No matter how much or little business experience you have, you instinctively know that great customer experience matters. Customers who love what you offer and the process of purchasing from you are happier, stay with you longer, and are more likely to recommend you to others.
Say that you know all that and decide to do something to improve your customer experience. What do you do first? Just putting down “improve customer experience” on your to-do list is hardly an actionable plan.
Instead of one, set multiple customer experience goals and crush them, one by one. Here are some amazing customer experience objectives you can set and complete in the upcoming year.
Taking our word for it is probably not going to cut it. The good news is that there is plenty of research to back up our claim that good customer experience is invaluable.
For starters, 89% of companies compete based on customer experience. That means that t’s becoming increasingly difficult to compete based on pricing or features. A company with a better customer experience will have more success in attracting and retaining customers.
86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. If you’re looking for a way to add more MRR and improve your bottom line, customer experience is the first part of your business to look at.
49% of customers have made impulse purchases after a great online experience and being offered personalized recommendations.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. In reality, great customer experience is not something that is nice to have—it’s a factor that can drastically improve your bottom line. With that in mind, here are some actionable goals you can strive for from now on.
CSAT is one of the most common customer experience metrics for a variety of reasons. It’s easy to measure (with tools such as CSAT surveys) and it’s indicative of how well your customer experience efforts are working out.
In short, to measure your success with CSAT means asking your customers a question such as “How satisfied are you with our product/service” on a scale from 1-5?”
Surveys are the easiest way to find out your CSAT score. As customer responses come in, you can calculate them using this formula:
(Number of customers satisfied (4 and 5) / Number of survey responses) x 100 = percentage of customers satisfied
Alternatively, you can use a tool such as Survicate to find out what your exact CSAT score is through extensive customer surveys. If you want to quickly gather feedback and gauge how your customers feel, you will love Survicate.
You can distribute CSAT surveys via:
To find out exactly what could improve your CSAT score, you can use survey logic to ask additional, open-ended questions to customers who gave you a low score. This can unearth some hidden gems that you can act on immediately.
Even if your current CSAT score is excellent, don’t rest on your laurels when it comes to customer satisfaction. Make sure to measure CSAT regularly to ensure your customers stay happy and come back for more.
Your NPS should be the next thing on your list for your customer experience strategy. Short for Net Promoter Score, it measures how likely your customers are to recommend you to their friends and peers. Over the years, it has become an industry standard for customer experience.
You can measure the NPS score for your business by asking a simple question such as “How likely are you to recommend our product or service to your friends?” on a scale from 0 to 10.
Based on the scores they give your business, your customers can be divided into:
Each group requires a specific strategy to improve their customer experience—even the Promoters, who are the happiest of the three.
To find out your Net Promoter Score, you’re best off approaching it with a multichannel customer experience strategy. In other words, you should run NPS surveys throughout the entire customer journey, including via emails, live chat, and your website.
So, what kind of NPS score is good enough? Once again, it largely depends on your industry. However, if your NPS is anywhere from 30-70, you have a good cause for celebration. With anything lower than that, look into making those passives and detractors happy.
NPS and CSAT are major predictors of how happy customers are and how likely they are to continue being your customers. But that’s not everything. Besides the overall satisfaction with your product or service, there are countless daily interactions your customers have with you. This is where the Customer Effort Score comes in as part of your customer experience strategy.
CES measures how difficult a task is to perform within your product or service. In other words, how much effort your customers have to put in to resolve their problem or achieve something with what you offer.
You can measure the CES:
When measured correctly, CES shows you whether you’re doing a good job with your UX, UI, timing, and your customer service team.
While NPS and CSAT can give you a global overview of your customer experience, CES is a superb way to measure smaller interactions with your brand. You can use Survicate and run CES surveys in a matter of a few clicks—on your website or mobile, among other channels.
Determining a good CES score is an art form. The standard customer effort score survey provides a range for customers from 1 to 7. However, many businesses don’t use this model, making it complicated to find averages. The standard customer effort score survey provides a range for customers from 1 to 7.
For those that use a 7-point system, a customer effort score that is 5-6 on average is a sign that you’re doing well in terms of customer experience. With anything below that, you might want to look into what is causing issues with a specific aspect of your product or service.
Imagine buying a brand new laptop and carrying it home, excited to try it out and start working (or watching Netflix). You fire it up and a blank screen appears. You call the customer service line to find out what is wrong, and they place your call on hold for 40 minutes before finally putting you through to a customer service manager. The result? You’re probably not a very happy camper, and chances of repeat business are reduced drastically.
A phone call is still one of the best ways for customers to get in touch with you and it should have a prominent place in your customer experience strategy. Despite new technologies such as VoIP, most businesses still make errors, with the worst one being long wait times.
According to research, the average wait time across industries is 46 seconds, which is not bad for a contact center. How long a customer is willing to wait depends on a lot of things but, once again, it’s the industry that dictates the average.
Don’t relax if your wait times are close to this figure because, ideally, you want your new customers not to wait at all. Another research states that two-thirds of customers are willing to wait up to two minutes before hanging up. Alarmingly enough, 13% state that they should not be forced to wait to talk to someone at all. Keep that in mind to gain a competitive edge.
There are plenty of ways to reduce long waiting times, including:
In any case, this metric needs constant monitoring because customers that are unhappy with the service you provide can soon flee to a competitor due to an oversight that is very easy to prevent.
It’s a long-standing fact that acquiring a new customer is more expensive than retaining an existing one. However, retention and customer loyalty are two different things. And while retention is good, having loyal customers is the ultimate goal that you can achieve with better customer satisfaction.
Loyal customers stick around longer, spend more, refer more people, give better feedback, and, in general, they’re just easier to please. However, going from a regular user to a loyal one is not something that happens overnight and building brand loyalty can be tough.
To improve your customer loyalty (and customer satisfaction), there are plenty of tactics you can use, regardless of the size of your business, including:
You might feel like forcing your customers to solve their problems is a bad thing. In reality, this is far from the truth. As it turns out, 40% of customers prefer self-service options, which is a handy tip for your customer service goals. This means they would rather figure out a problem on their own than have to talk to the customer support team or email someone and wait for a response.
This is only natural as modern technology allows customers to troubleshoot on their own rather than rely on someone else. There’s a sense of accomplishment for the customer and the satisfaction that they managed to save time.
Depending on the budget and time you have for your customer experience strategy, you can opt for one of the following:
These are just some basic ideas to get you started. The benefit of good customer self-service is not only that it makes your customers happier. At the same time, you’re reducing the burden on your customer support. These two factors combined mean lots of money saved that you can reinvest into providing a stellar customer experience.
In an age where it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to compete based on features and price, companies with the best customer experience are going to win the market. And given the amazing tech that you can use today, providing that fantastic customer experience has never been easier.
Looking to get off on the right foot? Sign up for a free trial of Survicate and start measuring your key customer experience metrics such as NPS, CSAT, CES, and many others. Grab your free trial today! Also, you can foster your decision making by checking our newst ranking of best customer satisfaction tools.
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