Came across an old statistic that is still very relevant for today’s businesses,

Our most recent customer-experience survey of some 27,000 American consumers across 14 different industries found that effective customer journeys are more important: measuring satisfaction on customer journeys is 30 percent more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than measuring happiness for each individual interaction. In addition, maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20 percent but also to lift revenue by up to 15 percent while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20 percent.

~Mckinsey, the 3 C’s of customer satisfaction

This is a very significant matter because a lot of businesses I talk to do value giving the individual customer a happy experience. Especially with the threat of social media backlash, criticism and negative reviews, businesses want customers and site visitors to have a good interaction with the company. Usually this is fixed with customer service related modifications – provide discounts if a customer is disgruntled or aim for speedy problem solving and so on.

However, what they don’t focus enough on is the entire flow of the website. Whether there is a clear path for the customer – all marked out and easy – so they can journey from a visitor –> interested –> customer –> loyal customer / repeat buyer seamlessly.

This customer journey is a key element in site conversion and revenue metrics. Naturally, it should be the key focus of the marketing and growth teams. Optimizing this journey and ensuring satisfaction can significantly improve site conversion and thus grow the business.

This means that businesses shouldn’t improve customer interactions in silo – a distinct customer service team, separate marketing team/agency for top of the funnel activation, separate sales teams for bottom funnel conversion and a disconnected tech team building the UI. It would be very difficult to provide a satisfactory journey with such silos.

Focusing on the customer journey as a whole would be much more holistic in the long term for any company.

A few first steps to bring the various team together for a cohesive and consistent customer experience in your company,

1. Ensure you have your primary customer journeys mapped out
2. A shift in the Marketing teams understanding – they have to work on understanding and improving this journey taken as a whole rather than in bits and pieces
3. All the various departments must understand each ones role with respective to this journey and seamless processes need to be develop to avoid any disconnect in the customer experience
4. Company branding, positioning, customer-defining exercises done across teams
5. Everyone contributes to the customer service team

I look at these aspects in my 12-day free email course on Business Growth process. Sign up here.

Our research indicates that since 2009, customers are valuing an “average” experience less and have even less patience for variability in delivery. In addition, companies that experience inconsistency challenges often expend unnecessary resources without actually improving the customer journey. Making additional investments to improve the customer experience without tightening the consistency of experience is just throwing good money after bad.

~Mckinsey, the 3 C’s of customer satisfaction

What are you doing in your company to ensure a consistent customer experience?