Customer experience is how your customers perceive the quality of their interactions with you. It is the sum of all their experiences with your company across channels, products, and services. Investing time in improving customer experience will improve sales, reduce churn, and increase customer loyalty.
The key to a great customer experience is focusing on your customers’ needs by understanding their individual wants and preferences as well as your organization’s capabilities. In order to do this effectively, it takes a lot more than just good marketing. Here are five industries that need excellent customer experience to be successful:
Customer Experience In The Software Industry
The software industry is often criticized for being a difficult market to sell. In order to get people to buy into your product or service, you have to have an emotional connection with your customers. Software companies need to focus on understanding the needs of their users and create a great user experience. That means products should offer more than functionality and make sure you’re delivering the service customers really need.
If your company provides a service, it is essential to address the needs of your customers’ employees, team members, and clients. Also, ask yourself what makes customers loyal to your company. Your website, your business cards, and your products all play a role in providing excellent customer experience.
Over the last several years, businesses have moved away from purchasing software for the sake of buying software, instead opting to build out their own internal apps to allow them to have their own custom solutions. While this has helped lower the price tag for new software and makes it easier to integrate a new product into an existing system, it’s very difficult for companies to integrate and maintain these apps.
Software is complicated, and it’s hard to gauge how new apps are being used and the cost to implement the changes necessary to keep up with change. Add in some unpredictable demand from an increasing number of devices, customers, and businesses and you have a recipe for a fractured, incomplete, and frustrating customer experience.
There is still room for both app developers and enterprises to improve. However, companies looking to improve their performance must concentrate on how their apps are connecting with their customers and understanding why certain customers are engaging with their products.
Customer Experience In The Food Industry
The current state of the food industry is not a good one. The healthy, sustainable food movement is gaining ground and companies in the food sector are failing to deliver healthy, sustainable food products. Overusing chemicals, additives, and preservatives can and does lead to a lot of health issues and the food is not good for you. The competition for market share is also fierce, making it difficult for most companies to have an adequate profit margin. These facts combined with a weak economy make it difficult for most companies to provide a great experience for their customers.
To start off on the right foot, a restaurant’s quality, consistency, and value should be second to none. The food must be both tasty and nourishing as well as sustainably sourced to provide your guests with a healthy, well-balanced meal. Your overall experience should be memorable, too. However, poor service will be the first thing your customers see and remember about your brand and could affect your customer experience score as well as your sales.
To set yourself apart from the competition, make sure to invest in a strong informative website with regular updates and offer a robust online ordering process that includes fast and hassle-free delivery to your customers.
Customer Experience In The Retail Industry
Today’s consumers are spoiled for choice when it comes to their shopping experiences. This has forced retailers to constantly learn new tricks, update their strategies, and adopt new technologies to deliver an exceptional experience for their customers. It is essential for retailers to deliver the right message and message correctly. This is achieved by great marketing, consistent messaging, and having a point of view. It is the combination of these things that creates customer experience.
A survey from Deloitte finds that the retail industry should focus on four investment priorities which consist of; digital acceleration, supply chain resilience, health and safety, and realigning cost structure.
With the emergence of e-commerce and the proliferation of internet shopping, retail is facing a challenge that is greater than ever before. More than half of the consumers surveyed by Deloitte agree that “the retail experience is under threat.” Changing demographics, competition from online channels, and the rise of “experience-driven” competitors like Apple and Amazon are all forces that are driving consumers to choose retail experiences over clicks and clicks only.
When asked about the most important factors in their purchasing decisions, consumers identified easy returns, excellent customer service, and having a direct relationship with a retailer as the most important aspects.
Customer Experience In The Banking Industry
The banking industry is more than ready to embrace the digital revolution. The negative consequences of high-profile bank failures have made the topic of cybercrime more compelling for executives in the banking industry. Banks’ attempt to increase their market share in the digital space is driving financial institutions to seek new approaches to the traditional in-person and online banking services. Banks are becoming increasingly familiar with technology that will enhance their customers’ experience by being integrated into the customer’s daily life.
