Customer Experience 2025: How Innovative Technology Can Increase Sales and Grow Market Share by Jill Spencer, Director of Intelligence at Proinsight Mystery Shopping.
Customer Experience is now the key battleground for consumers’ purses and wallets – 89% of companies surveyed by leading analyst Gartner said that CX is now their primary basis for competitive differentiation.
So how can organisations like yours find that elusive formula for success for their CX strategy?
A well-executed CX strategy not only enhances customer satisfaction but also significantly impacts brand loyalty, driving repeat business and long-term success.
You can’t rely on gut instinct as to what works or needs to change – you’ve got to be ready to invest in the right tools for the job, to understand exactly what you need to do to win and retain the custom of your target audience and grow market share.
Today, large sums of money are made available by business owners to invest in Customer Experience. However, in the age of Big Data, where there’s seemingly so much choice, budget holders are still unclear how to develop a clear and cost-effective strategy; clearly demonstrated by the Maritz CX Evolution Global Study which reported that 72% of CX professionals considered that their company’s CX programme was “not very effective”.
Understanding Customer Experience
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience (CX) refers to the overall perception and feeling that a customer has towards a business or brand, encompassing all interactions and touchpoints throughout their journey. It is a crucial aspect of building customer loyalty and driving business success. A positive customer experience can lead to increased customer satisfaction, repeat business, and ultimately, a larger market share. By focusing on delivering exceptional experiences at every stage of the customer journey, businesses can foster strong relationships with their existing customer base and attract new customers, thereby increasing sales and gaining market share.
What are your goals?
Setting a strategy starts with clarifying your goals. You want to give and get value through the customer experience, whether by delivering proactive customer service, increasing customer loyalty, or focusing on existing customers to drive repeat business.
Each goal requires a different tactical plan.
Where companies get things wrong is that they elect to spend all their resources on tracking the consequences of their customer experience, the outcomes, at the expense of determining the factors that cause those experiences as they unfold. They track Outcome Metrics, instead of focusing on Elemental Metrics.
Outcome Metrics
Outcome Metrics are great – nicely packaged, well promoted by the research community, and theoretically easy to understand across any given business. But they can’t pinpoint or fix the real issues; their role is to produce a figure that indicates the sum of the customer experience. “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” is a question that a customer will (hopefully) answer as a consequence of their experiences at your store/pub/gym.
The answer is the sum total of all the ‘micro’ experiences in the “buyers’ journey”. It doesn’t tell you what those experiences were and where you can improve - either in your training, presentation or other elements of your sales process.
Outcome metrics, whether Customer Satisfaction or Net Promoter Scores , certainly have their benefits, principally in enabling you to broadly track progress over time. The same applies to review platforms like tripadvisor. They’re indicators of general performance, but they’re too simplistic – and they don’t show you how to improve the design of your CX.
Elemental Metrics
The customer experience is complex. It consists of broad factors, such as connection and timing, which break down into smaller elements: smiles, frowns, word choices, answer clarity, and more.
Having talented employees who can effectively manage and improve these elemental metrics is crucial for delivering a superior customer experience.
These small elements comprise the customer experience – and they’re what you can actually change. To uncover gaps, opportunities and areas to improve, you need metrics that track your performance using specific criteria.
Example:
Imagine you own a sandwich shop and want to sell more sandwiches. A number of factors and elements are involved:
- Product: Do customers like the sandwiches? Is the bread soft? Is the filling tasty?
- Timing: How long do customers wait? Is there music in the background, or digital POS on the walls, so it doesn’t seem so long?
- Connection: Did the shop staff focus on each customer? Or were they busy talking to each other?
- Competition: Was a sandwich shop nearby offering free coffee with their sandwiches?
If you only look at your sales numbers, nothing will change. However, you’ll increase sales revenue if you improve the underlying factors like sandwich quality, wait time, and staff friendliness and attentiveness.
To get results, you must improve these underlying factors. And acknowledge that each factor is comprised of myriad elements. For example, Connection can depend on acknowledgement, eye contact, body language, tone of voice, level and quality of interaction and parting comment. Improve each element, and you’ll get better connection with your customers.
But simply measuring your “customer connection” by asking for customer feedback with one question won’t tell you what – or how – to improve.
Whilst you can’t improve your connection overnight, you can focus on one of the myriad elements with your team – such as improving tonality, or body language with customers – on an ongoing basis. And by using Mystery Shopping to measure the different elemental metrics, as they are being delivered by your team, you’ll start to understand the different checks and balances that need to be made to drive your CX forward.
Building Customer Loyalty
Strategies for Building Loyal Customers
Building customer loyalty is essential for businesses to gain a competitive edge and increase market share. Here are some strategies for building loyal customers:
- Personalize the customer experience: Tailor your interactions and offerings to meet the unique needs and preferences of each customer. Personalization can make customers feel valued and understood, enhancing their overall experience.
- Provide exceptional customer service: Go above and beyond to ensure that customers feel valued and supported throughout their journey. Exceptional service can turn a one-time buyer into a loyal customer.
- Offer loyalty programs and rewards: Implement programs that reward customers for their repeat business and loyalty. These programs can incentivize customers to return and make additional purchases.
- Gather and act on customer feedback: Collect feedback from customers and use it to make improvements and show that you value their opinions. Acting on feedback can help you address issues promptly and improve customer satisfaction.
- Foster strong customer relationships: Build relationships with customers through regular communication and engagement. Strong relationships can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat business.
- By implementing these strategies, businesses can create a loyal customer base that not only drives repeat business but also contributes to positive word-of-mouth marketing, further expanding their market share.
Attracting New Customers
How to Gain Market Share with New Customers
Attracting new customers is crucial for businesses to gain market share and drive growth. Here are some strategies for gaining market share with new customers:
- Identify and target your ideal customer: Understand your target market and tailor your marketing efforts to reach and engage with them. Knowing who your ideal customers are allows you to create more effective marketing campaigns.
- Develop innovative products and services: Offer unique and innovative solutions that meet the needs and preferences of your target market. Innovation can set your business apart from competitors and attract new customers.
- Utilize effective marketing channels: Use a combination of marketing channels, such as social media, content marketing, and paid advertising, to reach and engage with new customers. Diversifying your marketing efforts can help you reach a broader audience.
- Provide exceptional customer experiences: Ensure that new customers have a positive experience with your business, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. A great first impression can turn new customers into repeat customers.
- Encourage word-of-mouth marketing: Encourage happy customers to share their experiences with others, driving referrals and increasing market share. Word-of-mouth marketing can be a powerful tool for attracting new customers.
By focusing on these strategies, businesses can attract new customers, increase sales, and grow their market share.
The Bottom Line
To maximise your ROI from customer experience, the choice must be a strategy that balances out Elemental and Outcome Metrics – to stop reliance on outcome metrics alone and embrace complexity by measuring and improving elemental metrics.
This will be achieved by implementing a programme of regular Mystery Shopping across your estate and topping this up with an annual or bi-annual customer satisfaction survey to validate the improvements to the customer experience that have been made.
