd.
4. Maintain a Customer-Centric Mentality
Investing in innovative new tools and solutions for customer experience may not be an option for cash-strapped companies today. However, preserving and building a customer-centric mentality doesn’t have to cost a penny.
Focusing on listening to customers, learning about their preferences, and responding to their specific needs doesn’t cost a lot, but it generates fantastic growth opportunities.
The more companies learn about their customers and listen to their needs, the more they can invest in the CX initiatives most likely to deliver a significant return on investment.
Listening to customers carefully can also help companies solve problems that lead to substantial revenue losses.
5. Enable Employees to Be More Productive
Excellent customer experiences start with fantastic employee experiences. Empowering agents with the tools they need to resolve problems quickly and more effectively directly impacts customer satisfaction levels and a company’s bottom line.
For instance, an employee who can use cobrowsing tools to actively see a customer’s issue and troubleshoot a problem remotely will be more equipped to resolve a problem fast and move on to helping the next client.
Agents with access to streamlined technology for managing customer service requests and queries won’t have to spend as much time jumping between apps and learning to use different resources. This means they can complete tasks more efficiently and keep the organization running smoothly.
Even regular training and development strategies can help to empower agents and reduce the risk of lost revenue, high employee turnover, and missed opportunities.
Learn Lessons from the Past
“The only pathway through this uncertainty is continued and accelerated innovation,” stated Judson Althoff, Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft.
There is precedence for this as companies accelerated digital customer experience transformation projects through the last crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic – to survive in a new world.
Yet, Althoff also notes that the pandemic underlined the significance of resilience in businesses. Those that already had robust digital capabilities had fortified their businesses, proving more resilient.
As such, in the face of the next economic crisis, Altoff recommends that businesses focus on three aspects of digital performance. These include:
- Delivering a connected employee experience to maintain an engaged workforce.
- Providing contextual and personalized customer experiences by connecting data across sales, service, and marketing.
- Doing more with less by using tech to maximize efficiencies within the CX tech stack.
“Landing these objectives will help you deliver better business outcomes and achieve sustainable growth,” concluded Althoff.
