What Is Total Customer Experience & What Impact It Can Have On Pakistani Brand’s Profitability In 2016?

Total Customer Experience is described as the relationship between the customers has with a particular brand. It is made up of all of the interaction and experiences frequency, the Customer has had with a specific brand’s outlet or a sales channel, from the time the customer first made contact with them, up to the Present day!

Why the Brand’s must create Total Customer Experience at Retail & Sales Outlets?

Total Customer Experience sums up a brand’s customers' loyalty and future relationship dynamics. If they are happy and have great experience at all of your point of contacts, they will tell their friends, and come again to buy. If they are unhappy, they will also tell their friends, and you are likely to not receive future business from them or their friends or in worst case, gain the negative marketing from them which will impact in sharp decline of your sales and goodwill. 

Why Customer Experience is important for the Global Brands today: Let’s go through some of the research references and validate the idea:

• Higher Customer referral rates and Customer satisfaction were reported by a study of 860 corporate executives who increased their investment in customer experience (Strativity Group, 2009)
• It eases Customer acquisition, drives Customer Loyalty and improves Customer Retention (Beyond Philosophy, 2013).
• Increases Customer Contentment. When a customer is Wow’s by the experience and has their expectations exceeded, it increases customer satisfaction.
• Reduces Customer dissatisfaction. People want to buy from places that make them feel good. Creating an experience that is memorable and enjoyable for the customer will help to keep them coming back for more and not churning away.
• Create a Competitive advantage and Point of Uniqueness. No longer can you compete on price, customers want more, and they want emotional connections with the companies they deal with. Create that experience that keeps them coming back for more. This will create a point of differentiation that you can use as a competitive advantage.

The Brands in Pakistan that are True to their ideas of Good Service as the new Battleground and are Successful in building that Emotional Connection, are going to be the successful brands win 2016 to enjoy the Cult-like Followers that all other brands will struggle to achieve. This time, the loved customers are going to be the loyal customers.  

As an organizational and particularly as a Brand’s strategist, I myself strongly realized few years back, that Customer experience will be turning as one of the most important factor for the Brands. It was never been this important as it is now due to huge diversification and competitions in brands war in the country today. Knowingly or unknowingly by the masses, Customer Experience plays a vital role in our national market today. 

Most customers are now much aware and looking for the best brands that can provide good experience to them, pre-sales and after sales. Because of this reason, you need to boost your Sales & Customer Service for improving the overall customer experience at your Brand Outlets or other Sales Channels. 

Some of the important tips as a Brand’s sales performance expert, I can give are:

Create the Frame work, provide the Best Service and evaluate your Sales points regularly:

When you are able to create a comprehensive services SOP’s and preferably TAT time for all customer related process, it’s a limited success. The point of appreciation is when you will start evaluating your services channels as per your SOP’s. Thereafter you can analyze all of your customer service efforts, so you can choose the best plan for your business. When you want to grow your business, net promoter score, customer satisfaction index etc. and by reviewing these metrics, you need to know how to provide the Best service for all customers.

Beat Your Competitors through Competitors Studies:

This is another reason why you need to make Customer’s experience, a priority. Most brands are using professional mystery shopping and Audit services to improve their business performance today. Therefore, you also need to make audits of your competitors, to analyze their strength and weak areas and for beating your competitors. This tip is very useful to prevent your competitors from grabbing or reaching your customers. If you want to maintain your business sustainability on the market, you must have an eagle eye on your competitor's customer experience.

Identify & then understand your Customers’ needs

A professional Mystery Sales & Services Audit program is also very useful to help you understand your customers’ needs. When you want to have a successful business, you need to know how you can build good connection to your customers. It is important for you to build good customers’ relationships. By using various customer based interviews at your retail locations, you will be able to analyze your customers’ behaviors easily. As the result, you are able to learn more about your Customer’s needs, behaviors and pre-requisites to sell, easily and conveniently with the passion to “do more” for those who are loyal with you as valued customers. 

Through a recent market research study conducted by Static-A, the first Customer experience specialist company in Pakistan, it was indicated that 81% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. In addition, it was stated that:

• 70% of customers stopped buying goods or services from a company after experiencing poor sales process and/or bad customer service   
• 64% of customers switched and made future purchases from a company's competitors after experiencing poor sales process and below average customer service at a specific brand 

 These sobering statistics show that now in Pakistan, customers' perceptions have a profound impact on every organization's brand equity, customer loyalty and revenue. Therefore I believe this should be one of the prime agenda in every brand’s annual strategy of Year 2016. Do you have one now? Not a problem……

It’s never too late. Make your Brand’s Customer Experience Plan:

If you want to get a lot of benefits from your Customer experience optimization in terms of more and improved sales and higher customer satisfaction/loyalty levels, you need to write down a clear plan for the coming year. This clear plan should include all important details and plans especially that are related with your Sales & Customer service and even all sales touch points such as web sales, e-commerce, social media and other customer engagement channels. 

If you are not sure where to start, engage with a Customer Experience specialist to plan and implement and facilitate the program for your company. Make sure that you create a thorough but realistic and achievable plan for providing the best Customer Experience for all touch points. 

You need to focus on improving the overall customers’ experience and expectations afterwards you create a clear plan. Once you implement your framework and started regular evaluations preferably from a customer experience specialist/company, you will start receiving useful information and insights to make necessary actions time to time. 

Don’t forget to discuss these insight with all members who are engaged with customers through any medium of your business. This step is very useful to let all people in your business know about how important and vital is this program, for your brand and business and for the consistent and durable strategic growth for your company. I wish you good luck in achieving the great customer experience for your customers and inverse for your organization.