Avoiding Poor Customer Experiences: Strategies to Limit the Unexpected Cost of Poor CX
Kurt Schroeder, Avtex Chief Experience Officer, and Dan Gingiss, a customer experience keynote speaker, consultant, author, and podcaster recently got together to explore the primary indicators of poor CX and the impact it can have on a business. During their roundtable discussion, Kurt and Dan examined where the CX focus of brands should be, what to do with a CX problem once it's discovered, and why customer input is vital to the success of any CX strategy.
Within this blog, we've highlighted some key takeaways from Kurt and Dan's conversation: The Cost of Bad Customer Experience.
Providing exceptional customer experience, or CX, can completely change how your brand operates and the way you navigate customer relationships and business costs. When your business is providing poor CX you are likely going to suffer in more areas than just financially and that will roadblock the potential avenues your business wants to pursue. Understanding the strategies that can help your brand’s CX approach avoid creating poor experiences will allow you to avoid the unexpected impact those experiences will produce.
The often-overlooked costs of poor CX include:
- Lost loyalty: Your customers will look for other business relationships when they feel undervalued or are having bad experiences with your brand. As more customers leave, you’ll begin to see an imbalance in your customer base and how that impacts your business overall.
- Poor brand reputation: As customers leave, they will take their opinion with them and likely share that with their business connections. This creates a new narrative about your brand with potential customers that will no longer consider starting a business relationship with you.
- Decreased revenue: The combination of customers leaving and potential customers staying away, this will absolutely have an impact on your existing and project revenue. Your business will feel a lasting impact due to the poor CX you are providing.
Learn more about what constitutes poor CX and what you can do to avoid the costs of poor CX
Strategies to Avoid the Costs of Poor CX
Commit to Building Lasting Relationships
Focusing your CX approach solely on creating experiences for incoming customers will generate growth for your business quickly. But once a potential customer is no longer new, what happens to that relationship? Focusing solely on creating outstanding experiences for potential customers will create an unbalanced experience and will contradict your goal of building better experiences for your customers overall. It will begin a cycle of neglect for your loyal customers and will eventually lead to your business experiencing the leaky bucket effect.
The leaky bucket effect means that by focusing on only new customers, you are pouring these customers into your “bucket” and continually trying to fill it to the top. But when you are neglecting the customers you've had for a more extended period; they begin to leak out a “crack” on the bottom of the bucket. You may hardly notice they are leaving until you realize that the bucket is never getting full. This process is a result of not having a holistic CX approach that creates exceptional experiences for all your customers. You may start to lose more significant customers and can develop a system of imbalance in the type of customer you retain and for how long. This system ultimately impacts your business financially and will change how your customers connect with your brand.
Get to Know Your Customer
Journey mapping is an option to help your business avoid being caught in this situation. Journey mapping enables you to identify the points at which a customer may be impacted and establish what attitudes and behaviors they have that will affect results. The experience you provide a customer will influence their attitude and behavior and can go in the negative or positive route. Customers have emotional and functional needs that impact how they want to feel and what they want accomplished through their relationship with your business. Using that thought, you can look through the points of impact a customer may be experiencing and establish the results it's creating. Then your business can develop a plan to move forward successfully.
Tackle Issues Head-on
If your business is looking to be successful in avoiding the impact of poor CX, it's crucial to take action and establish a holistic approach as you move in the right direction. Taking immediate action with your entire team on board is essential to making sure you are not ignoring or avoiding a problem. If you choose not to tackle issues head-on, your brand may be allowing the frustrations from customers to grow. It will ultimately create a cycle that will shift customer behavior and attitude in the wrong direction. The impact of poor CX will be more significant than lackluster experiences and will have a lasting effect on customer relationships and brand perception.
Exceed Expectations at Every Touchpoint
Customers expect more than the status quo of the past, which means it is time to exceed expectations in every touchpoint, including committing to change in areas where your business is lacking and tackling issues head-on. There is no longer time to accept what is barely doing the job and functioning adequately because you are allowing customers to feel as though they could slip through the crack and quickly be on their way to someone else. A leaky bucket continues to leak until you seal the crack and maintain the structure. Doing the same with your CX will change the way it impacts your business and customer relationships for good.
Learn more about The Cost of Bad Customer Experience by viewing the on-demand version of the Avtex Digital Roundtable with Kurt Schroeder and Dan Gingiss.
