Your Customer Experience is the Best Marketing

1.     Feature Article

Your Customer Experience is the Best Marketing
By John DiJulius, Chief Revolution Officer

When it comes to a company’s budget, every department annually fights for an increase in its own budget. That’s not surprising; the outcome will determine what the department is allowed to spend for the following year. This is especially true of the budgets for advertising versus customer service training. The only way to win the battle is to prove which expenditures will produce a better return on investment (ROI) for the company. The fact that this is even still a debate is a sign of old paradigm thinking by too many senior executives. A shortsighted obsession with constantly bringing in new customers to your business is significantly more expensive than building an incredible customer experience.

In Our Social Times article titled “Can Online Customer Service Deliver a Higher ROI than Marketing?” Tom Eggemeier, EVP Global Sales at Genesys, says that global budget expenditures on marketing and advertising were $500 billion a year compared to $9 billion spent on customer service. How does your company compare to that percentage?

What Has a Better ROI—Investing in Advertising or Customer Service?

Start asking yourself if you are constantly offering incentives to “New Customers Only.” What about rewarding the customers who have been loyal to your business for years—those who do business with you regularly, no questions asked, and refer others to your firm? You ignore them at your peril.

It is a fact that:

• Repeat customers spend more than new customers.
• Repeat customers give higher satisfaction scores.
• Repeat customers give referrals more often than new customers.
• You need five new customers to produce as much as one repeat customer.

In a study titled The ROI from Marketing to Existing Online Customers, published by Adobe, it was reported:

• A 5 percent increase in customer satisfaction can increase a company’s profitability by 75 percent.
• 80 percent of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20 percent of your existing customer base.

Companies spend millions creating and advertising their brands, yet the customer’s experience is what truly drives customer perception, retention, and referrals. If you take really good care of your existing clients, they will generate more new customers than any advertising campaign ever could. Think about what might happen if you reversed your budgets for advertising and customer service.

In any case, it is no longer acceptable to allow customer experience and marketing to act as separate silos. Both departments need to work together; otherwise the customer loses, which means ultimately the company loses. How do you merge marketing into the customer experience hierarchy? Start by figuring out who owns the voice of the customer, initiate customer satisfaction surveys, sponsor soft-skill experiential training, and designate a senior executive to hold all departments and locations accountable for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Customer Experience Is the New Branding

Branding has changed. It is no longer about building a perception in your customer’s mind. In the age of smartphones and social media, customer experience is the new branding. Customers are defining the brand to the business and everyone else, and we can find out what a large percentage of them think about any brand within minutes by simply searching Google.

Brands put billions into boosting awareness, satisfaction, and loyalty, but they often overlook the most powerful driver of customer value—emotional connection. Research shows that consumers who are emotionally connected with a brand are anywhere from 25 to 100 percent more valuable in terms of revenue and profitability than those who are “merely” highly satisfied with it.

Marketing Will Report to Customer Experience

Marketing is no longer in control of the brand, and revolutionary companies are acknowledging that by beginning to place the marketing department under customer experience. Within the next 5 to 10 years, that will be the norm. Now, if you are a chief marketing officer or head of your marketing department, don’t panic. You have time to acquire the knowledge and training you need to smoothly make the transition to the chief experience officer who will oversee marketing.

According to the “Customer Experience Management Market,” a report by Grand View Research , the Customer Experience Management (CEM) market is estimated to grow from $5 billion to $13.18 billion by 2021. The major factors driving the CEM market include an increasing need to manage the customer experience throughout the customer journey, the need to retain customers, and competitive differentiation. Similarly, Forrester Consulting’s white paper titled “The Business Impact of Investing in Experience” shows through research how businesses are being forced to make bigger investments in their customer experience. “Customer experience has quickly moved from competitive differentiator to business imperative. In a world where the answer to almost any question is at our fingertips, where AI is becoming a part of everyday life, and where we can get a week’s worth of groceries delivered to our homes in less than an hour, consumers and business buyers have come to expect highly contextual and personalized experiences,” noted the authors of the paper.  Traditional “branding” is an old paradigm. Companies that are tired of spending an exorbitant amount of money on advertising and marketing are now reallocating those dollars toward customer experience training. The top customer service companies typically spend the least in their industries in advertising and marketing. They’re proving that the new budget priorities are the direction of the future.

There’s no denying that technology has amazing advantages to make it easier for the customer in most cases, provided businesses do it in moderation and not at the cost of the human experience. The new paradigm starts with hiring employees who genuinely like people and want to serve, then giving them the training that will increase their service aptitude, making sure there’s a leader with the power to oversee and strengthen customer service across all departments, and allocating the budget to make it happen.

*Related – It is Time to Make the Pandemic Irrelevant

 2.   Short Video You Need to Watch & Share with Your Team 

Some of my favorite lyrics that are so applicable to our current times;

• Through all the strife, in the destruction, sings a voice so strong for all to hear.
• That voice is you, standing true, running to the lead to find your dream.
• So keep the faith, don’t hesitate, be the change you want the world to make.
• When the world needs something new, let it come from you, and reimagine.
• March on to your destiny, pave the path for all to see. Reimagine, there’s no stopping you now!
• Lead the way. The world won’t be the same.

By J.R. Heckman, 21-year-old singer songwriter

3.    Ken Blanchard Speaking at The 2020 Customer Service Revolution

The DiJulius Group is thrilled to announce that Ken Blanchard will be speaking at this year’s virtual Customer Service Revolution. Ken is the author or co-author of over 60 books, including The One Minute Manager, which has sold over 13 million copies.

Ken’s presentation for the Customer Service Revolution is titled Leading at a Higher Level. Ken believes that truly great leaders focus on results and human satisfaction. They are able to achieve long-term success by creating work environments that are respectful, fair, and inspiring. Hear Ken describe the four keys to leading at a higher level:

1. Set your sights on the right target and vision
2. Treat your people right
3. Treat your customer right
4. Have the right kind of leadership

By following these steps, leaders will be able to create and sustain a workplace where people and organizations thrive.

4.    Newest Episode of The Customer Service Revolution Podcast

5.    Resource to Help Take Your Customer Experience to the Next Level