| |APRIL 202319CIOReviewBy Barbara Weisz, Senior Vice President Global Sales & Operations, Founder, GrouponCXO INSIGHTSFOCUSING ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN THE MIDST OF AN ECONOMIC CRISISIt's easy when budgets are tight to look at costs and play the short game, but during an economic slow down the one area not to cut is customer experience. As consumers put more thought into when and where to spend money, now more than ever customer experience as a driver of loyalty and realising its role in reducing the cost of acquiring new customers has never been such an important lever. According to Invespcro, increasing customer retention rates by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%. In addition, the average repeat buyer spends 33% more than a new customer. When customers get a great experience in tough times, they're more likely to remember, trust, and reward those brands when things improve. From a customer perspective we know that they want a great experience, simple and easy interactions that meet their needs and to feel valued. This means that during tougher economic times mapping and meeting customer expectations across the business at every touch point is critical. Your Front Line Team While great Customer Service is not just the purview of the customer service team, this team is vital. As consumers look for ways to cut their budgets and better understand their spending, contact centres are invaluable in providing a personalised service. Research from HubSpot states that 93% of customers are likely to buy multiple times from companies that provide a quality customer experience and 80% are willing to leave a brand after just one bad one. Correctly answering a customer issue the first time provides better customer experience (CX) while helping the company decrease costs. Repeat inquiries simply strain CS budgets. Investing in chatbot automation, inquiry routing procedures and agent assist tools that generate the most effective and highest quality initial interaction with the customer will pay dividends in the long run. Technology is also driving access to intelligence, as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms and contact centre technologies merge. This also means that the intelligence coming out of the contact centre is shaping how we understand our customers, giving us vital insight into brand perception, product and service quality. Data when smartly harnessed and fed back into the business can dramatically impact the bottom line. Personalisation and Data Brands must capitalise on personalisation to maintain customer loyalty. 91% of consumers say that they are more likely to shop with a brand that provides offers and recommendations that are relevant to them, and 74% are only willing to engage with personalised messaging. Catering to customers by providing an authentic and valuable experience focuses on the use of unique personas for each customer, and aligning communications, CRM content and physical experiences to these at each stage of that customer's Barbara Weisz
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