In this day and age, aside from having an excellent product at a reasonable price, customer experience (CX) is the main feature of successful businesses worldwide.

Why is that? 

Nowadays, customers want quick solutions and personalized services with no strings attached, all through an omnichannel experience. It doesn’t matter what channels they use to connect with your brand, be it a physical store, website, mobile app, email, or phone call. They expect excellent customer service and prompt response to their requests. 

Omnichannel customer experience is a customer-centric approach through which businesses ensure that customers have a unified customer experience regardless of devices or platforms they use for interaction. Providing an omnichannel experience to your customers leads to increased satisfaction and loyalty, which in turn boosts customer lifetime value. Factors like pop-up ads (41%) and slow page loading (25%) can significantly affect the CX as shown in the graphic below.

Adobe Most Frustrating Aspects Online Content Jun2020

Source: Marketing Charts

Now more than ever, SMBs without sufficient financial means need to focus on customer experience right from the get-go. After all, it costs a hundred times more to fix a bad user experience than to get it right from the start. Below are some of the essential benefits of having an excellent customer experience that SMBs can’t overlook.

More Sales

The competition in the mainstream market today is quite fierce. Customers have enough options and the ability to switch brands if they want to. The average customer attention span keeps getting shorter by the day. One additional second of website load time can cause you to lose 27% of your site visitors who are potential buyers, and only 13% of them are likely to buy from you again. 

However, 86% of customers are likely to purchase again from you if you offer an excellent customer experience. Plus, you’ll get to enjoy the additional benefits of word-of-mouth recommendations. 

Improved Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty means that customers come back to purchase from a brand. When you offer excellent customer experience from the get-go, you create a strong bond with them. Once you make their needs a top priority, they will repay you with their loyalty. 

The graphic below provides a representation of the different reasons that spur businesses to invest in CX.

Source: Super Office

It’s important to note that people remember how they felt when they interacted with your brand. Was it excellent, subpar, or somewhere in-between? Every company’s goal regarding customer interaction should be excellence. As a business owner, you can benefit tremendously as 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a product if the customer experience is top-notch, regardless of whether your competitors sell the same item at a lower price. That’s the power of customer loyalty.

Increased ROI

According to statistics, increasing your retention rate by just 5% boosts your revenue by 25%. A happy customer is a loyal customer. Also, a loyal customer will recommend your brand, thus helping to attract new customers. 

The reviews that your satisfied customers leave on social media, internet forums, and other platforms will serve as marketing channels for your business without any added cost. That way, the return you get on your investment in CX remains high.

Statistics show that for every dollar invested in CX, there is a return on investment of $100. That explains why customer experience stands out as the most exciting opportunity (20%) for B2B businesses in 2020.

Source: Super Office

Improved Public Image and Increased Brand Awareness

The internet has made it super easy for people to connect and share information anywhere in the world. Through word-of-mouth marketing, social media, public forums, and review websites, customers can now easily share their own opinion about your brand or product with the rest of the world. As much as that is a good thing for small businesses looking to stand out, it’s also important to understand that poor customer experience can spur customers to leverage the same platforms to give your business a bad review. That unavoidably impacts your public image negatively. 

As statistics show, 62% of dissatisfied customers will tell someone about their horrible experience with your brand. What’s more, another 13% will tell 15 different people about the negative experience they had with your brand. This creates a negative public image in the minds of your potential customers, thus driving them away even before they have the chance to buy from you. 

Reduced Cost of Operation

It’s six to seven times more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain one. Also, recommendations coming from your satisfied customers will be more effective in the long run than all of your marketing efforts combined.

Why’s that? 

92% of customers seek and trust recommendations from friends and family before making a buying decision. That places them further down the conversion funnel, all without you spending a dime on advertising. 

Conclusion 

Customer experience is a factor that SMBs can’t afford to overlook, given the current competition in the mainstream market. The benefits of providing an excellent customer experience to your buyers are immense. Due to this, SMBs need to take CX seriously if they wish to survive and remain relevant. 

About the Author: Andriana Moskovska is a content curator and contributor at TechPriceCrunch.com. With a passion for tech and marketing, and a degree in English Language and Literature, she always manages to deliver well-researched and impeccably written content. When she’s not writing her next piece, you can find her immersed in some of the classics, or planning her next trip.