1. CX outweighs price to drive customer loyalty.
Over two-thirds of customer loyalty is driven by customer experience, making it more important than price and brand combined. We oftentimes assume that customers are primarily price-driven when deciding between businesses, but they would much prefer to experience repeated positive interactions over saving a few dollars with a brand that offers a disappointing customer experience. (Source: Gartner).
2. Speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendliness drive satisfaction and loyalty.
Customers care about four things – speed, convenience, knowledgable help and friendly service. Nail these elements and 80% of customers will be totally satisfied. Customers don’t generally take notice of added bells and whistles to improve CX – unless they malfunction or slow the process down. They want user-friendly and elegant website and mobile app interfaces and automation to ease their experiences, but if the speed, convenience and the right information aren’t aligned, any sophisticated upgrade you may offer is meaningless. (Source: PwC).
3. The online purchase process can make or break a sale.
In eCommerce, it’s easy to forget that customers often still need guidance and support. 45% of U.S. consumers will abandon an online transaction if their questions or concerns are not addressed quickly, and 89% of shoppers have stopped buying from online stores after they’ve experienced poor customer service. Having a seamless online shopping experience is essential to customer retention and loyalty. Because so many online platforms make online shopping easy – Amazon for example – the bar is high to make the transaction process really smooth. (Source: Forrester, RightNow).
4. Feeling underappreciated is the #1 reason customers switch to a new brand.
An estimated $62 billion is lost by U.S. businesses each year following bad customer experiences, but feeling underappreciate was found to be the top reason (40%) why customers churn in a survey performed in 2018. Other causes included not being able to speak to a person, being passed around to multiple agents and being put on hold for too long. But, 86% of customers said they would do business with a company again if they made a positive emotional connection to the service agent. (Source: NewVoiceMedia).
5. Being data-driven and journey-based is the key to being a high CX performer.
The cream of the crop of customer-facing businesses aren’t just offering good CX, they are performing regular and robust data-driven analysis of the customer journey to truly understand customer behaviour so that they can continuously improve. These high performing companies are over 9x more likely to integrate data from multiple sources, analyze customer interactions across channels, and engage customers optimally across channels. (Source: Pointillist).
6. Age doesn’t really matter when it comes to CX.
Whether a customer is Gen Z, Gen X or a millennial, they all want the same thing – convenience. But expectations surrounding CX convenience have nuance – Gen Z expects seamlessness and immediacy in their interactions with brands more so than other generations. Gen Z is also more likely to pay more for certain elements of customer experience than other generations, including company loyalty, brand personality, design, trust, fun and mobile experience. (Source: PwC).
7. It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience.
Negative experiences are costly. They are also inevitable, but how your ability to handle and resolve them will determine how much they end up costing you. Customers take their experiences to heart, and will not bother doing business with a brand again if their qualm is not resolved. 70% of unhappy customers whose issues were resolved in their favour said they would be willing to come back, but for those with issues left unresolved – it is likely that they will never return. (Source: Glance).
