Arguably the biggest hindrance to business growth is the loss of customers. If your clients are looking to grow, one of the best ways to do this is to focus on their existing customers.

Reducing your clients customer defection rate by 5% can increase their profitability by 25 to 125 per cent. So what can you help measure to increase your client’s customer experience?

Developing an integrated and seamless customer experience

With the rise of the digital age and the millennial generation becoming a powerful buying force, majority of customers expect cross-channel customer service. Customers expect an experience where all physical and digital touchpoints are connected. Has your client implemented technology to create this experience for their customers?

Utilising social media for customer experience

Social media is a very immediate and powerful platform. Customers expect this urgency to extend to businesses using it as well, regardless of their size. That’s why 72 per cent of customers expect a response from a brand on Twitter within one hour. Furthermore, not responding via social channels can lead to a 15 per cent increase in churn rate. If your clients are looking to improve their customer experience, their social media response times is a great metric to be measuring.

Cheap prices is no excuse for a poor customer experience

Many small businesses think that a great price or deal can compensate for average to poor customer experience. However, majority of consumers disagree. 60 per cent of consumers favour a balance of price and service. Furthermore, they will not tolerate a bad customer experience in exchange for a cheap deal. Ensure your clients are measuring their customer satisfaction ratings alongside their pricing.

Online doesn’t equal self service

When online retail began, many viewed e-commerce as a self service form of shopping that didn’t require customer service. However, customers still require some degree of assistance while making an online purchase, generally in the form of asking questions. Ensure your clients have some form of customer support and are measuring the satisfaction of their responses.

Consider the cost of a negative customer experience

There are huge costs involved when businesses don’t provide a great customer experience. In the UK, businesses lose £12 billion every year as a result of poor customer service. To demonstrate what improvements could save them, illustrate what it’s currently costing them. You could illustrate the approximate customer services costs of gaining and keeping a client. You could highlight what improvements would do to reduce costs and increase profits.

Customer experience can increase loyalty and recommendations

Paying attention to the type of experience their customers are having will increase the chance of repeat customers and will also increase their chance of referrals. Even a small improvement in customer service can make a big difference. If a customer’s satisfaction is increased by 1 point (out of 10), it results in an average increase of 10 per cent that they will remain a customer. If that is raised further to 3 points, a customer is three times as likely to recommend that business to friends.

Measuring your clients social media response times, current costs of customer service, connected systems and online support could lead to great increases in their repeat business and referrals. Advising them on improvements to their customer experience can lead to great ways you can work with them to help increase their profitability.