User Experience Is The Heart Of Any Company. How Do You Make It Top Priority? The closer you are to your customers, the more relevant your product will be and the more likely you make it for people to choose you. It may seem obvious, but the gap between those that do and those that talk is widening, despite the immediate bottom-line benefits. But more than this, companies that put usefulness at the heart of what they do become part of their customers’ lives.
Engaging with customers then becomes an ongoing conversation, rather than the stop-start involvement that characterized the 20th century. This makes it much easier for customers to come back, and keep coming back. Who are you for? Usefulness is best achieved by thinking about everything as user experience. Financial services like Zopa or the recently launched Simple (first known as BankSimple) are taking customer needs into account by addressing the frustration associated with the traditional banking system. Designed to evolve with life Don’t always ask the audience 3 Case Studies Be More Like Apple. Understanding Online Customer Experience. What if you discovered a fixable problem was costing your company a quarter of its revenues? Well, a recent survey commissioned by Tealeaf® and conducted by Econsultancy shows just that. The survey of nearly 500 business professionals working for companies involved in e-commerce and e-business indicates that U.S. companies are losing as much as 23 percent of their entire annual online revenues from providing poor experiences to their online customers.
One would assume that a loss of this magnitude would be a wake-up call to ebusinesses. However, most companies lack the tools and processes to truly understand online customer experience and, therefore, don't know what they're missing. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, but it's certainly not in the recipe for ebusiness success.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King Customer retention is a greater challenge online. How do most companies learn about website issues, then? $2 million in Revenue Recovery is No Small Potatoes. Yes, Virginia, There Is A Return On Customer Experience Investments. In some business circles, getting people to believe in a return on customer experience investments is a lot like getting them to acknowledge the existence of Santa Claus. Admittedly, it can be difficult to quantify a specific profit or revenue impact from some types of experience enhancers—more robust “voice of the customer” programs, more polished customer statements, better trained front-line personnel, streamlined customer touchpoints, a more user-friendly website, etc.
The financials surrounding such initiatives are much less precise than those of hard-dollar initiatives, like the renegotiation of real estate leases or the consolidation of corporate functions. Of course, that doesn’t mean customer experience investments have any less of a compelling return than these other endeavors. It just takes a little more work to quantify it. And, frankly, in some cases, it requires a leap of faith.
Leap of Faith? I know what you’re thinking. Is The Market Rewarding Customer Experience Leaders? Us-top-40-e-retail-satisfaction-index-holiday-2011-foresee. It's 2012, but these major retailers still can't get online right. By Douglas A. McIntyre, Charles B. Stockdale, Michael B. Sauter, 24/7 Wall St. Customer service surveys cannot entirely distinguish between true, direct customer service on the one hand and brand perception and reputation of the company providing the service on the other. A look at the customer service scores of the largest retailers proves that point. 24/7 Wall St. examined the internet retailers with the best and worst customer satisfaction ratings based on ForeSee’s Holiday E-retail Satisfaction Index.
To put those customer service rankings in context, we looked at how the parent companies that own the websites have performed recently. It begs the question: Does Apple have such a high customer service ranking because so many consumers love the Apple brands? At the bottom of the ForeSee index are Gap, Sony, and Overstock. ForeSee’s E-retail Satisfaction Index included the top 40 retailers by sales. 24/7 Wall St.: Worst product flops of 2011 The Worst Online Stores This Holiday 10. 9. 8.