Most organisations know they need to focus on improving the quality of their customer experience. But what has driven this critical shift in thinking?
How well are you competing for customer attention and loyalty?
Jerry Gregoire, the former CIO of Dell Computers once said that “customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” He was right, and now the battle is well underway.In our new book “Customer First: A Guide to Improving Your Omni-channel Customer Experience” we lay out the imperative for organisations, but what is the challenge exactly?Never before have customers been more empowered, knowledgeable and connected. Driven by heightened customer expectations and demands, companies worldwide have realised that, in order to remain competitive, they must focus their time, energy and investment on improving and maintaining the quality of the experiences they offer their customers. This global movement is what Forrester Research has dubbed the ‘
Age of the Customer.’So why should you invest in customer experience (CX)?
- Customers judge your brand by the quality of their interactions with you. And positive experiences pay dividends in customer loyalty and advocacy. A recent Accent survey found that customers having a positive experience with a brand are 80% more likely to make an additional purchase and 79% more likely to tell family and friends.
- Your current customer experience quality is nowhere near good enough. Forrester Research produces an annual index of customer experience quality across multiple industries. In the recent UK results, only six of 28 companies listed had a score of ‘good’ while the majority spanned the range from ‘very poor’ to just ‘ok’. Not a single company achieved an ‘excellent’ score.
- Customer experience is a top priority for most other companies. Temkin Group research found that 82% of respondents think that CX will be more important to their organisation this year than it was last year, and 66% of respondents expected that their company will spend more on CX this year than it did last year.
Customer Experience improvement is not easy, but it is critical
Improving the quality of customer experiences is not an easy job — in fact, sometimes it feels too big and complex to even try. But we think it’s not only worth the effort and investment, it’s critical to make customer experience a top strategic priority.Temkin Group’s research reported that 42% of respondents think their CX efforts had a moderately or significantly positive impact on the business in 2014 and 78% expect it to have a positive impact in 2015. But, more importantly, is the unknown cost of being left behind, of being perceived by your customers as not meeting their minimum expectations. And then the inevitable cost of losing those customers to your competitors.This is the customer experience imperative for change. It is not the ‘next competitive battleground’ as Jerry Gregoire wrote, because the battle is already well underway. The purpose of our new book, therefore, is to outline an effective ‘battle plan’ for engaging with the challenge of competing in the Age of the Customer.
Want to learn more? The full book is available to read and download below.
We hope you find the book useful. We’d love to find out more about your customer experience challenges and explore ways to help you make an impact – get in touch:
hello@brilliantnoise.com
