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It sounds like a good idea. Striving to deliver great customer experiences intuitively seems like smart business, doesn’t it?
Intuition, unfortunately, doesn’t necessarily pay the bills!
So should you invest money in programs designed to improve the engagement and loyalty of your customers? If so, where should you invest for the greatest return? One needs only to look at the methodology and outcomes of Forrester Research.
Forrester has developed an annual benchmarking survey which they call the Forrester Customer Experience Index. That survey is provided to a wide swath of consumers asking them about the nature of experiences they’ve had with companies across the industry. The survey looks at three key elements of customer experience excellence.
The degree to which customers feel a company:
Meet their Needs
Offers Ease
Makes the Experience Enjoyable
Forrester then merges data from those three aspects and calculates a singular Customer Experience Index score for every company. Overall results suggest that most companies are receiving very mediocre scores on the index.
Forrester has actually calculated a performance level which they call “the green line of goodness.” That line differentiates between sub-par performance and excellent customer experiences. Companies who perform above the green line of goodness enjoy a number of remarkable financial outcomes and customer relationship benefits. By asking loyalty questions and researching the financial performance of those above and below the green line of goodness, Forrester finds that:
The higher the Customer Experience Index score, the more likely a customer will consider another purchase or recommend a friend or family member to a business.
The lower the Customer Experience Index score, the more likely a customer will consider switching to another brand.
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Modeling the business value of higher Customer Experience Index scores, Forrester estimates millions of dollars in annual incremental revenue for “any company in any category” they survey.
In industries like hotels and wireless service, the annual incremental revenue boost is calculated as “BILLIONS” of dollars.
If your customers were asked would you find your business above Forrester’s “Green Line of Goodness?”
In any case, it pays to invest in efforts to more effectively meet your customers’ needs in a manner that makes it as easy as possible for them. All the while you should also be looking for opportunities to enhance the pleasurableness of your experience.
Customer experience is not only good business…it is A MAJOR source of profits and sustainability in a sea of similar products often delivered by competitors who are only providing marginal experiences.