CX Builds Resilience in a Downturn
Economic Climate
Within the current economic uncertainty with a recession on the horizon, customers and consumers are re-assessing where their money is spent with many starting to cut back on extravagant purchases and luxuries to gain a tighter control of household budgets.
Companies are already reporting on the impact of this behaviour and are starting to tighten their own budgets which subsequently impacts B2B transactions.
This is unfortunately a cycle which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy into ever decreasing circles.
How can we weather the storm?
We know based on research that Customer Centric companies are far more resilient to external market pressures.
The natural behaviour for companies during a downturn is to start cutting budgets across the board. This however may cause much longer term damage to the organisation than taking a more proactive approach to concerning times ahead.
Building resilience needs be based on a multi-faceted approach to cut back on areas that do not provide value or ROI while at the same time doubling down the key aspects of Customer Experience.
As companies, we all need to make money, to do that we need customers. During turbulent times, companies become extremely vulnerable to losing customers. The critical question becomes: how resilient is your company to mitigate or reduce customer churn?
Customers make decisions to purchase and stay with a company based on their needs and goals, the cost to value but customer retention is based on how you make your customers feel, if you show your customers that you listen, learn and understand them while making the end-to-end customer journey great, you will build advocacy, loyalty and trust leading to far higher retention than your competitors.
Mindset, Culture & Strategy
“Customers are at the heart of everything we do”
You’ve probably seen many companies state something like the above. Make sure these are not just words on your page otherwise you will create ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ which is the fast track to churn.
It’s more important than ever to ensure everyone in the organisation is focussed and aligned on the approach to ‘Customer Centricity and ‘Continuous Improvement’.
Customer Centric organisations think about customers every day, in every meeting and in every decision. They build greater understanding of customers and their needs, motivations and feelings to ensure customers feel valued and gain value from their relationship with your company.
Listen attentively
Customer insight will come from many sources including your CRM, ticketing system, surveys, social media and review sites. It’s vital to use this powerful insight to help prioritise where to focus your investment and improvement initiatives.
Building a more holistic view of your customers will help you innovate, improve, and stay ahead of the competition. Think about how you are listening today and more importantly how you use that information to improve. If your surveys are not providing the insight, you then need to change the questions you are asking.
Build Trusted Relationships
Retention is based on relationships and how your customers feel. Do you know how you would like your customers to feel about your organisation? How do you build relationships? Building a clear calendar of events, meetings, communications for your customers across their lifetime journey is important. Regularly speak to your customers to see how they are, ask them what they would like to see improve, recognise their key milestones. If done in the right way this can become a key customer insight driver.
Amazing Customer Service
This is your chance to show customers that you genuinely care about them. For many customers, interactions with you customer service team are where most interactions take place. This is key; customers contact customer service when then need help, the way that help is provided will either re-enforce your company values, building advocacy, or alternatively erode them leading to churn. A clear focus on ensuring that your service team are empowered to help can go a long way. Customers typically don’t want to contact support so utilise your data to discover the top ten reasons for customers making contact and either improve your products or services or enable self-service so the customer can resolve themselves.
Each and every experience comes down to three key areas:
Customer insight will come from many sources including your CRM, ticketing system, surveys, social media and review sites. It’s vital to use this powerful insight to help prioritise where to focus your investment and improvement initiatives.
Building a more holistic view of your customers will help you innovate, improve, and stay ahead of the competition. Think about how you are listening today and more importantly how you use that information to improve. If your surveys are not providing the insight, you then need to change the questions you are asking.
Build Trusted Relationships
Retention is based on relationships and how your customers feel. Do you know how you would like your customers to feel about your organisation? How do you build relationships? Building a clear calendar of events, meetings, communications for your customers across their lifetime journey is important. Regularly speak to your customers to see how they are, ask them what they would like to see improve, recognise their key milestones. If done in the right way this can become a key customer insight driver.
Amazing Customer Service
This is your chance to show customers that you genuinely care about them. For many customers, interactions with you customer service team are where most interactions take place. This is key; customers contact customer service when then need help, the way that help is provided will either re-enforce your company values, building advocacy, or alternatively erode them leading to churn. A clear focus on ensuring that your service team are empowered to help can go a long way. Customers typically don’t want to contact support so utilise your data to discover the top ten reasons for customers making contact and either improve your products or services or enable self-service so the customer can resolve themselves.
Each and every experience comes down to three key areas:
Success
Can your customers achieve their goals. Do your products and services add value and enable customer success.
Effort
How easy or difficult is it for customers to achieve their goals with your products and services.
Emotion
How do your customers feel about your organisation as a result of their interactions.
Can your customers achieve their goals. Do your products and services add value and enable customer success.
Effort
How easy or difficult is it for customers to achieve their goals with your products and services.
Emotion
How do your customers feel about your organisation as a result of their interactions.