Customer experience is the impression customers have of a brand as a whole throughout all aspects of the buying and service journey. The customer experience creates their view of a company and impacts factors related to the bottom-line including revenue, customer growth and retention.
In business, the primary touchpoints that create the customer experience are people, product, service and brand image.
When you’ve been a customer, have you ever been blown away by the performance of a product or service? Have you been delighted by the attention an account manager or customer support rep provided to help solve your problem? These are general examples of factors at play when a company creates a great customer experience, and without this experience, businesses lose customers.
Here are a few customer experience statistics to note:
- Customer experience is set to be the number one brand differentiator in 2020(and beyond).
- One out of three customers will leave a brand they’ve been loyal to after just one bad experience.
- Price isn’t as much of a factor as experience. Customers will pay a price premium of up to 13%simply to receive a great customer experience.
- 49% of buyersmade impulse purchases after receiving a more personalized customer experience.
- Customers that rate companies with a high customer experience score will spend 140% more and remain loyal for up to 6 years.
Customer Service or Customer Experience?
You may be asking yourself if customer service is part of the customer experience. Or is customer experience what happens when someone receives customer service? Are they the same thing?
Customer service is definitely a more familiar term — it’s also the more narrowly scoped of the two. It requires that your team possess a particular set of skills, including adaptation, time management, communication, attentiveness, relationship, persuasiveness and tenacity, so they provide the answers and assistance your customer needs. Customer service is the human element in the customer journey and the voice your customer recognizes as a trusted representation of the organization.
How to Create a Great Customer Experience
A remarkable experience for your customers is critical to the sustained growth of any business. It promotes loyalty, helps businesses retain customers, and encourages brand awareness. Customer experience refers to the customer journey across the organization—it includes every interaction between the customer and involves all the ways the business interacts with a customer.
Primary Touchpoints of Customer Experience
- Customer Service: This includes customer support, customer success; the customer interaction with your team
- Product or Service: This is the product/service itself; how it works and the engagement with the customer
- Brand Design: This is the brand touchpoint; the marketing and message your brand creates for your customer
While these three areas are quite distinct, there are no hard lines between them. All of the pieces combine and work together to make up the customer experience. The terms “customer service” and “customer experience” are often confused or used interchangeably. They’re not the same thing, but they are related.
The difference between customer service and customer experience is that while customer service is one piece of the puzzle — focused on human interaction and directly supporting customers — customer experience is the sum of the entire customer journey with your business.
At England Logistics, we focus on four cornerstones of the customer-first strategy. These four cornerstones create quality customer interactions that ensure each customer receives a valuable experience as we demonstrate a clear investment in customer needs.
The Four Cornerstones of a Customer-First Strategy
- Quality – Follow and implement standards in processes and procedures that save customers time
- Trusted– Be a strategic partner invested in customer success
- Consistent – Be a valuable resource customers can rely on
- Flexible – Present customers with valuable solutions customized to their business
What is a Great Customer Experience?
Great customer experience is built on the cornerstones of a customer-first strategy that demonstrates a clear investment in every experience with the customer. We are passionate about the success of our customers and empower people to lead in delivering world-class customer experience and customer service. An outstanding customer experience keeps customers coming back while spreading the word about their encounter with your company.
One of the ways to make sure your customers are completely satisfied is to give your employees the resources and authority to deliver on the promise of excellent service. Customers want to deal with one person, not three different people. This is very important when a customer has an issue. Empowering your employees to do what’s best for the customer will avoid negative experiences.
In today’s highly competitive landscape, anything less than an exceptional customer experience will lessen a business’s chance to succeed. A stellar customer experience will not only keep your customers coming back for more, but it will also allow you to stand out from the competition. Providing a reliable, consistent experiences will always keep customers coming back for more.
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About England Logistics
England Logistics offers a vast portfolio of non-asset based transportation solutions including full truckload services, intermodal, dry and temp controlled LTL, parcel, and complete supply chain management. The company is recognized among the “50 Best Companies to Sell For” by Selling Power magazine and “Training Top 125” by Training magazine. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT, the company also has offices in Atlanta, GA; Detroit, MI; Greeley, CO; Ogden, UT; and Portland, OR. For more information visit www.englandlogistics.com.