With rapid innovation and expansion in tech in the last several years, tech companies must continually work to stay ahead of the competition. One of the best ways to ensure regular revenue is to combat customer churn, or the loss of regular customers. Customers may choose to quit services due to several reasons, but a bad customer experience (CX) ranks highly among them. By examining the causes of customer churn and the effects of CX on customer relationships, businesses can discover ways to improve the longevity of their customer base.
What is Customer Experience?
The customer experience relates to everything the customer sees, does or feels when they make a transaction with a company. CX starts with the first time the customer connects with the business to consider products or services and stops when the customer ends a relationship with the company.
Everything in between, from the look of the site to the payment system that the business uses, forms the customer’s experience.
What Causes Customer Churn?
The loss of a customer happens for a variety of reasons, including:
- Financial difficulties
- Problems completing a transaction
- Products or services not maintaining relevance with customer needs
- Changing trends
- Poor customer experiences
Many of these situations relate directly to the customer experience. Since keeping a loyal customer is often easier than gaining a new one, improving CX to minimize customer churn should be an important goal for businesses.
How Can Companies Use CX to Minimize Customer Churn?
Reducing customer churn requires a comprehensive look at the customer experience. Most aspects of churn relate to CX, emphasizing opportunities for businesses to analyze their processes and improve them.
These strategies can help tech companies to create a customer-centered buying experience.
Improve speed
Speed is a key component of customer satisfaction. People who find it too difficult to get through the transaction, due to lagging payment websites or too many clicks from start to finish, are more likely to give up on the purchase altogether.
Maintaining efficient systems that load quickly, streamlining payment and other systems to work together, and responding to concerns quickly can help to speed customers through each transaction.
Ease the Shopping Experience
Many customer interactions are designed to distract, but this can contribute to churn when customers become frustrated with the process. Businesses should imagine customers who know what they want and are ready to buy and create a design that reduces obstacles in their way.
Shopping guides and FAQs can be helpful, but they should address actual customer concerns and provide accurate information.
Make a Seamless Transaction
Customers, even business clients, are accustomed to shopping on sites where they can search for an item, add to cart and process payment within a minute.
Companies should consider this level of seamless transaction a business goal and implement tools to achieve it. For example, integrating an SaaS billing platform can streamline the payment process for maximum ease of use.
Personalize Interactions
With a wide range of data available to personalize customer experience, many customers see no reason for companies not to use it. In fact, nearly 90% of customers expect it.
Personalization can be as simple as the customer’s name on email or text marketing, or as complex as tailored services and tutorials built to suit the customer’s needs. If the customer feels like they are important to the company, that sense of value can translate into long-term loyalty.
Streamline Operations for Consistency
The existence of massive nationwide chain stores highlights a particular preference of the modern customer: consistency. People expect the company message and the customer experience to be consistent across all platforms. Businesses should aim to streamline touchpoints in the following areas:
- Online sites
- Social media pages
- Mobile apps
- Brick-and-mortar stores
Every touchpoint should feature a consistent look, feel and function. If the online site is simple to browse, the mobile app should be just as simple.
Maintain Relevancy
Customer churn often happens when customers feel like the offering or the company itself is no longer relevant to their needs. Maintaining relevancy requires regular attention to customer expectations, pain points and experiences with the business. Companies can achieve this goal by prioritizing the following:
- Make product and service offerings consistent with current customer needs
- Update payment options to reflect popular technology
- Get regular feedback from customers about the experience
This effort helps to keep long-time tech companies from becoming obsolete.
Provide Transparency
Customers are highly wary of companies trying to trick them in imperceptible ways, which can be prevented by promoting transparency from the outset.
Businesses should make prices consistent and easy to understand by minimizing the number of confusing fees and other additions to the bill. Explaining how the company will use customers’ data can also increase trust and willingness to participate.
Meet Fulfillment Goals
Ultimately, the business that succeeds is the one that achieves the customers’ goals. A company might have the best-looking customer experience, but if they fail at fulfillment, they will lose customers.
Treating the purchase transaction as just one part of CX is key to businesses building an ongoing relationship with customers. Striving to meet or exceed order processing, service scheduling, and setup goals can cement a trustworthy feeling in the customer.
Respond to Concerns
Although much of the modern CX should be designed to work autonomously with the customer’s needs, responsiveness is still an important component. Customers sometimes have problems that require solutions, and the future of the customer relationship could be on the line. By responding to questions and concerns promptly, using chatbots and other tools to simplify the process, businesses can ensure that each customer gets what they need.
Building a seamless customer experience does more than just increase revenue generation. It can help companies to form better long-term relationships with customers, which can improve their ability to survive and compete in the changing tech landscape.
