Why Is Customer Experience so Important in 2023?

For many decades, getting there first and having an extensive experience in the market was the holy grail of success. That's why many businesses still proudly display the year their company was founded alongside their logo. That’s because having experience at something was considered directly proportional to the quality your business could deliver.

Experience is still the holy grail of business success. Only now, the scale is tipped in favor of customer experiences. While quality is still essential, your consumer experience during and after the sale is now equally, if not more, significant. Consumers worldwide are shifting from making buying decisions based on fulfilling a need to actively searching for positive, unique, and personalized experiences.

The brands striving to deliver both are leading any industry, which is no coincidence. Take Starbucks, for example. Coffee can easily be brewed at home or office. On paper, it makes better sense since it would cost us less and be faster than waiting in line.

Then why are most of us stopping at our local Starbucks on our way to work every day to spend from $3-8 on a drink? Because they value the experience of getting coffee and a muffin from a café where they call them by name.

The dynamics of customer experience are changing. It’s time for brands to re-imagine their approach and adopt better practices for serving their consumers.

Thankfully, this growing demand for exceptional customer experiences has been linear with advancements in the tools that help brands deliver excellent customer service. With the help of data and AI, developing better consumer support tactics is easier than ever before.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience is how your clients relate to your brand. A customer's experience isn't one isolated event. It represents their entire journey and relationship with your company, from the first introduction to them scrolling the website to finally completing a purchase. This experience then continues as they keep using your product or service.

Each point of contact between customers and your brand comes together to make up their experience as a whole. In other words, all direct or indirect elements influencing your consumer’s perception of your brand make up their experience. These customer experiences also need to align with your brand vision and the values you strive for as a corporation.

Your customer’s perception of quality, i.e. the value they assign to services and goods, and all the services around the products are the two main factors in customer experience. Tilting the odds in your favor is simply a matter of understanding these individual factors.

Understanding the needs of the customer is the foundation of excellent customer service. Delivering an outstanding customer experience includes continuously seeking to improve the customer’s journey throughout your sales funnel.

Consistency and dependability are critical here to harness a sense of stability. When necessary, this can entail directing clients to start a customer support conversation to resolve issues.

5 Reasons why customer experience is vital for any business

The surge in e-commerce has changed the ecosystem of businesses worldwide. Gone are the days when the corner store was the only option for most customers. Not having something available from your local store simply meant doing without it.

Today’s consumer has tons of options from all around the world. They can order anything from almost any part of the globe with free shipping! This evolution in how we shop has increased the value consumers assign to their experiences with the products. Making “Experience Economy” the chic new ingredient in the fundamental recipe of success for any business.

Experiential retail is a concept built on that idea. Here are five reasons why delivering an outstanding customer experience translates to success for any brand:

When customers are treated better, they become your brand ambassadors

Your buyer's experience with your brand rarely stays limited to just them. 40% of consumers state product reviews as the main reason they shop from Amazon. Today’s consumer is vocal about their experiences, which also influences other customers' buying decisions.

Think of investing in providing a great customer experience as part of your marketing strategy. That’s because word of mouth is pivotal in introducing your brand to new client bases. Loyal patrons of your brand that appreciate the positive experience they had with you can double up as brand ambassadors.

On the flip side of this coin, negative customer experiences can have an even more substantial impact on your brand image and sales. It takes just one bad experience with a brand for most consumers to switch to a competing brand permanently.

Brands that focus on customer experience retain more buyers

Customer retention is more important, economical, and generates a greater return on investment than acquiring new customers. Making customer retention a key element in the success of any thriving company. One of the best practices to increase customer retention is enhancing the experiential value you provide to buyers.

Positive experiences make for loyal customers. And, in the long-run, loyal buyers are expected to be worth ten times more than they spend on their first purchase.

Great customer experience encourages more spending

When was the last time you had to return an item to the store? How smooth was the process, and how did the company facilitate you? If that experience were hassle-free, you would feel more confident in making big-ticket purchases from this store in the future. But if the return process made you jump through multiple hoops, would you be taking your business there in the future?

Exceptional customer experiences boost your brand's CLV (Customer lifetime value) rate. That’s even more important now that 84% of buyers don’t trust advertisements as much as they used to.

Most customers don’t spend much on brands where they didn’t have a good experience. Establishing a relationship with your brand that buyers trust will keep bringing back patrons for more.

Customer experience makes you stand out

What differentiates you from your competition? If the brand CEO is asked that, they might say the quality of their products and attention to detail. But if a buyer is asked the same question, they will value their experience with your brand more than the quality of your product or the efficiency of the services rendered.

How were they greeted when entering your store? How attentive was the staff when they had questions? Did your company’s masonry workers clean up the debris after installing new tiles? How you make a customer feel and their experience of purchasing from your brand are how a consumer differentiates between you and the brand next to you.

Consumers are willing to pay a higher price for great buying experiences

The dynamics of what consumers value most are undergoing an evolution. About thirty years ago, consumers priced quality and got great value in return for their money. Today, most consumers rate the experience of purchasing something higher than the quality of their purchase. More than 86% are willing to pay the premium price for that luxury experience as well.

