Why do customers choose one brand over another? Customers consider customer experience one of the most important factors in their decision. A consistent customer experience across your franchise will result in more significant revenue and customer loyalty.
Learn what factors impact customer experience and how to build a positive customer experience that results in greater loyalty.
Key Takeaways:
- Customers with a positive experience are more willing to return to a business and spend more at that business.
- A positive customer experience depends on consistent messaging and aligned goals across all touchpoints and franchise locations.
- Use a centralized marketing system to collect and distribute customer data to unify the franchise’s messaging and activities.
What Is the Customer Experience?
The customer experience is how customers engage with your brand. When brands actively engage with customers and offer relevant and timely solutions, customers have a positive experience. However, when a brand doesn’t invest in customers and leaves a negative impression, customers have a poor experience. As a result, they are more likely to switch to a different brand that cares more about customer satisfaction.
Some factors that influence the customer experience include:
- Customer service: Is there a consistent customer service experience with knowledgeable and timely responses?
- Products: Do products have consistently high quality?
- Customer support: What resources and solutions does a brand offer for problems, and are the resources easy to access?
- Branding: Is the brand transparent and contact customers consistently with updates and new information?
- Social listening: Does the brand show it’s listening to customer comments and feedback and adjusts accordingly?
- Social responsibility: Does the brand care about ESG issues impacting the customers and community?
- Online content: Does the business website, social media, and online content have a single brand voice and appearance that unites the brand?
Benefits of Having a Consistent Customer Experience
The customer experience is crucial for success in today’s market because customers have greater power than in the past when making purchase decisions. The internet gives customers access to more information and options, increasing competition between brands.
Businesses responded to this customer-centric market by focusing more energy and resources on the customer’s experience over promoting products, as the experience directly impacts purchase behavior. A consistent customer experience means customers receive the same amount of care and attention across all devices and channels to improve a customer’s overall impression of a brand.
Consistent Customer Experiences Leads to Loyalty
Customer loyalty is crucial for company success because 65% of business comes from loyal customers. In addition, retention is more cost-efficient than customer acquisition.
One of the best ways to encourage customer loyalty is by improving the customer experience. Having a positive customer experience encourages customers to come back repeatedly. Nearly three-quarters of senior executives say customer experience directly impacts customer loyalty.
However, to enjoy the full benefits of a positive customer experience, franchises must ensure that the same experience is available across all channels and locations so that other marketing and customer service efforts aren’t counterproductive to the brand’s message and loyalty goals.
Source: SuperOffice
The more locations a brand has, the more challenges arise for delivering a consistent customer experience. Instead of focusing on one store and one set of products, a company has to track all stores and each store’s needs.
Investing in that consistent experience may require additional strategies but is worth the payoff as businesses can boost their profits from increased loyalty.
5 Tips to Improve Brand Loyalty through Customer Experience
Use these five tips to create a seamless and consistent customer experience across all your franchise locations and channels.
1. Personalize the Customer Experience
Three-quarters of US consumers are loyal to brands that personally understand them. Therefore, franchises that want to increase their loyalty should start by personalizing the customer experience across locations. A key to creating a personalized buyer’s journey is understanding the audience through customer insights.
Marketing automation that gathers customer data gives marketers the tools and information they need to create personalized content and interactions. Then, centralizing that data on a database for all locations to access ensures that personalization is consistent no matter where the customer is in the franchise.
2. Connect Marketing Channels Across Locations
Most senior-level marketers say a unified customer experience across touchpoints is essential for marketing success. However, when marketers deal with several channels and locations, a seamless experience becomes more difficult.
Businesses that use an automated marketing system can connect each channel in one place to track and run several marketing strategies at once across several locations. Running campaigns and tracking leads from one centralized system aligns marketing campaigns and messaging for a consistent customer experience.
3. Map the Customer Journey to Find New Opportunities
Customer journey mapping follows customers through each touchpoint. This visual tells marketers which channels customers interact with, where customers are most satisfied, and where there are potential issues.
Brands that use a customer journey map fully understand customers from end to end. This increased understanding helps brands deliver a consistent experience at each touchpoint along the way and identify touchpoints and channels that aren’t providing that same experience and are causing customers to leave the brand.
Source: Qualtrics
4. Clearly Define Your Brand
Brands that have a clear mission, values, and goals and share those with customers create a consistent experience as that message ties all channels and franchises together with a unified direction and purpose.
Each franchise location should also be aware of the brand’s mission and objectives to improve a brand’s messaging around those goals.
Brands can create a consistent experience by training employees with specific guidelines and definitions, so all locations and teams are on the same page about the company’s message and values.
5. Measure Customer Satisfaction to Continually Improve
Continually auditing the franchise and measuring multichannel marketing results keeps the marketing managers on top of customer experience by measuring customer satisfaction. Managers can identify issues early, determine what works well, and find areas to improve.
An audit fully analyzes the entire franchise and each location’s efforts. The audit looks at what each store is doing to improve customer satisfaction. Some ways to track and measure customer satisfaction are:
- Customer survey results
- Customer feedback
- Customer churn
- Customer support tickets
- Customer reviews
Stay on Top of Your Customer Experience
Use MXTR’s marketing automation platform to stay ahead of the customer experience by offering a consistently positive experience at every touchpoint and franchise location. In addition, you can unify your customer data from all locations to align your efforts and message through the platform.
Contact us to learn more about our marketing automation platform for franchises.
Feature Image: istockphoto
