Closing the Customer Experience Gap
In this post, we look at how to close the gap between customer expectations and your business's ability to meet those expectations.
The customer experience gap is becoming more and more evident. Customers across industries are demanding a more seamless, personalized experience that aligns with their needs and expectations. This trend is forcing companies to rethink how they engage with customers, from engaging them at every touch point in the customer journey through to being able to provide an immediate response. Effective journey mapping is key to finding these opportunities.
In this post, we look at how to close the gap between customer expectations and your business's ability to meet those expectations.
The best way for companies to stay ahead of the curve is by investing in customer engagement technologies that will allow them to get closer to their customers than ever before. By deploying interactive self-service solutions, they can boost their engagement rates while also providing a better overall experience than competitors who haven't invested in technology yet or don't have the funding available for such investments. In this post we'll explore some examples of how companies are closing the customer experience gap through leveraging interactive self-service solutions within different industry verticals:
What is the Customer Experience Gap?
The customer experience gap is the gap between a customer's expectations and a company's ability to meet those expectations. It can be caused by a number of things—poor product quality, lack of communication or service, or even simply being misunderstood by your customers. The problem is that this gap exists for almost every business out there today, but it doesn't have to be this way!
Why you need to overcome the Customer Experience Gap
The customer experience gap is the difference between your company’s actual performance and what your customers expect. Customers are more demanding, they have higher expectations, and the battle for their loyalty has become a war. If you don’t address this gap, you will lose customers to your competitors who do.
The most basic explanation for why this is so important is that if you have high-quality customer service but no one knows about it because no one talks about it in social media (which is where people go first when they want to research something), then all of your efforts are wasted.
In addition to being an important metric in its own right, measuring a company's ability to close the customer experience gap can also be used as an indicator of success when it comes down to doing business with other companies or organizations -- particularly those who specialize in providing services related directly or indirectly towards improving efficiency within businesses' supply chain systems such as logistics/distribution centers; distribution operations professionals; freight forwarders; etcetera).
A company's ability to close the customer experience gap can be used as an indicator of success when it comes down to doing business with other companies or organizations -- particularly those who specialize in providing services related directly or indirectly towards improving efficiency within businesses' supply chain systems such as logistics/distribution centers; distribution operations professionals; freight forwarders; etcetera).
How to Close the Customer Experience Gap
There are five basic steps
- Understand who your customers are
- Understand what your customers want
- Benchmark your experience today (and the experience offered by competitors, if appropriate)
- Identifty the opportunities
- Identifty how to turn those things into a solution
Understand what your customers want: By getting out of the building and talking to your customers, you can gain valuable insight into what they want. You may hear something like “I wish I could get a better price on my car insurance” or “I hate that I have to wait so long when I call customer service.”
Once you’ve heard what your customers want, it’s time to start benchmarking your experience today: Benchmarking is a great way to learn how other companies are doing things and then see if there are ways that you can improve upon them. For example, let’s say that you run an insurance company. You could benchmark the customer service experience at several other insurance companies in order to gain some insight into how they handle certain situations.
Once you’ve benchmarked other companies, it’s time to start experimenting: Once you have a good idea of what your customers want and how other companies are doing things, it’s time to experiment with different solutions. For example, if one of the things that your customers complain about most often is price, then it might make sense to start offering discounts for those who pay on time or offer some sort of loyalty program.
Customer experience is a competitive advantage.
These days, having an excellent customer experience has become more important than ever for businesses of all sizes because it's a key driver of growth and profitability. It also helps you create loyal customers who are willing to pay more for your products or services over time.
As the experience gap closes, your business will be in a better position to win and retain customers.
Conclusion
By adopting a customer-centric approach and applying the right tools to preserve your customers' loyalty, you can bridge the gap between great products and experiences.
Your business will not only be more successful, but it will also become more aligned with the needs of your customers.
