The Sitel Group recently released their 2018 Customer Experience (CX) index, which looks at how brand loyalty is affected by the ways businesses operate and the most effective forms of customer engagement.
The index is compiled based on a survey of 1,200 adults living in the US, who answer 17 questions that – in addition to brand loyalty and customer engagement – look at customer service and the overall customer experience. This year, the index identified three key themes.
1. Customer Experience
Convenience and personalisation are priorities for consumers when deciding where to shop. This is why the majority (55%) said they preferred shopping online to a physical store. And while price is a factor when it comes to online shopping, it’s not the primary concern for most shoppers.
In fact, almost 50% of people surveyed said they’d pay more to have a better customer experience, showing just how important this is to consumers and why you need to make sure you develop a customer journey that works well and makes the most of the latest technologies.
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2. Social Media
Customers, especially Millennial women, share their experience of shopping through social media – both the good and the bad. And while the perception is that most people only share negative reviews or make complaints, this isn’t actually the case: almost half of comments on social media are positive. This is something you can take advantage of by sharing positive comments.
Look at why people have commented, on your business and those of your competitors and build these into your customer experience. If you use music for business, for example, pick songs that reflect your company. Mood media provide music for business and can help you with your music for business choices.
3. Human Connections
Even when shopping online, 70% of consumers want to have a human connection when it comes to customer service. They are wary of chatbots and automated systems and don’t believe these systems understand what they need, no matter how well they’re designed.
However, there is a note of caution here – even if you have human customer service teams, they need to be well trained, as over 25% of consumers don’t believe that the person on the other end of the phone understands what they need either!
