Published: 21/05/2018
Getting it right with customers is more important to your business’s bottom line than you may think as has been shown by PwC’s latest Customer Intelligence Series report: “Experience is Everything”.
The report has shown that customer experience is one of the most important factors taken into account by consumers when choosing a product or service, 74% of those surveyed in Australia cited it as being important – only topped by price and quality. If that isn’t enough, the report also reveals that customers are quite happy to pay a premium for good service.
One of the other takeaways from the report is that a business can lose customers quickly and forever if they do not take customer experience seriously. 32% of all those surveyed said they would turn their backs on a business after just one bad customer experience even if they loved the brand.
In this technology-driven age, it would seem that being the fastest and trendiest, with automated processes and cutting edge design is essential for the best experience. However, according to this report, the consumer need for a more human experience is far more important to them than new technology.
The key is to find the balance between the technology expected of a business today and a real human connection with your customer. Consumers embrace a lot of technology – apps, clouds, websites etc., but if something goes wrong they want to talk to a real person, quickly, and businesses need to make sure that customers can do exactly that in order to keep the “human touch” so desired by people. This is especially important in Australia, with 84% of consumers stating that they will want to interact with a human more as technology improves.
It would be wise to not underestimate the importance of having good, empowered employees that drive good customer experience. The right person, backed by the right technology, can create the kind of seamless experience that will keep customers happy. If an employee has the ability to deal with any customer issues on the spot, the amount of consumers driven away due to a bad experience will be significantly reduced.
The price that consumers are willing to pay for an experience that goes above and beyond, is something that a business can’t afford to take lightly. A seamless and unobtrusive transition from machine to human, and having experienced and empowered employees, is critical for keeping consumers happy, and businesses profitable.
At Grapple, we’ve made a significant investment to ensure our clients’ experience is simple and straightforward. We doubt there is anyone that can beat our competitive finance offering but we are always striving to improve our service.