Spend smarter, operate leaner and accelerate your growth with the untapped potential of your customers. Most businesses are prioritizing growing revenue or boosting retention. These are both smart things to do in the current economic climate, and they have one thing in common: they should revolve around the customer experience.
Contentsquare’s Chief Customer Officer, John O’Melia and Michael Gulmann, former SVP, CPO, Expedia Group, sat down at Adobe Summit to discuss just that—the impact of prioritizing your customer experience.
Your customers should be at the heart of your strategy because they are one of the most powerful revenue generators. Customers’ feelings about your brand and digital experience can make or break your performance. And with brands having to do more with less in 2023, it’s crucial to start elevating your customer experience now. In this article, find the 3 reasons how customer experience drives business growth for you.
“We are clearly in the age of customer experience, and customers are now judging the experience of engaging with your website just as much as the product itself.” —John O’Melia, Chief Customer Officer, Contentsquare
Customers want more privacy and personalization
This isn’t an oxymoron. Consumers expect more privacy and security online but don’t want to sacrifice their experience. With third-party cookies becoming a thing of the past, businesses will need to collect more data directly from customers in order to offer individualized experiences.
Forrester predicts that CX leaders at 20% of European and 10% of US firms will focus on privacy and consent journeys.
Businesses must create privacy or consent journeys designed with their customers in mind to build digital trust and offer a humanized digital CX. Personalization isn’t dependent on customer demographic data but on the behaviors and interactions of that user within their journeys with your brand or website.
“I always advise brands that if they’re collecting information from their customers, they need to explicitly share what value that customer will gain when sharing information.” —Michael Gulmann, Former SVP, CPO, Expedia Group
Demonstrating that you value their security and privacy will go a long way with your users. It can turn casual browsers into repeat visitors and loyal customers.
How customer experience drives business growth: the importance of the activity
Based on the 2023 Digital Experience Benchmark Report, it’s the activity within the user journey that makes the most impact on your KPIs. Users who engage more with your content are 19% more likely to convert than those that don’t. But remember that user frustrations along the customer journey are also rising, with 36% of users experiencing frustration in a journey.
Slow-loading pages were the number one frustration for users in 2022. Frustration influences your activity and bounces. So how can you encourage the good (activity and engagement) and reduce the bad (frustration)? Build fast, empathetic and humanized digital experiences.
Three pillars of human-centric experience strategy:
Understanding: Capture the complete picture of your customer behavior and understand the quality of the experience you are delivering. Is there confusion? Are visitors overwhelmed by your navigation menu? Are they frustrated scrolling through your PLPs?
Action: Align and empower your team to take intelligent, data-driven action on what matters most. Maximize your team’s impact by enabling them to prioritize content, UX and performance investments based on quantifiable impact, not gut feeling.
Trust: Build trust with your consumers during uncertain economic times by prioritizing privacy, security and accessibility. Offer more compelling digital experiences without compromising their preference for added privacy.
“Unless you’re looking at what a customer is doing and making decisions based on that data, then your company is not data-centric or customer-centric. Being data-centric or customer-centric means, you take action on that data constantly.” —Michael Gulmann, Former SVP, CPO, Expedia Group
Your customers are your biggest opportunity for growth
Now you know how customer experience drives business growth. Building seamless, personalized and empathetic customer experiences will build trust and loyalty while driving key KPIs like conversions and revenue. Customers are your key to a successful 2023 and beyond. Focusing on the human behind the digital interaction is your fool-proof way to boost ROI and revenue in the coming years. According to a commissioned Forrester, companies that use digital experience analytics (DXA) tools like Contentsquare recovered $3.28 million of income from reducing customer journey friction and achieved a 602% ROI.