Why is Customer Experience Important?
While it may seem like an overly simple question, the importance of asking, ‘why is customer experience important’ cannot be overstated. Firstly, let’s outline the core understanding of great customer experience.
Customer experience is not defined by a singular moment but rather by the culmination of many touch points your customers have with your company. Whether that’s your communication on social media, the interaction with them at the checkout page, or even the customer journey leading them to speak with an after-sales specialist.
A customer’s experience has the power to define your customer’s brand loyalty to you. It impacts their decision-making process (will they buy from you again?), what they say about your brand (will they give positive feedback?), and the stories they will share about your customer experience (will they be ambassadors for the brand?). So, it’s easy to see why satisfied customers at every stage of their buyer’s journey, not just the end product, is critically important to any business.
Examples of Companies with Great Customer Experience Journeys
There is no shortage of examples that show how “customer-obsessed” companies continue to thrive and dominate in their respective industries - but let’s take a closer look at some of the best in the business.
Great Customer Experience Example 1: Ritz-Carlton
When you think of remarkable hospitality, brands such as The Ritz-Carlton are usually top of mind, and for good reasons. Employees are allowed up to $2,000 to manage any guest problem, no questions asked. But beyond the numbers, their simple three-step approach to a quality customer journey defines all of their actions:
A warm and sincere greeting.
Use the guest's name. Anticipation and fulfilment of each guest's needs.
Fond farewell. Give a warm goodbye and use the guest's name.
Their ethos and purpose are instilled through their employee experience and their goal to ‘create Ritz-Carlton guests for life’ ultimately leads to many satisfied customers and significant brand loyalty.
Great Customer Experience Example 2: Lotte
In the retail world, Korean department store Lotte is a great example of how data and technology can improve in-store shopping, making it intuitive, fuss-free, and ultra-convenient.
Lotte introduced their “Smart Department Store” by way of improving its customer experience. It offers a range of smart shopping solutions, including an omnichannel platform that enables cartless shopping, a table built with a multi-touch screen that offers diverse shopping information, and a storage cabinet that can be used via a mobile phone.
Great Customer Experience Example 3: Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A's renowned hospitality has made it one of, if not the, most preferred fast-food chain in the U.S.
In fact, Chick-fil-A’s high standards of customer service are almost as famous as their sandwiches. Their employees are frequently documented as going out of their way to provide an excellent customer experience and even borrowing phrases from Ritz Carlton’s rulebook, such as responding to customers by saying “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome”.
Chick-fil-A’s founder, S. Truett Cathy, said it best, “We should be about more than just selling chicken. We should be a part of our customers’ lives and the communities in which we serve.”
What do these companies have in common when it comes to great customer experience?
The primary factor that connects these companies is that each one of them ensures great customer experience as part of their company purpose. It’s not the icing on top of the cake. It is the cake. It’s their strategy and their ethos, and it’s championed company-wide through their employee experience. It’s almost too easy - give your customers an outstanding experience, and they will give you loyalty, repeat business, and referrals. But many companies find that, often, there is a disconnect and are unsure how to measure the impact of great customer experience on their business.
How to Measure Great Customer Experience
So, we know that the quality of your customer experience dictates your sales growth, retention, and your long-term cost of customer acquisition - but how do you measure satisfied customers and customer feedback?
Let’s look at Fred Reichheld’s Net Promoter Score (NPS). This is a tool for a business to quantify the impacts of an improved acquisition strategy driven by great customer experience. Since 2003, NPS is widely recognized as the premier market research tool that quantifies the customer experience, particularly in regard to brand loyalty. Once identified, a company can use their NPS to address any issues of their customer experience journey and improve upon them.
More recently, Reichheld developed the earned growth rate metric, a complementary metric that measures the revenue growth generated by returning customers and their referrals. Earned growth rates show the measurable impact of customer loyalty. It gives companies a blueprint for how they can customise experiences that not only make customers happy but also grows the business.
Why is Customer Experience Important In Summary
Experience is subjective, and it varies for each customer, but at the end of the day, the basics of great customer experience remain the same - speed, convenience, consistency, and friendly human touch. With the pandemic pushing many companies to recalibrate their business models and navigate evolving customer expectations, delivering great customer experience is more important than ever. But is it enough?