What is Customer Experience and why is it important?

The Customer Experience is an incredibly important part of a business, but it's still not widely understood. In fact, many companies are failing to prioritise their most valuable assets - their customers. That’s why we’ve written this blog, to show why you should focus on your Customer Experience and how it can accelerate your success. 

What is Customer Experience?

The perception your customers have of your brand throughout the buyer's journey is known as Customer Experience (CX). That means everything from the moment they discover your brand, right through to a purchase or customer service interaction. Customer Experience encompasses how your brand makes them feel, how easy it is for them to interact with you, and how personalised your communication with them is. 

If your customers find your brand appealing and easy to deal with, your Customer Experience will be much higher than if there are multiple sticking points for them. If you want to optimise your Customer Experience you’ll need to ensure your customers can find what they need easily, have the best possible support for any queries and are treated in a way that suits them. 

Why is Customer Experience important?

Where businesses used to have control over the market, customers increasingly hold that power. With technological advances, customers can now find resources and make informed decisions for themselves, so businesses need to nurture their customers before they go elsewhere. To retain loyal customers and encourage repeat purchases, businesses need to be making their Customer Experience as enjoyable, natural and stress-free as possible. 

Also, if you can provide a fantastic Customer Experience, your customers are more likely to advocate for your brand. That means you’ll have more organic exposure without having to increase your marketing efforts. 

Did you know that Customer Experience is a billion-dollar global industry? In fact, in 2022, it’s expected to reach $640 billion USD. With up to 90% of buyers willing to pay more for a good customer experience, it’s no wonder companies are investing in this booming industry. It’s more important than ever to have a customer-focused approach to business because the happier customers are, the more likely they are to remain loyal, promote to others and make repeat purchases. 

How to track Customer Experience

Tracking Customer Experience might seem daunting, but once you know the best metrics to track, it gets a lot easier. Customer Experience is subjective, but that’s why many businesses choose to track quantifiable metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS). The idea of these metrics is that they indicate how happy customers are throughout their experience with a brand so that the brand can understand how they’re feeling at any given point. 

Net Promoter Scores (NPS)

A Net Promoter Score survey asks a customer how likely they are to recommend a brand to someone else. The theory of an NPS is that it can imply how a customer feels about a brand, whether positive or negative. Unfortunately, NPS is often not as valuable as businesses might think because they only give a general score for the entire buyer's journey. If you do decide to use an NPS survey, be sure to include a follow-up question with an opportunity for customers to explain their scores. This gives you a chance to do something proactive with the score, rather than falling into the trap of data for the sake of data. 

Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT)

A Customer Satisfaction Score asks customers to give direct, relevant and valuable feedback about their experience with a brand. Unlike an NPS, the CSAT metric is designed to give businesses the specific information they need to improve their Customer Experience. We recommend using CSAT surveys because they provide you with the nitty-gritty details of your customer’s experience throughout the entire buyer’s journey. To get started, check out these tips on how to write effective CSAT questions, and these top 5 CSAT platforms. 

Customer Effort Scores (CES)

Perhaps one of the most important Customer Experience metrics is the Customer Effort Score (CES). That’s because a CES measures how easy it is for a customer to interact with a brand and, therefore, how likely they are to continue the relationship. Now that customers hold the power, they can choose to leave a brand as soon as it gets too difficult to get what they need. That means it’s important to set your business up so that there are no frustrating glitches, long wait times or unclear information to put customers off. You can learn more about how to write good Customer Effort Surveys here, including example questions and formatting ideas to encourage a higher response rate. 

Managing Customer Experience and feedback

If you want to improve the experience of your customers, collecting and analysing their feedback is critical. As you can see, there is a range of metrics you can track and fortunately, there are also a wide variety of helpful tools to support you. When managing your customer feedback, it’s important to keep it organised, measurable, and easy to understand. That’s what customer feedback management software like Survey Monkey or Ask Nicely is designed to do for you so that you can focus on improving your business. 

Feedback should be a constructive resource for business, not another time drain, so it’s important to have the right tools to set you up for success. To help you find the best system for your customer feedback, check out this list of management platforms and our top 10 recommendations. 

Review Tui’s new customer feedback platform 

With all of that in mind, Review Tui saw there was a need for customisable feedback management in New Zealand, and we decided to meet that need. That’s why we’ve developed an intuitive, easy-to-use software that makes it easy to build surveys, get real-time reporting and analyse customer insights all in one place. 

We’re excited to launch our platform later this year, so keep an eye out for updates and sign up to be the first to know all about it. You’ll get invite-only access and expert advice to kickstart your customer feedback strategy so that your business can thrive. We can’t wait to share it with you, and we know it will give you the power to embrace customers' input and watch your profits grow as a result.