Is Customer Experience Still Important?

Nov. 18, 2010

Too often marketers get so caught up in marketing strategy that they forget about the importance of customer experience. If a customer has a bad experience interacting with your organization online, then they are less likely to return for further interactions.

A new study from Econsultancy in conjunction with Foviance called the “Mult-Channel Customer Experience Report” examines how well organizations are working towards an improved customer experience and the components necessary to optimize it.

Some highlights from the report include:

49% of survey respondents say that a multi-channel customer experience is important to their organization
68% of the organizations surveyed recognized a strong link between long-term business performance and customer experience
Unfortunately 9% of the respondents say that they still have no strategy in place for improving the customer experience
61% of companies said that their most dominant competitive strategy was product differentiation rather than customer experience improvement despite the fact that 86% stated that their company makes some attempt to differentiate their brand through superior customer experience
Despite the “almost universal consensus” around the important of customer experience, only 22% of companies say that they have a well-developed strategy

Are you spending enough time on your customer experience? Or are you ignoring it in favor of tactics like product or service differentiation? Is the fact that your products or services are unique going to get you very far if people hate their experiences with your company? Probably not. If you’re not already working on improving your customer experience, maybe it’s time to begin planning a comprehensive strategy.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at November 18, 2010 8:00 AM