Due to digital disruption, customer loyalty has been an issue for companies, despite their efforts to retain them best they can. Today, we are able to continuously evaluate new products and providers and really, we’re consumers round the clock, non stop.
Because of the highly competitive nature of business today, your business needs to regularly ask itself: how easy is it for your customers to do business with you? And it needs to be really easy.
To leverage new growth opportunities, businesses have to implement new customer centric processes, that improve customer experience for all. Meeting customer needs by offering an integrated experience across all channels (whether digital or offline) will become a requirement.
Needless to say, customers now go through a dynamic journey when interacting with any brand, and it’s a continuous journey (not just pre and post sales).
To keep up, we need to think of every customer as a digital customer while also keeping in mind that they all move at different speeds and have different needs.
Read more: The Future of Business: data and digital transformation
Why businesses fail at customer retention today
The main reason for failing to retain customers lies in not being able to meet their continuously evolving needs, for numerous reasons. A Microsoft global customer study found 58 per cent of consumers report having severed their relationship with a brand because of poor customer service. Meanwhile, the same study found 90 per cent of customers believed customer service was somewhat to very important when it came to choosing a brand—which can be assisted by digital innovation and automation.
The main thing that companies still struggle with today is proving a holistic experience through digital, social, mobile and traditional channels, which is very much noticed by customers and can result in a frustrating experience overall.
Most customer frustrations are to do with companies not making it easy to do business with them—particularly online. A 2021 study found the most common customer frustrations were being unable to with getting basic information from businesses and navigating their websites. With the rise of eCommerce and more businesses incorporating AI into their customer service, it is likely these frustrations have increased as businesses adapt to the changing landscape.
Which brings us back to the initial question we asked you: how easy is it for your customers to do business with you?
What your business needs to do to leverage digital disruption
How can you capture your share of the revenue opportunity that digital brings? Becoming a high-speed customer centric company to compete with others is a start.
This means providing a customised customer experience and moving beyond the one-size-fits-all solution in way that customers genuinely benefit from and value. It doesn’t mean to improve more, it means to improve better; providing more impactful, unique initiatives informed by customer analytics. Success in this dynamic field also means adopting a test-and-learn aptitude.
Companies will find it challenging but must wholly master the integrated and holistic approach to all channels to comply with the preferences of multiple customer segments.
Although many of us have been looking forward to the opportunities that digital brings, many companies are still focusing on "doing things better". This is a natural mechanism, but in order to get the results needed, they really need to be doing things "differently" altogether.
Learn more about how your business can succeed through digital disruption to create awesome customer experiences in our free guide.
