Customer Experience: The Secret Ingredient in Every Successful Business

Every business owner is familiar with the concept of customer service. However, focusing on service alone is missing out on a lot of what makes a happy customer. Instead, business owners are turning to customer experience to form a better understanding of how to reach success through customer satisfaction.

While you might think that your product or service should speak for itself, the truth is that customers are often willing to spend more to shop at businesses where they have had a better experience. Because of this, customer experience should play a role in every business owner’s decision-making and goal formulation.

Do you want to learn more about improving your customers’ experience, and thus improving your cash flow? Reach out to ActionCOACH SW Houston today!

Step One: Understanding Your Business’ Customer Experience

Customer experience might sound like a self-explanatory concept, but the truth is that it may be more complex than you expect. Customer Experience, also called CX, is a way of understanding a customer’s complete experience with a company, including every interaction that they have with your company.

While customer service includes direct interactions with your team, CX encapsulates much more. Everything from the atmosphere you create to the self-service options your business has is a part of CX.

In general, the components of CX can be split into three categories, each of which overlaps with the others in some areas:

• Design — This includes the feeling, marketing, and overall visual and brand design of your business. Basically, your atmosphere and attitude.
• Customer Service — As written above, all customer interactions fall under customer service, whether it be in the form of customer support, customer success, or self-service support.
• Technology — This category includes your product or service itself, including how your product works and how your customers use it.

CX and customer service are often confused by business owners, leading to less successful service and product execution. By considering CX rather than customer service alone, you can better understand how your business is functioning, what’s working, and what isn’t.

Step Two: Understanding the Importance of Customer Experience for Success

Simply by considering the components of CX, you can probably understand why this concept is so important to your business. However, that alone doesn’t get across just how essential and helpful quality CX is for your business.

• Satisfaction Matters
  CX takes into account all factors that affect how satisfied your customers are, and a more satisfied customer is likely to spend more money in your store. If you’re able to predict your customers’ needs and exceed their expectations using CX, then you’re likely to see greater revenues.
• A Happy Customer is a Loyal Customer
  Data has shown that it’s five times more costly to attract a new customer than it is to keep an existing one, largely due to the often high cost of catching that potential customer’s attention through marketing. Customer retention is key to a successful business, and CX is key to customer retention.
• Understanding Experience Means Understanding Customer Problems
  CX also allows you to include problem-solving in your understanding of customer satisfaction. While you might assume that a customer who’s had a problem at your business would be less likely to return, the truth is that attentive and effective problem solving is likely to earn your business a lot of trust with that customer.
• A Satisfied Customer Will Tell Their Friends
  We’ve already discussed how getting new customers can be more difficult than keeping happy ones, but there is one secret weapon that businesses can use to address that issue for less: word of mouth. It may be difficult to convince a potential customer to trust your advertising, but they will certainly believe their friends. If you make sure each of your customers has a good CX, then you’re more likely to create a community of customer advocates.

Step Three: Boosting Your Customer Experience

There are many components that go into creating a superior customer experience, and those components often vary from business to business. Of course, you should ensure that your business has a welcoming and friendly atmosphere, but the primary source of CX is your sales and customer service force. Your workers should be equipped with the temperament, tools, and confidence to make your customers happy.

• Patient and empathetic team members are better able to build strong customer relationships.
• Your customer service should be proactive: from keeping CX records for each customer, to creating a positive experience for each customer who enters your business.
• The quality of your team is largely contingent on the quality of their pay and support. Dealing with customers can be difficult, but a team with the tools and incentives they need to succeed is more able to have a positive work/life balance.

Improving Your Customer Experience with ActionCOACH SW Houston’s Effective Tools

No matter what sort of business you run or how established your business is, ActionCOACH SW Houston’s experienced team of business coaches can help you identify opportunities to improve your business in order to increase growth and overall success.

Take action and partner with ActionCOACH SW Houston for all the tools and know-how you need to succeed.