Why is it important to connect with customers?
When companies connect with customers’ emotions, the payoff can be huge. Consider these examples: After a major bank introduced a credit card for Millennials that was designed to inspire emotional connection, use among the segment increased by 70% and new account growth rose by 40%. Within a year of launching products and messaging to maximize emotional connection, a leading household cleaner turned market share losses into double-digit growth. And when a nationwide apparel retailer reoriented its merchandising and customer experience to its most emotionally connected customer segments, same-store sales growth accelerated more than threefold.
Why is customer base important to a business?
Knowing your customers lets you in on the secrets of what your specific audience loves to see and what annoys them. It gives you an insider perspective on the type of marketing content you need, the media sources you should be using, the sales conventions needed on your website, and the kinds of products and services you should be developing.
human spending patterns are set to a pattern and process of “spend ‘til it hurts,” so understanding these different levels of pain points is essential to maximizing your potential sales:
- Unconflicted (61%): Average spenders.
- Spendthrifts (15%): People who are able to spend more before they hit their maximum buying pain.
- Tightwads (24%): People who spend less (on average) before they hit their maximum buying pain.
So which type of buyer is most difficult to convert? The tightwads.
Since they comprise nearly a quarter of your potential customers, you should learn some of the smart techniques to minimize buying pain for your “tightwad” customers.
High-Impact Motivators
There are many ways to connect with customers. Business owners, Ceo’s, Brand Managers, Sales heads and managers as well as customer relationship experts share their tips and feedback on how and where to best engage with existing and prospective customers on site as the most effective way to analyse forecast and audit the brand life span.
What do you know about your customers?
The more you know about your customers, the more effective your sales and marketing efforts will be. It’s well worth making the effort to find out:
- who they are
- what they buy
- why they buy it
If you’re selling to other businesses, you’ll need to know which individuals are responsible for the decision to buy your product or service. For information on targeting decision-makers, see our guide on how to target the right people in an organisation.
You can learn a great deal about your customers by talking to them. Asking them why they’re buying or not buying, what they may want to buy in the future and asking what other needs they have can give a valuable picture of what’s important to them.
Strong sales are driven by emphasising the benefits that your product or service brings to your customers. If you know the challenges that face them, it’s much easier to offer them solutions.
It’s also well worth keeping an eye on future developments in your customers’ markets and lives. Knowing the trends that are going to influence your customers helps you to anticipate what they are going to need – and offer it to them as soon as they need it.
You can conduct your own market research and there are many existing reports that can help you build a picture of where your customers’ markets – and your business – may be going.
Customer’s current supplier
Chances are your potential customer is already buying something similar to your product or service from someone else. Before you can sell to a potential customer, you need to know:
- who the customer’s current supplier is
- if the customer is happy with their current supplier
- if buying from you would offer the customer any benefits – and, if so, what those benefits would be
The easiest way to identify a potential customer’s current supplier is often simply to ask them. Generally people are very happy to offer this information, as well as an indication of whether they’re happy with their present arrangements.
If you can find out what benefits they’re looking for, you stand a better chance of being able to sell to them. The benefits may be related to price or levels of service, for example. Are there any benefits your business can offer that are better than those the potential customer already receives? If there are, these should form the basis of any sales approach you make.
Ten things you need to know about your customers
- Who they are
If you sell directly to individuals, find out your customers’ gender, age, marital status and occupation. If you sell to other businesses, find out what size and kind of business they are. For example, are they a small private company or a big multinational? - What they do
If you sell directly to individuals, it’s worth knowing their occupations and interests. If you sell to other businesses, it helps to have an understanding of what their business is trying to achieve. - Why they buy
If you know why customers buy a product or service, it’s easier to match their needs to the benefits your business can offer. - When they buy
If you approach a customer just at the time they want to buy, you will massively increase your chances of success. - How they buy
For example, some people prefer to buy from a website, while others prefer a face-to-face meeting. - How much money they have
You’ll be more successful if you can match what you’re offering to what you know your customer can afford. - What makes them feel good about buying
If you know what makes them tick, you can serve them in the way they prefer. - What they expect of you
For example, if your customers expect reliable delivery and you don’t disappoint them, you stand to gain repeat business. - What they think about you
If your customers enjoy dealing with you, they’re likely to buy more. And you can only tackle problems that customers have if you know what they are. - What they think about your competitors
If you know how your customers view your competition, you stand a much better chance of staying ahead of your rivals.
What consumers want from brands in a divided society
Customer experience improvement is critical, but it’s very hard and expensive to execute. It requires prioritizing and managing large investments that span multiple functions across the organization, all in the hope that customer value will increase. By setting emotional connection as the overarching goal, the “true north” of the customer experience, companies can point their investments in the right direction, execute more effectively, and reap significant financial rewards.
Mind the (Emotional Connection) Gap
How do businesses connect with customers?
Customers’ key emotional motivators were their desire to feel a sense of belonging, be thrilled by the shopping experience, and have a sense of freedom and independence. The retailer executed marketing programs designed specifically to address these motivators at the “choose store” and “make a purchase” stages of the customer journey – for example, by using relatable models within their advertising imagery and providing personalized alerts on new items, aspects of the experience that drove emotional connection even though customers said these weren’t important.
