Poor customer experiences can account for major losses in revenue for brands that neglect to satisfy consumers. In fact, recent research shows that, on average, companies lose over $83 billion dollars every year because people, on some level, simply did not have a positive customer experience. It is important to understand that successful marketing is more than only analyzing a few key metrics and then running a program on autopilot.
What happens after a program is launched is just as important. Tuesday’s Loyalty360 webinar, titled “Why Marketers Should Focus on CX and Personalized Engagement Across the Customer Lifecycle,” focused on how marketers can champion customer experiences and do so in a consistent and enduring fashion.
During this session presented by Genesys, Lindsay Frazier, Director of Offer Management and Outbound Engagement, and Mike Romano, VP of Outbound Engagement, provided a host of deep insights and emphasized the need for markers to seize opportunities to personalize interactions at all points of the customer lifecycle.
Today many customer experiences are fragmented and Genesys was quick to note that this can lead to frustration. This often includes many different departmental silos attempting to engage in disparate outbound communications to customers that are already using multiple channels. It can all become overly complex and confusing very quickly. And this frustration can lead to more than just the loss of an immediate sale. Poor word of mouth, lost future sales, and even diminished credibility are all potential dangers.
“We are putting up road blocks that lead to customer frustration,” said Frazier. “And if one customer has had a bad customer experience it is likely that others are going to as well.”
A refocused top down business approach that reemphasizes the customer experience is key.
“The CMO of 2015 must own the most important driver of business success -- the customer experience -- and represent the customer’s perspective in corporate strategy,” Frazier continued.
Great customer experiences are the new standard that marketers must meet. In the past, most brands used price, product, and customer experience to differentiate a brand. However, by next year, almost 90% of brands plan to remain competitive primarily based on customer experience. They also plan to focus more on the personalized customer journey, which has been proven to result in an almost 20% increase in revenue and customer satisfaction levels.
But how is this to be achieved?
Frazier and Romano offered five critical areas to focus on.
1) Preference Management and Personalization
Frazier and Romano stated that more than half of US consumers actually spend more money when cross-channel personalization is in effect. To bring increased levels of personalization, they recommend capturing opt-in and offer choices for channel frequency, and then relying on these preferences during campaigns. Modifications and adjustments to these campaigns can then be made as the marketing campaigns progress.
2) Contact Center Customer Experience
This includes a range of best practices to build positive customer experiences for when consumers call into a brand’s call center after a marketing campaign. It also includes reviewing IVR experiences and closing the feedback loop.
3) Tailored Web and Mobile Experiences
Leveraging multi-channel customer experiences is now crucial and Frazier and Romano stressed the need for personalized content and promotions across every platform. This not only includes websites, mobile sites, smartphone apps, but also in physical store locations and contact centers.
4) Abandoned Transactions and Post Sale Follow-up
This topic focused on ways to mitigate the likelihood that consumers will abandon transactions. Frazier and Romano recommend implementing proactive chat features on websites, enhancing abandoned cart and sale strategies, and using NPS closed loop surveys.
5) Mobile for Location and Care
Frazier and Romano noted that 89% of consumers that receive mobile location-based brand marketing are very likely to respond at some level. This means that mobile engaged customers are often the brand’s highest value customers. Therefore, it is imperative that brands use all available tactics to personalize marketing based on location by using services such as Push, Passbook, and Beacon.
Orchestrating an effortless and seamlessly personalized customer journey across all channels should be the goal for brands today. This can create the great customer experiences that consumers now demand. And once brands deliver, this can ultimately result in improved sales conversions, increased customer loyalty, and more business for you.