Improving Customer Experience Insights and Loyalty

Best practices for boosting revenue and reducing churn

The old adage, “If you build it they will come,” couldn’t be more wrong. Having a good product isn’t enough to attract or retain customers. You also need to deliver a great customer experience. 

Consider this: 49% of consumers abandoned a brand they were loyal to in the past 12 months due to poor customer experience. Even worse, most companies had no idea they were going to churn. That’s because 95% of dissatisfied customers don’t complain directly to their vendor. 

So what should you do? You can’t count on replacing lost customers – not when acquiring a new customer often costs 5%-25% more than retaining an existing one.

The smart move is to do everything feasible to keep customers happy. How? By focusing on customer experience insights.

What do we mean by customer experience insights?

Customer experience insights means deeply understanding how customers interact with your company or products, and how they perceive those interactions.  

These insights go beyond surface levels. They delve into the nuanced behaviors, preferences, and expectations of various customer segments throughout their journey with your company. They help you identify what delights customers and what turns them away.

Insights can come from direct feedback on product usability and price. They could also come from complex data patterns that indicate how different customer segments engage with your service. For example, an e-commerce platform might analyze customer reviews and support tickets to identify common pain points in the checkout process. A SaaS company might use usage data to understand which features are most – or least – compelling at different stages of the customer journey.

Top 6 benefits of customer experience insights

1. Increases customer retention
   92% of businesses say that improving customer experience boosts customer loyalty. By definition, that reduces churn.  
2. Improves customer engagement
   Understanding the customer experience at a granular level helps businesses craft personalized engagement strategies that resonate with your audience. For example, sentiment analysis of customer feedback can reveal the emotional drivers behind customer loyalty.  With this knowledge, you can tailor communications and interactions to make them more relevant and effective.
3. Boosts revenue
   Satisfied and engaged customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and advocate for your brand. This leads to increased sales and customer acquisition. 84% of businesses cite uplifts in revenue as a key benefit of customer experience improvements.
4. Increases profitability
   By increasing customer retention by as little as 5%, you can raise profits by as much as 95%. That’s pretty astounding. Perhaps that’s why 94% of companies say cost reduction is a top benefit of customer experience insights. 
5. Streamlines operations
   Understanding customer journeys helps eliminate unnecessary processes and leads to smoother and more efficient operations. 
6. Enhances product and service design
   Many organizations use these insights to refine their offerings so they meet and exceed customer expectations. For instance, by analyzing customer feedback and product usage data, companies can identify features that may be lacking, uncover usability issues, and discover what aspects customers appreciate the most.

You can see why businesses are so attuned to customer experience (CX). However, despite more than 80% of business leaders indicating that improving CX is a high priority, just 6% saw a significant increase in 2023. This could be because they don’t have the right data, don’t follow the right practices, or don’t follow through on the insights they gain.

Finding the data you need

As noted above, the data you need for customer experience insights comes from many overlapping sources. Depending on the type of customers you target, sources may include:

• Feedback data: Customer surveys, feedback forms, product reviews, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys.
• Behavioral data: Website analytics (e.g., page views, time on site), app analytics for usage, Salesforce CRM, and e-commerce platforms for purchase history and customer interactions.
• Demographic and psychographic data: Age, location, job title, personal interests, company industry, and size.
• Customer support data: Support ticket themes, resolution times, and customer satisfaction scores post-resolution, via CRM and customer service platforms.
• Social media data: Mentions, hashtags, sentiment analysis, and engagement rates, via social listening tools and social media analytics platforms.
• Transactional data: Purchase records, return rates, and average deal value, from e-commerce, point-of-sale, and CRM software.

Best practices for leveraging data

• Make sure data is complete and accurate  
  If your data has any gaps or errors, the decisions your organization makes probably won’t deliver the results you need. One way to ensure CRM data accuracy is to use a tool such as GRAX. It backs up and replicates every version of Salesforce data into your own cloud. This ensures you always have a complete and accurate snapshot in time. With GRAX, you can even easily access archived data to analyze trends over longer periods of time.
• Use multiple sources 
  Combine different data types and sources for a 360-degree, granular view of the customer experience.
• Solicit feedback proactively
  Don’t wait for customers to come to you. They’re not likely to do so. And if they do, then you’ll be in fire-fighting mode. Instead, actively seek out their opinions through surveys and feedback mechanisms. Solicit their thoughts on what’s working, what’s not, and suggestions for improving their satisfaction. This will not only help you keep a finger on the pulse of their sentiments. It will also show customers you’re serious about delighting them.
• Segment your data
  Break down data by customer segments to identify specific insights and trends within various groups.
• Ensure privacy compliance
  Adhere to GDPR, CCPA, and other relevant privacy laws when collecting and storing data.

Tips for analyzing and presenting data

Now that you have the data you need, it’s time to transform your data into actionable insights. Here are some ways to do so. 

• Use advanced analytics tools
  Leverage tools equipped with AI and machine learning capabilities for deeper insights. Take advantage of Salesforce CRM analytics. 
• Leverage predictive analytics
  Use historical data for customer churn prediction models, including specific risks of churn, as well as for predicting customer behaviors and preferences.
• Visualize data
  Employ data visualization tools to help identify patterns and trends that might not be immediately apparent in raw data.
• Perform cohort analysis
  Track customer behavior over time by grouping customers into cohorts based on specific criteria (e.g., purchase date, product type) to observe trends and behaviors.
• Test and learn
  Use A/B testing to experiment with changes in the customer experience and measure their impact.

Consider self-service analytics

To truly empower your customer success teams, consider providing them with self-service analytics tools. These tools are designed for ease of use, enabling business users to perform analyses without needing specialized skills. With customer experience insights at their fingertips, they can delve more deeply into contributing factors and innovate ways to better serve your customers.

• Instant access to insights and accelerated decisions 
  Traditional data reporting processes can be slow and cumbersome, with requests for data analysis creating bottlenecks. Self-service analytics eliminates delays. Customer success leaders and team members can ask and answer their own questions on the fly. This immediate access empowers teams to make informed decisions quickly.
• Proactive customer management
  You can easily monitor customer health scores, usage trends, and satisfaction levels. This helps to predict customer issues and proactively address them before they escalate. This preemptive approach to managing customer relationships significantly improves customer retention and satisfaction.
• Personalized customer experiences
  65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences. However, 61% say most companies treat them as a number. Analyzing customer data helps teams tailor interactions and support based on individual customer needs and preferences. Self-service facilitates this personalization by providing insights into customer behaviors, preferences, and feedback.
• Agility and responsiveness
  In our fast-paced economy, waiting days or weeks for insights can mean missed opportunities and escalated customer issues. Self-service analytics provides real-time data access. Teams can react promptly to changes in customer behavior or market conditions.  
• Increased efficiency and productivity
  By reducing dependency on data scientists and IT staff for reports and insights, you free up those valuable resources. At the same, customer success managers can accelerate actions to address customer issues and boost loyalty and revenue.

Your customers have very high expectations. 80% consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services. If you don’t continually focus on understanding and exceeding those expectations, your competitors might. Don’t take that chance. 

Customer Experience Insights infographic