Shaping a customer experience by being precise about the emotional connections you’re trying to build and investing in the touch points that drive these connections is an powerful way to increase customer value, and maximize the return on investment decisions and minimize the risk. Emotionally connected customers not only generate greater value, but in every interaction become more and more convinced that “this company gets me.”
Companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%.
84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue.
Companies with a customer experience mindset drive revenue 4-8% higher than the rest of their industries.
Two-thirds of companies compete on customer experience, up from just 36% in 2010.
73% of companies with above-average customer experience perform better financially than their competitors.
96% of customers say customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand.
83% of companies that believe it’s important to make customers happy also experience growing revenue.
Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience.
73% of consumers say a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties.
77% of consumers say inefficient customer experiences detract from their quality of life.
Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers.
Customers switching companies due to poor service costs U.S. companies a total of $1.6 trillion.
Loyal customers are five times more likely to purchase again and four times more likely to refer a friend to the company.
American consumers will pay 17% more to purchase from a company with a reputation for great service.
Companies that excel at customer experience have 1.5 times more engaged employees than less customer-focused companies.
Companies with initiatives to improve their customer experience see employee engagement increase by 20% on average.
Companies with engaged employees outperform the competition by 147%.
81% of companies view customer experience as a competitive differentiator.
68% of customers say the service representative is key to a positive service experience.
The top reason customers switch brands is because they feel unappreciated.
64% of companies with a customer-focused CEO believe they are more profitable than their competitors.
63% of CEOS want to rally organizations around customers as the top investment priority.
90% of CEOs believe the customer has the greatest impact on their business.
Customer experience leaders are more likely to have senior executives leading company-wide efforts.
22% of Fortune 100 companies have a C-level customer officer, compared to 10% of Fortune 500 and 6% of Fortune 1000.
90% of CEOs believe customers have the biggest impact on company strategies.
75% of customer experience management executives gave customer experience a top score for being incredibly important to business.
59% of companies with a CEO who is involved in customer experience report higher revenue growth, compared to just 40% of companies without a customer-focused CEO reporting growth.
39% of CEOs say customer experience is the most effective method of creating a competitive advantage, which was the most common answer.
90% of global executives who use data analytics report that they improved their ability to deliver a great customer experience.
77% of consumers view brands more favorably if they seek out and apply customer feedback.
Companies that earn $1 billion a year will see an average gain of $700 million within three years of investing in customer experience.
Customers tell an average of nine people about a positive experience with a brand, but they tell 16 people about a negative experience.
69% of U.S. consumers shop more with brands that offer consistent experiences in store and online.
Companies that use tools like customer journey maps reduce their cost of service by 15-20%.
Companies that have embraced digital transformation are 26% more profitable than their peers.
The top 10 most empathetic companies increased their financial value more than twice the bottom 10 companies.
Offering a high-quality customer experience can lower the cost of serving customers by up to 33%.
71% of the companies say the cloud has influenced the customer experience.
65% of companies say improving their data analysis is very important to delivering a better customer experience.
Two-thirds of customers will share personal information with brands, but only in exchange for some kind of value.
Customers are likely to spend 140% more after a positive experience than customers who report negative experiences.
70% of Americans have spent more money to do business with a company that offers great service.
Companies that provide an emotional connection with customers outperform the sales growth of their competitors by 85%.
A 2% increase in customer retention is the same to profits as cutting costs by 10%.
87% of customers who say they had a great experience will make another purchase from the company, compared to 18% of customers who had a very poor experience.
52% of marketers adapt their strategies and tactics based on customer interactions and feedback.
80% of customers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences.
75% of marketers say they will be responsible for the end-to-end experience over the customer’s lifetime.
62% of marketing leaders said use of online customer data at their firms increased in the last two years, and 70% said they expect to use more online data in the next two years.
By implementing an emotional-connection-based strategy across the entire customer experience — including how it communicates with customers and attracts prospects – this retailer has increased its percentage of emotionally connected customers from 21% to 26%, reduced its customer attrition rate from 37% to 33%, and increased customer advocacy from 24% to 30%, resulting in a 15% increase in the number of active customers and more than a 50% increase in the rate of same-store-sales growth.
Among customers’ key emotional motivators were their desire to feel a sense of belonging, be thrilled by the shopping experience, and have a sense of freedom and independence. The retailer executed marketing programs designed specifically to address these motivators at the “choose store” and “make a purchase” stages of the customer journey – for example, by using relatable models within their advertising imagery and providing personalized alerts on new items, aspects of the experience that drove emotional connection
Tail Piece:
By implementing an emotional-connection-based strategy across the entire customer experience — including how it communicates with customers and attracts prospects – this retailer has increased its percentage of emotionally connected customers from 21% to 26%, reduced its customer attrition rate from 37% to 33%, and increased customer advocacy from 24% to 30%, resulting in a 15% increase in the number of active customers and more than a 50% increase in the rate of same-store-sales growth.
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