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Driving growth through CX

As we navigate a post-Covid-19 world riddled with shortages, delays, disruptions, and closures, customer-centricity will serve as a lead value driver. Now is the time for businesses to revisit their strategic models in an age where customer loyalty is fundamental in the pursuit of profit.

With research from

Qualtrics XM

showing that investing in CX initiatives has the potential to increase revenue by 70% within 36 months, it is crucial that businesses start to see customer service as a profit centre. Here are five key steps that will set organisations on the right path towards greater CX that makes a positive impact on the bottom line.

1. Tailor your approach

Customers want to feel remembered, recognised and receive recommendations that are accurate and relevant to their previous purchases and searches. Personalisation is important in both securing new sales and upselling. Studies have shown that

80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences

.
These findings show that customers still desire the personal relationships of the offline, face-to-face world. Businesses need to respond and re-create these experiences in the online world.

2. Tap into the desire for convenience

Maximising the convenience offered to consumers is a powerful driver of CX. In fact,

PwC research

found that 43% of all consumers would pay more for greater convenience; and 42% would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience, which are both by-products of creating a customised customer journey.

Delivering the right information at the right time, on the right platform may just make the difference between a flourishing and stagnating business. Convenience-optimising technology that was once cutting-edge and hardly affordable has now become mainstream and enables businesses to capitalise on this expectation of easy interactions at scale.

3. Improve the accuracy of predictions

Companies must evaluate all the intersection points of a customer’s journey to truly build a rich history that enables them to predict future buying trends, make relevant suggestions, and create a uniquely personal experience. This involves studying a potential customer’s first experience on the company website, analysing browsing history and tendencies, and reviewing the purchasing experience itself, such as the placing and receiving of orders.

By combining full correspondence history including any emails, texts, live chats, and simply anything and everything that customers have experienced when interacting with any part of the business, a thorough understanding of the customer’s needs, preferences, and most plausible future behaviour can be surfaced.

4. Let technology do the work

AI offers organisations an abundance of opportunities to harness vast amounts of data, making it more accessible and actionable to all business users. Gone are the days of silos and scattered data, too big or difficult to make sense of.

With AI, the manual work of sorting, categorising, observing, and deciding is taken care of and customer-facing teams can focus on strategic goals rather than tactical, time-consuming tasks like pulling customer lists. In

Gartner’s September 2020 survey of business and IT professionals

, 24% said their organisation invested more into AI since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic – showing huge progress within just 6 months. As the AI and automation uptake accelerate the race is on to keep up with competitors and not fall behind.

5. Change with customer feedback

CX is an ongoing relationship and a key part of ensuring success is to listen and implement customer feedback into action plans to improve service.

Gartner

found that although 95% of companies have collected feedback from their customers for years, only about 10% use these suggestions to change their processes and improve CX. 

Instead of wasting this opportunity, companies need to merge the desires of their customers with the overall business strategy. This can be achieved by consolidating direct, indirect, and inferred customer feedback received through numerous intersection channels, so customer concerns are resolved in real-time. If various teams and areas of the business interact with customers, knowledge-sharing programs can be an effective way to remove departmental barriers and improve customer-facing processes.

Invest in your customer

While the correlation between customer loyalty and profit continues to increase as the world further digitalises, companies that invest in tactics and technologies that bring them closer to their customers can unlock steady revenue growth. Although the inclusion of personalisation and investment in technology is vital, companies must be willing to listen to customer feedback, or risk losing business.

It is more important than ever to retain customers to ensure they play a part in a company’s growth, instead of its competitors. Understanding that intelligent technology is a key enabler in creating an impactful CX will allow businesses to reap the benefits of having satisfied, long-term customers.


Want to learn more about improving your CX?

Why not check out Propolis, our exclusive community for B2B marketers to share insights, learn from industry leading marketers, and access our best content. Propolis includes a Hive (group) specially dedicated to CX.


Check out Propolis now!

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