11Mar2024
In recent times, the discussion around customer experience has reached new, interesting levels. The question is no longer about whether or not customer experience is a key enabler for business success or whether business leaders need to prioritise that on their agenda. Instead, the discussion today is all about how to make customer experience into a competitive advantage. The topic has also reached the board rooms as one of the topics all smart, future-focused boards are occupied with.
As the Chief Customer Experience Officer of Nordic Business Forum, and passionate about the topic, I’ve followed this development closely. But why should all companies care about customer experience today? Let’s take a look.
Investing in CX Makes Business Sense
Every company should aim at building strong relationships with customers, who are happy with the products and services they buy. Happy customers buy more, and they buy again. They stay loyal and speak on your behalf. It’s far more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep a current one, and increased retention is one of the many benefits resulting from a great customer experience.
Research has shown that customer-centric companies outperform their peers in financial results. Also, these companies have more engaged employees. So, investing in excellent customer experience simply makes business sense.
Importantly, in today’s world, products and services can easily be copied, but a unique, differentiating customer experience is far harder – if not outright impossible – to copy. It truly has the potential to become a competitive advantage for any company, when done right.
All Business Is Experience Business
Customer experience is the sum total of all interactions a customer has with your brand, across time and touch points. It’s the overall feeling a customer gets when interacting with your company. That being said, customer experience is not impacted by everything that the customer ever experiences, but by what they remember of it.
We remember best the things that have evoked our emotions. As the American author Maya Angelou famously said:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
At the heart of customer experience is the emotional connection established between the company and its customer. To me, this remains one of the fundamental truths behind excellent, differentiating customer experiences. It applies across industries and company sizes, as one thing is common to all of them: business, ultimately, is all about H2H. It’s about human-to-human interactions and the emotions evoked because of them.
Customer Experience Creates Positive WOM
More often than not, customer experience starts to form in a customer’s mind long before they have even made a buying decision. The expectations are set, and interest is triggered when we are exposed to marketing messages, social media, spontaneous recommendations, and stories from our friends and colleagues. Instead of traditional marketing, and more so than ever before, our buying decisions are influenced by what others say about the products, services, and brands they are consuming and interacting with.
Does your brand deliver a customer experience that makes customers speak on your behalf? Positive word-of-mouth (WOM) is one of the most impactful marketing tools today, both in B2B and B2C.
Additionally, delivering a customer experience that not only meets but exceeds customers’ expectations is one of the most powerful ways of getting customers to love your brand.
How to Learn More about Customer Experience?
Finally, I’d like to give you a personal reading tip: Will Guidara’s book Unreasonable Hospitality is one the most inspiring customer experience and leadership books I’ve read or listened to. (It’s always a good sign when you decide to extend your evening walk or cross-country skiing round just to be able to continue listening to Will, who has given his own voice to the audio book.)
Join us to hear Will and other keynote speakers share their great insights, and to learn from and discuss customer experience with us at Nordic Business Forum 2024 next September!