The way a customer experiences your brand can also prompt them to make more spurge-of-the-moment purchases. About 49% of buyers buy something from a brand even if they didn’t plan to just because they are attracted by a great customer experience.

Our top 5 tips for creating an excellent customer experience

The experience you provide to consumers isn’t tangible. It's build-up, layer by layer, whenever your buyer comes into contact with your brand. Improving the experiential value you provide will require you to evaluate the many elements that make up your sales and after-sales funnel. Here are five ways you can create better experiences for your customers:

Take a proactive approach to improve your brand-customer relationship

Every action we take is active or passive. You can wait for pitfalls in your sales funnel to become more prominent before attempting to fix them, but chances are that it will be too late by then. The best approach is to work towards identifying any trouble spots before a customer makes a complaint, which costs you lost business.

You can do that by collecting data to discover your brand's strengths, flaws, and elements that could be improved. Being clear about the type of experience consumers can expect from your brand is also a great way to set your brand up for success.

Change your communication avenues

Adhering to outdated practices is one of the worst things you can do regarding customer experience. One such practice is limiting yourself to a single channel of communication. Especially when it comes to resolving complaints and queries, which can cause frustration and loss of business.

Adopt an omnichannel strategy to support your customers whatever channel they use. For example, 68% of customers report videos as their preferred source of information when troubleshooting any product problem. Make sure you offer your buyers omnichannel purchasing and communication frontiers.

Take a data-driven approach

The single best practice for enhancing your customer experience is using data and numbers to guide your business strategies. Going off gut feeling alone or relying on the experience of a small customer pool won't get you anywhere.

Data collected from different sources is an asset that can help improve the experience consumers have with your company. According to this report, most companies are underutilizing the power of data and analytics.

Data-driven statistics help guide your efforts towards enhancing customer experience. They give you a detailed insight into different elements that make up your buying experience. These insights help identify your customer’s needs and preferences. Empowering you with the know-how of how you can deliver what they expect from your brand.

Spend more on understanding your customer demographics

Every brand aims to magnetize a different customer group. To be effective in creating a superior customer experience, you should focus on your target customers and work to satisfy them. Then why not invest in understanding your customers better and researching what unique customer experience they value most?

Similarly, customer preferences may differ from one geographical location to the other. Personalizing your approach is a great practice to improve consumer experiences. Gaining a better understanding of the community your aim to get business from is a worthy investment of your time and resources.

Deliver more than just goods or services

Most brands give extreme importance to the product or service they sell. After all, what you sell certainly holds center stage in your business. But your competing companies will most likely offer that same product or service.

Giving the same importance to excellent customer service as you give to the research and development of products is a great business practice. The delivery of your product or service to your consumer and every step in between needs to hold positive experiences for your end-consumer.

5 Ways Layerise can help you improve your customer’s experience

Layerise is devoted to helping brands drive up consumer loyalty and revenue in the long run by leveraging the power of data in their favor. Here are some ways Layerise leverages the power of analytics to help you understand and deliver the best customer experiences:

Collecting consumer data

With Layerise collecting data about your customers has never been easier. With Layerise, you can get an in-depth view of your customers based on geographical, demographical, preference, and behavioral variables.

Understand what your customers do and track their satisfaction. This will help you better understand your customers to design an onboarding experience that is tailored to them.

Gathering feedback to improve the experience

The true test of any company’s customer experience is its approach to resolving customer complaints. Complaints are a natural part of doing business; how you tackle a frustrated, unhappy customer makes all the difference.

Layerise doesn’t just help you resolve complaints. It also helps you understand why your consumer is unhappy and what can be done to reduce such experiences. Insight like that helps you improve customer experience across the board.

Creating a superior onboarding experience

Layerise can help your brand improve its onboarding process. Once customers have received the product they simply scan a QR code on the packaging or directly on your product and they can quickly register their product ownership. When the customer scans the QR code and registers, all the information provided will automatically personalize the experience, in terms of notifications, language, videos, etc.

During the registration, the customer will need to add the phone number. That way, you will unlock the possibility to communicate with them through SMSs and create SMS marketing campaigns.

Makes your consumer feel heard and valued

Your customer’s experience with your brand doesn't end with the sale. Adopting customer registration best practices can streamline the after-sales process and customer support. Layerise helps resolve customer complaints and address any queries they might have quickly and effectively.

Thanks to Layerise Virtual Assistant you can provide the best post-sale experience. The Virtual Assistant will help your customers in case of problems with the usage of the product. Any Assistant you create can be easily downloaded to a phone or any other device supporting PWA's. Any update or change will be automatically pushed to your customer's device without any required actions.

Leverages the power of media to enhance the experience

Layerise uses different mediums to help your customer familiarize themselves with your product and help enhance their experience with your brand.

With Layerise you can create an excellent setup guide, using videos and animations to help your customers learn how to use your products. It is important to make the setup process as easy and intuitive as possible. The customer should be able to start using the product as soon as possible without wasting too much time.

Happy customers can do so much more for your brand and bottom line! Layerise is here to support your brand throughout its journey. Give it a try yourself by checking out our website or booking a demo today.