The Impact of Customer Experience on Sales

The customer comes first. Is it a cliche, or the single time-tested key to growing any business?  It shouldn’t be a secret that the impact of customer experience is huge. Let’s talk about customer experience, what it is, and how your company can benefit from it!

What Is Customer Experience?

Customer experience is simple enough to define, it’s the experience your customers get when they step foot in, call, receive services, or otherwise interact with your business.

Customer experience is controlled by all staff and management that are engaged in production and customer service. This includes customer communication, wait times for service, quality of the product or service received, and the overall feeling the customer walks away with.

By far, the most important part of customer experience is that it’s relevant in every customer interaction. Every customer may not remember exactly what happened when they did business with you, but they will remember the general impression they got, and that’s what’s most important.

Why should you care as long as they pay you? Well, promoting the right customer experience brings a lot of benefits back to your business. Let’s talk about that.

The Impact Of Customer Experience On Business: Marketing Benefits

The number one benefit of facilitating a great customer experience is word-of-mouth advertising. Not only is it a free marketing tool (and who doesn’t love the word “free”?!), but it may also be the most effective. In fact, studies have shown that that word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertising, which makes sense.

Think about it, you see ads everywhere you go. While you may have a keen eye for spotting them or ignoring them, you probably have no idea which ones to really trust.

However, if your best friend or your coworker tells you they tried out this new sandwich shop down the street, and they give a raving review about the food and the customer service, your stomach is about to start growling and you’ll be heading down the street come lunchtime!

Customer Retention

One of the most important parts of any company is getting customers, that’s the most basic principle in business. However, keeping customers is just as important.  Keeping your customers absolutely pays off. It is 6 to 7 times more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. The best way to do this is by creating the right customer experience.

Customer Benefits

While we know that when the customer benefits, your business will benefit, let’s not forget that first part. The reward to your customers should be a benefit itself.

Yes, if you focus on the customer having a great experience, the benefits really are mutual. This helps with networking, meeting new people, and building relationships with your most loyal customers.

However, if we stop focusing on the benefits to our business and really focus on the benefit to the customer, that mindset will really have an effect on the experience. Especially if it’s spread throughout the staff. There are other ways to improve your company’s customer experience, but you should think of this as number one.

How Can I Improve My Company’s Customer Experience?

There are some simple steps you can take to improve your customer experience, and it starts with the staff. You don’t want to develop the reputation that your business is 50/50, and you might get a bad experience depending on who answers the phone.

Take some time to do a training with your staff and go over all the best practices for your customers’ benefits. Go over the basic “dos and don’ts”, as well as polite phrases you would like them to say.

Giving them the tools to handle difficult situations with customers will ensure the benefit of everyone involved. Simply taking steps to improve the culture at the company will have a huge effect on customer relations.

Also, remember the two golden rules: the customer comes first and every customer interaction counts.

This is true no matter how difficult the customer is, no matter how often you see them, and no matter what they are buying. Fostering a great customer experience must be down the line, or you may as well not even try.

You can also hire a customer experience specialist to help you with direct customer relations, training your management and staff, and a lot more. There are even affordable packages for customer management out there. You’d be surprised what some outside help could do for your business.

Build Your Customer Experience Today!

Now that you understand the impact of customer experience on business, why wait? There’s so much you can do to improve, no matter how advanced your business may already be. There is always room for improvement.

Need a hand to figure out the best practices for your business? Check out our business consulting services and reach out today!

Roman Kucak, CEO