According to a 2020 Deloitte Center for Financial Services Global Outlook Survey, 71% of bank leaders expect their organizations to increase cybersecurity spending, with cloud computing/storage and data privacy rounding out the top three areas of needed improvement to combat the risk of data breaches.
Although the number of data breaches are down in 2020 from the year prior, 2019 saw 1,506 separate incidents resulting in consumers’ data being compromised.
Now that digital banking is here to stay, cybersecurity is vital to customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction.
Additionally, Foresight Research published a survey in October 2020, involving nearly 11,000 bank and credit union members in 44 markets, suggesting that large multi-location banks will experience significant customer churn over the next two years.
In the two years prior to the pandemic, the number of customers leaving their financial institution for another was around 12%—whereas this survey suggests it will jump to 27% for large banks between 2020 and 2022. Of those who indicated they intend to leave their financial institution, almost three fourths are Millennials or Generation-Z consumers.
This is a considerable concern for banks, as it signals the need for further long-term resources and relationship building between the institutions and consumers.
Banking is all about financial products and services that serve your customers’ needs. The best way to develop the most customer-focused bank is to understand your customers’ needs, tailor your products and services to them, and be the best at delivering on the promises that you make to your customers.
Banking experiences vary from person to person, but all customers want to be treated with respect, as equals. They don’t want to be forced to do anything. They want their money to be safe and secure. They want to be informed of any changes to their accounts. They want to be treated with respect by the bank employees.
Customer Experience in The Healthcare Industry
Healthcare services have been, and will continue to be, heavily regulated. As such, the experience that a customer has with a healthcare provider is extremely important.
Healthcare is always in high demand, as patients struggle with various problems and injuries that require a specific healthcare solution. However, the system is filled with inefficiencies and inefficiencies at every step of the process. Customers feel frustrated by time wasted by searching for the right solution, filling out forms and filling out more forms, having appointments that require several trips to different locations, and more.
According to a 2021 Accenture Health and Life Sciences Experience Survey – United States findings, not every healthcare experience is good, and the negative ones have a variety of consequences—from additional stress to switching providers to forsaking treatment.
People look for positive experience factors such as clear explanations from their provider, and they want the emotional support that they feel when a provider listens and shows empathy—emotional support proved to be just as important as medical support to those surveyed. The US healthcare system has an immense opportunity to provide a better customer experience by using technology to be more efficient or to deliver useful information such as transparency into pricing.
Better experiences can improve engagement with the healthcare system. The survey revealed that only one out of three people said they did not have a negative experience with a medical provider, pharmacy or hospital. So what does that mean for the remaining two-thirds? People have had a variety of negative healthcare experiences such as, their visit was not efficient (22%) or the medical advice was not helpful (19%) .
Nearly half (44%) of the people reporting negative experiences felt stressed or upset by these experiences, and there were additional consequences: Slightly more than one-third (34%) switched providers or treatments or were less likely to seek medical care the next time they needed it. Others chose to not keep up with their treatment or they never picked up their prescription because of these poor experiences. Only 12% of people said that the negative experience didn´t affect them in any way, implying that 88% of people affected respond to an unsatisfactory healthcare experience in a way that limits healthcare effectiveness.
Conclusion
The key to a strong customer experience is implementing an omni-channel approach to ensure that a customer can reach you whenever and wherever they want to. The sales staff needs to be well-versed in the knowledge of the customers and customers will need to be well-versed in their knowledge of your company to ensure that you give them a great experience.
Good customer experience is important because it is crucial in every business. For some, it’s just a nice thing to have while for others, it’s essential to their survival. There are some industries that will only thrive with an excellent customer experience.
Companies will need to put a lot of time and resources into analyzing current offerings and customer’s behaviors and preferences to formulate a strategy to provide the best customer experience possible.
