Business Impact

When it comes to customer experience (CX), a single moment can mean all the difference. And that can be easy to forget when your brand is interacting with countless customers over multiple channels every day. When it comes down to it, however, a moment can mean the difference between a positive or a negative experience—and a boost or a dent in your core customer experience metrics.

For many experience programs, those metrics are the end-all-be-all. Every move they make is with the express purpose of driving those numbers up. At Pearl-Plaza, we believe that experience leaders should aim higher at goals that go above and beyond typical customer experience metrics. More specifically, we help our clients design programs that target four economic pillars to help them not only improve experiences for customers, boost metrics, and build loyalty, but also to benefit the business where it counts: the bottom line.

Today, we’ll walk you through each of those four pillars and tell the stories of brands who have leveraged their experience programs to achieve those goals. Let’s get to work!

The Four Economic Pillars of CX

1. Customer Acquisition
2. Customer Retention
3. Cross Sell & Upsell
4. Cost Reduction

Pillar #1: Customer Acquisition

A well-built CX program enables organizations to anticipate what new customers are looking for in a brand—and therefore they’ll be able to leverage that information in their efforts to boost acquisition numbers.

For example, a major athletic company sought to capitalize on acquisitions by optimizing its surveys to find new types of customers. By targeting respondents between the ages of 18 and 35 with specific questions, the company was able understand this demographic and expand to new cities and demographics. 

The practitioners who ran this initiative were able to prove its worth by tracking the new customer acquisition, increases in unique customers, and market share growth that it generated.

Pillar #2: Customer Retention

Organizations should never underestimate the power of service recovery—70 percent of customers who have a situation resolved in their favor will return to a brand, while a 10 percent increase in customer retention can grow a company’s value by 30 percent. Truly customer-centric companies leverage their CX programs to identify disgruntled customers, reach out to close the loop with them, and ultimately prevent customer churn.

For example, America’s largest cable and home internet provider leverages VoC technology in their regional customer care centers. They discovered that 3% of all respondents requested callbacks, totaling 1,000 customer recovery opportunities a month (or a whopping 12,000 per year). By combining this insight with customer lifetime value, the company was able to identify $23 million in recoverable revenue—directly resulting from customer retention!    

Pillar #3: Cross-Selling/ Upselling

Given that it costs 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, brands stand to gain a lot from finding new cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

Organizations can leverage CX listening tools to identify what about a brand spurs trust and loyalty from its customers and then take action to make those offerings even stronger. After all, nearly 50 percent of customers are willing to spend anywhere from 11 to 50 percent more with a brand they feel they can trust. Additionally, predictive analytics can be tuned to identify which customer segments are more open to new offerings. This allows marketing teams to target those customers with campaigns that will encourage them to spend more with the brand.

An example of a brand leveraging their experience program to grow share of wallet comes from a large cafe group that was able to capture feedback from its existing customer base, analyze their sentiments, and make fundamental menu changes accordingly. As a result, the cafe group saw a noticeable revenue bump that it was able to link directly to their program insights and subsequent menu changes.

Pillar #4: Cost Reduction/ Elimination

Finally, organizations can use CX feedback and employee feedback to both save money within operations and to simplify their provided experience. Are there ineffective processes that are costing more than they’re worth? Eliminating such costs can save companies time, resources, and revenue. (After all, training one employee can cost an average of almost $1,100!)

A top-tier mattress retailer used CX tools to install an exit survey for departing employees, giving them a greater understanding of employee sentiment. After implementing the necessary changes to reduce turnover and new hire training costs, the company was able to establish a clear link between its CX strategy and the ROI it helped to generate.

Don’t Stop at Customer Experience Metrics

In the simplest of terms, what we do as CX professionals is create interactions that inspire attitudes in our customers than, in turn, produce desired outcomes. One of your desired outcomes can be to simply improve your CX metrics, but don’t let your goals stop at the numbers! 

Instead, create a strategy for your experience program that aims to benefit the business as a whole by increasing customer acquisition and retention, growing wallet share, and decreasing unnecessary costs. You have the power to help your business thrive, so aim big, go beyond the metrics, and inspire meaningful outcomes!

Want to learn more about how your experience program can produce desired outcomes? Check out this eBook that explains how to use the power of social science and your experience ecosystem to leverage the power of a single moment and meet your goals.