Customer Experience Strategy: The Secret to Better Customer Retention

Imagine you’ve just downloaded this awesome new app.

You’re enjoying yourself. Swiping around, clicking all of the features, then realize it’s missing one key feature. What a bummer!

Sometimes, you can live without them, but in the back of your head you hope that they’ll take your feedback seriously with their next update. Believe it or not, your customers feel the same way.

Are you taking your customers feedback seriously?

Customer experience affects  how your customers value you and your service / product and often, how long they stick around.  

According to Harvard Business School, increasing customer retention by even 5% can increase your profits between 25-95%. Since most of your revenue will most likely come from repeat customers, why not adjust your inbound marketing strategy to include your customers?

Take a look at how you can use a unique customer experience strategy to foster brand loyalty and grow your company.

Benefits of Implementing a Customer Experience Strategy

If I were to ask, “Are you delivering a superior customer experience?” How would you respond?

Sadly, your response is probably very different from that of your customers.

Based on research from Bain & Company, 80% of CEOs believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8% of their customers agree.

Customer experience is not a trend or the new “marketing”, but rather a plan that guides various activities and resource allocation needed to deliver an experience that will meet the customer's expectations.

By obtaining their feedback and continuing to educate your customers, you’re developing the opportunity to drive up customer loyalty while decreasing churn.  

Take a look at these customer experience statistics:

• By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. (Walker)

• 95% of dissatisfied customers tell others about their bad experience. (Dimensional Research)

• 82% of consumers say the number one factor that leads to a great customer service experience is having their issues resolved quickly. (Econsultancy)

• 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience, but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations. (Oracle - CEI Survey)

• It is 6-7 times more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer. (White House Office of Consumer Affairs)

Develop a Strategy for Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Measuring Feedback

How often are you asking your customers their likelihood to recommend you to a colleague, friend, or business connection?

One way that you can gauge their likelihood is by implementing a net promoter score survey, where you can ask your customers these two questions:

1. How likely are you to recommend [COMPANY NAME] to a friend or colleague?

2. What is the most important reason for your score?

Obtaining their feedback isn’t necessarily about your company. It’s about thinking about the companies using your product or service.

Your customer should know you care about their company and their business. When you ask them for their feedback, don’t just keep it in a document locked away somewhere.

Whether you’re collecting their feedback through a Google Form, creating an email and workflow in HubSpot, using SurveyGizmo or Promoter.io; what you really need to focus on is developing a strategy for the Promoters and Detractors of your company.

A lot of your focus will go towards the Detractors.

What can you do to address their concerns? The simplest way might be to ask them, “What can we do to help?” Unfortunately, if their feedback goes unaddressed, these customers and users are at risk of churning within the next 90 days. Oftentimes, you might not even realize an ideal customer is unsatisfied until it’s too late.

On the other hand, promoters are users and/or customers who are more than willing to recommend you to their colleagues and friends. They might not know the best avenue for leaving a review or referral, depending on your company or industry this might vary.

Don’t Forget to Educate Your Customers

As an organization, whose continuously trying to grow their customer or user base, a lot of your energy is likely going towards acquiring new customers, but what are you doing to keep current user?

Whether they’re a first-time user, or they’ve been using your product or service for a while, it’s essential to provide them with the necessary educational resources (webinars, how-to videos / articles, FAQs, etc.) to ensure they’re getting the most out from your company and software.

Customer Contact Council found, the single most important factor to increasing customer loyalty is reducing the amount of work the customer has to do.

As a software company, do you have a section of your site dedicated to walking your customers through setting up a feature or even how they can fully utilize a feature?

Use your customer feedback to put together a variety of comprehensive resources to help your users when they need it. Here are a few options:

Live Chat

You might want to consider adding a live chat to your site. Give your customers the ability to quickly ask you a question, without all the hassle of finding your customer support number or email address.

This will reduce the number of steps it will take them to find the information they’re looking for and help humanize your brand by making a personal connection.

Self-Service Channels

You can also consider creating a self-service channel where customers can find the answers to their questions and problems. A self-service channel can be in the form of an FAQ page, a resource center, forum, or even a blog.

This way your customers get the answers they seek without having to reach out to a member of your team.

How Are You Gauging Customer Satisfaction?

Promoters and detractors are single handedly the most important groups of users and customers. If you’re not actively engaging with them and making them feel like they matter, you can say goodbye to that referral.

It’s easier to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new customer. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this stat:

“The cost of acquiring a new customer costs five to ten times more than retaining an existing one. Not only that, but repeat customers, spend on average, 67% more.”

With so many companies putting a focus on customer experience, how are you measuring their satisfaction and likelihood to recommend your company? I’d love to hear your thoughts on developing a customer experience strategy and ways you’re engaging with customers.