Expert Opinion: How to guarantee a return when you invest in customer experience

How do you know when to invest in Customer Experience? What does such an investment look like? Is it training or measuring or just paying attention to the customer? And then, the million-dollar question, how do you know your investment in customer experience has actually worked?

Marketing Stockport member, Insight6, has worked with over 1,000 businesses across the UK and lreland, and their Customer Experience Experts share their 6 main findings to get the best out of investing in customer experience.

1. One customer experience size does not fit all

The first step is to gain an understanding of the needs of the organisation. Some clients know exactly what is needed, for example, a team training programme or a competitor analysis. Other clients may need to gain an objective view on whether there is a customer experience issue to address. If you don’t know if there is an issue, the only way to find out is by asking either customers, the team or both! Whatever the issue, whether it be high team turnover or low customer retention, the results of asking the right questions will always illuminate a path of action that will solve the problem. Simply having an open discussion will open up the world of CX and allow exploration into what can be achieved.

2. The time is right when you are ready for change

The only time to invest in Customer Experience is when you are prepared to take action. How many times have you decided to undertake research and used the report to fill a bookshelf, or attended a training course and, within a week, forgotten what you learnt? We all do it.

The truth is that you will know when it is time to invest in customer experience; it’s when you know you are ready and are open minded enough to embrace what comes next, and then make it happen.

3. Customer Experience is everything to do with the Customer

Look at your business through the lens of your customer, and you will see everything that needs to change! Keep the customer as a metaphoric ‘horse whisperer’ by having a continuous ‘feed in’ of how they see your business, from focus groups to CX reviews (mystery shopping), on-line immediate feedback, to mystery visits. The only thing that is vital, is that you listen to the ‘whispers’, and elevate their status in your business to the most important voice in your management team.

4. Invest in the catalysts to Customer Experience

Customer experience is not something that can be ‘given’ by a business. Customer experience is a subjective feeling that the customer has, which results from a series of events and encounters which leave an impression. This is called the Customer Journey. In order to create the blank canvas so that a customer journey can be identified, everyone in the organisation needs to see themselves as a catalyst to a great customer experience – from the leaders to the front-line team.

5. ROI on Customer Experience is exponential

How do you measure the impact of making your team happier? What do you ask your customers to find out if they had a good experience? And how do you know if all your investment in your customers and team really did increase your sales?

Part of any customer experience project is to put ROI at the core of the work. It is vital that you can quantify the impact of the work and the money invested. The only place to start is by asking yourself questions about where your business is now and where you would like it to be and what would ‘great’ look like.

6. The magic sauce for customer experience is objectivity and expertise

The journey to being ‘great’ is continuous, especially as we live in a world where expectations from customers increase every single moment. Keeping up with customer expectations, knowing how to respond and being aware of what the priority is in your business, is a difficult task.  It’s made harder when you are ‘looking out’ from your business, as opposed to having the benefit of looking from outside in. Gaining the insight of someone objective will allow you to step outside the boundaries of your own thinking, and experience a fresh, new way of looking at your business.

So, is investing in Customer Experience a choice? The answer is not binary. The business needs to commit to changing and you need to find the expertise to rocket fuel your customer experience.