Customers want to feel they come first. Your customer experience metrics can reveal what your brand needs to change to make sure they do.
Those insights can cover a lot of ground, though. Customer experience (CX) encompasses more than just customer service. According to McKinsey, CX is “everything an organization does to deliver superior experiences, value, and growth for customers.”
And it can’t be ignored if you want your business to succeed: Salesforce reports that 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.
Outside your customer loyalty program, rewards can be used to maximize every interaction opportunity — and help advance your customer experience metrics along the way.
Here are five simple ways to use rewards to optimize your business’s CX.
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores tell you how happy customers are with your overall service, making them useful for retention efforts. When customers report having a bad service experience, offering to make it right — along with giving them a reward of their choice — shows that you value their business. After you deliver the digital reward, ask them to give a follow-up rating to improve the average score, which is often considered one of the most important customer experience metrics.
READ MORE: How to Use a Digital Prepaid Card or Gift Card for Customer Appeasement
Brands are built on word of mouth. Naturally, your customers are the best source for business-building referrals. When you offer your customers the right reward for each referral they submit, you can move the needle and ultimately help your lead generation.
Choosing a reward that aligns with your audience’s preferences is the key. Customers with families may appreciate rewards that can be used to put dinner on the table, like Hello Fresh or Grubhub, while single folks may appreciate streaming services like Sling TV or Hulu. Using a clever referral campaign also gives your marketing team the chance to shine a light on your brand identity without breaking your budget.
Much has been written about the importance of lifetime customer value — it’s the metric that should be driving your decisions on sales, marketing, product development, and customer support. Offering a points-based loyalty program that rewards repeat customers not only builds long-term relationships, it also gives you plenty of opportunities for a high level of customer engagement.
Customers today expect a seamless experience. The more you can do to eliminate friction, the more satisfied your customers will be. Your customer effort score (CES), therefore, is an important part of your customer experience metrics.
When you survey customers asking them how easy it is to receive a product or service from you, the data they provide can help you improve the overall customer experience. Incentivizing customers to respond with a reward can help you get a wide spectrum of responses about how to improve your product, as software developers often do to find out what would be valuable in future releases.
Last but not least, once you incorporate rewards into your CX, be sure to add those claim rates to the list of customer experience metrics that you’re tracking. If recipients aren’t claiming the rewards you’re offering, it’s because either the reward isn’t appealing enough to them or they’re not recognizing the offer for some reason. Either way, your customer experience will suffer. Research what resonates with your particular customers to turn things around.
In addition to boosting your customer experience metrics, rewards can optimize your entire sales journey. Download our Sales Playbook: Using Rewards for Prospects and Customers to learn more!
BHN Rewards puts the power of digital rewards to work for marketers, researchers, and HR managers. Don't forget to check out all the great content in our Resources section!
BHN Rewards puts the power of digital rewards to work for marketers, researchers, and HR managers. Don't forget to check out all the great content in our Resources section!
