BY Tim Londergan
When a customer comes back and a client continues to do business with you, they’re happy — right? Maybe. Maybe not.
Customers may be less than satisfied but they’re too busy to find another vendor at this time. Consider if clients want to seek a new partner but feel it’s too much to take on right now. How would you know?
Each industry is challenged to provide a personalized client experience (CX) for their set of unique customers. However, fostering trust and loyalty is a tricky endeavor even for the most attentive enterprise.
The Right Client Experience Varies by Industry
Hospitality views loyalty as a growth engine. Loyalty rewards members to increase their amount of purchase and to return more often. Wealth management seeks to create that sense of exclusivity that leads to increased client loyalty and retention. The legal profession understands it’s all about trust, authenticity and consistent personal interaction.
Whatever the industry, the primary purpose is to instill a sense of faith and dependability that makes customers return. The premise is that happy customers spend more and yield quality referrals. In a nutshell, that’s the product of the right client experience.
Data Collection Fuels the Client Experience
Big box retailers and grocery stores are masters of data capture. They have expanded services to become pharmacists, optometrists, health care specialists, and food stamp redeemers. The minute you step foot into a market with your activated cell phone, you are fair game.
Retailers are one of the largest data brokers engaged in this lucrative practice. In fact, the data broker market is expected to pass $545 billion by 2028. Interestingly, only 4% of businesses say they don’t collect personal data.
Developing an agile, adaptable approach to customer surveys and the data you collect needs to be a priority. Improving customer satisfaction is about understanding the underlying reasons why loyal clients and satisfied customers feel the way they do. Equally important, you need to know what would make dissatisfied customers stay away.
Each step of the customer lifecycle has the potential to yield consumer data. From initial contact, through the relationship building process and onto seeking feedback, there are insights to be gathered. Still, with all this intelligence, what can you do to provide that ultimate “I care about you” customer experience?
Customer Segmentation Informs Your Actions
Keep in mind that emotions are the main language to communicate with customers and understand their needs and expectations. Qualtrics says “businesses may view products and services separately, but the human brain perceives experiences holistically — a whole entity. Customers see the product as a continuous experience flow, even lasting years.”
Typically, younger consumers drive the market for subscription services. Plus, they are more likely to engage with a brand to share information. Conversely, 24% of baby boomers would not share any personal data whatsoever.
Intimate knowledge of your customer base is crucial. Demographics, psychographics, net promoter score (NPS), customer lifetime value (CLV), and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) provide abundant data. However, proper analysis of the data then becomes the challenge.
PwC’s customer loyalty surveys provide insight to customer loyalty best practices. In the mind of the consumer, discounts and rebates loom large with 48%. Meanwhile, rewards from flexible loyalty programs follow closely at 43%.
Disturbingly, there are disconnects for what businesses struggle to provide, like personalized offers, and how they are valued by consumers. Helpfully, the article reveals five elements that must strike the right balance to satisfy a diverse clientele.
Providing your customer segments with the right measure of community, delight, ease, uniqueness, and value is key. In this way, you create the optimal personalized client experience for your business.
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