Customer Effort As A Measurement Of Business Success
A growing number of brands are implementing technology at various touch-points of the customer journey to reduce customer effort and deliver more seamless experiences.
Let’s take eBay, for example. Currently being dwarfed by competition from Amazon, the online retailing giant recently introduced an image search feature which uses deep learning to analyze photos and find similar products for the best prices.
The feature allows users to spend less time and effort trying to find what they’re looking for, with the use of a more intuitive search system.
So, how does customer effort influence a brand’s success?
According to a report by research company Gartner, a low effort experience from the customer’s point of view results in a 74% increased likelihood of a customer recommending the brand to others. Furthermore, a low effort experience also increases the chances of a customer spending more on the brand over a lifetime by 88%.
On the other hand, a high effort experience results in 81% increased likelihood of negative word of mouth, as well as a 96% increase in customers’ overall disloyalty towards the brand.
What Steps Can Businesses Take To Reduce Customer Effort?
At the end of the day, what customers value above everything else is a simple, effortless experience. The more difficult your business is to work with, the less likely you are going to keep long-time customers.
To begin making improvements within their customer journeys, businesses can start to frequently measure and identify the steps at various touch-points that contribute to a high effort experience. This way, first steps can be made towards delivering experiences that are more seamless and relevant to customers.
How can a touch-point be made effortless?
By turning it into something else. One possibility is to make the customer journey more fun and enjoyable, either through gamifying it or connecting it to a social platform.
Louis Vuitton, the world’s most valuable luxury brand, utilizes WeChat’s message automation and intelligent response API to offer instant customer service.
This not only enables shoppers in China to get immediate answers to common queries, but also reduces effort by integrating the support into an already popular messaging app.
Furthermore, intelligent process automation ensures streamlined communication between the business and the customer. This can nowadays be seen among fintechs, who have digitized their services by implementing online and mobile banking.
By reducing the steps and effort that would normally be required to access banking services, fintechs have made it easier for themselves to gain customer loyalty and recommendations.
DIVE DEEPER —
Explore the report ‘Touch-Point Technology: Transforming The Customer Journey’
This article is based on insights from our deep dive report on Touch-Point Technology: Transforming The Customer Journey.
This report explores how brands are responding to rising expectations in speed, precision, personalization and security through implementation of technologies at crucial touch-points (the moments of interaction between the brand and the customer).
