The benefits of improving customer experience in your business

Anna Oom |September 18 2023 | 9 min

With the right design and implementation, an improved customer experience can greatly impact your business and organization. But you might ask yourself: Is it worth allocating time and resources to ensure my customers have a good experience? In this article, we’ll investigate the benefits of customer experience and why investing in it is a must for businesses across markets.

A New Customer: The Prosumer

Before tackling any customer experience strategy, you need to know your customer. Partly due to the introduction of technology into practically every area of our daily lives, there is no doubt that we find ourselves in a constantly changing environment. The profile and needs of your customers are no exception. There is a new digital customer who is very well informed, active across multiple channels, and demanding, and can influence other consumers using the Internet and social media. This new customer, the prosumer, requires special attention and a highly satisfying experience. If we win these prosumers over, meet and exceed their expectations, and even surprise them, we will have a significant voice in the "word-of-mouth" system. Moreover, another change we have noticed is that the image the brand sells is not particularly important to customers anymore when it comes to making a purchase decision. What is more important to them is the opinion of other consumers with similar tastes.

The Benefits of a Customer Experience that is Unique, Flexible, and Memorable

Making the prosumers happy and ensuring that their experience with your business or organization is unique and worth remembering is just the first, albeit essential, step toward creating a customer experience that impacts your overall business. Let's explore some advantages of introducing techniques that improve customer experience and set the foundation for customer experience management.

Increase Sales with Customer Loyalty and Retention

Undoubtedly, a customer who is happy and satisfied with the service and received personalized treatment adapted to their needs is a customer who most likely returns, compared to one who felt ignored or had an unpleasant customer experience. A customer who has a good experience is also willing to buy more or try other products and services, resulting in higher chances of cross-selling.

Investing in customer experience and customer journey management and actively working on improving it can open up the opportunity to increase your profitability. You can charge a higher price than the competition for a high-quality service or product without the risk of losing the customer because the customer will value the overall experience and not just the price.

Increase the Number of Customers

In light of our previous comments, customers tend to trust the experience of other consumers more than the image the brand conveys, the prosumers are powerful voices and spokespersons for your business. They are the ultimate appeal to authority, allowing you to reach other prospects and convert them into customers. Prosumers can help you through word-of-mouth, which is one of the more difficult and powerful marketing activities to drive sales and is a marketing activity out of your control but can be positively affected by your ability to provide excellent customer experiences.

The benefit of good customer experience is that it generates a positive force in all your efforts to increase sales and attract new customers, as it acts as a confirmation that you are the best provider on the market and stay true to your marketing claims.

Improve the Image and Reputation of Your Brand

What better marketing strategy exists than the good words of your happy customers? There is no better marketing campaign than your satisfied customers and them confirming that your value-generating claims in your marketing messages are actually true. Thanks to customers’ ability to influence other prospecting customers in real life and on social media, prospects will learn about how good your services are and how satisfied your current customers are from interacting with your business.

If a company or organization offers bad service or fails to provide a good customer experience, they will probably struggle to convince prospects to become new customers. Once a customer has had a bad experience, they would most likely not return. Investing in improving customer experience will not only satisfy your customers but will help strengthen your brand and market position, too.

Improve Resource Utilization and Reduce Operational Costs

There is a growing trend toward automating certain processes and providing customers with self-service options, such as queue management systems or appointment booking systems, available both on-premises and digitally. These methods enable better utilization of available personnel resources, as staff do not need to answer questions or perform easy, time-consuming tasks for customers that can easily be provided with technical solutions. Instead, they can devote all of their time to helping customers with more complex tasks and supporting them in their customer journey. Improving how your resources are used, complementing staff with technical solutions that ease their workload and allow them to focus on customer care, reduces your operational costs, increases staff efficiency, and enhances customer experience simultaneously.

Reduce Customer Complaints

When customers are satisfied, and the quality of service is high, the number of customer complaints decreases, which has a great positive impact on the financials of a business. When customer complaints decrease, the amount of staff resources needed to handle such tasks and follow up with the processes of support requests is reduced.

Better Work Environment and Employee Identification with Your Brand

A better customer experience leads to satisfied customers, which reduces the risk of angry customers and all the exhaustion and pressure that entails for the worker. Instead, the chances of your staff receiving positive feedback and appreciation from your customers increase, resulting in an enhanced employee experience and improved work environment. One of the keys to a good customer experience is the interconnection between all the departments and people involved at the various points of the customer journey who work together to achieve a satisfactory experience. Having this common goal increases your employees' identification with your brand and its goals and increases the chances of achieving improved customer experience.

There is a chance that applying customer experience methods will create changes that affect the habits and practices of your company. Although in view of the benefits customer experience can produce, it is a valuable option, to say the least.

If you are interested in how technology can help you manage your customer journeys and improve customer experience and efficiency, check out our queue management guide.