Why Customer Engagement is Important? Part 2 – Revenue Impact

The rapid homogenising of product and services has made marketers shift focus to customer experience (UX). In our previous article, we explained the importance of reviews and rants leading to customer engagement for online and offline enterprises. In this post, we will be analysing the impact of a positive UX on your revenues. Most businesses struggle with this very important aspect of sales, as UX helps in faster customer acquisition and increased brand awareness.

User experience is the forte of your marketing and sales departments. They curate and deliver the information needed for successful pitches. Therefore, the information should be replete with industry insights and virtual product demonstrations. A McKinsey report about use of transformational sales and marketing methods sheds some light on the importance of UX. The report states that companies using such methods have 90% higher sustained growth than those who do not. And, sustained growth naturally leads to sustained revenue generation and vice-versa.

Use of Digital Interactions and Interactive Storytelling

Adoption of disruptive technologies is fast transforming the product as well as the customer. A customer’s approach is no longer ‘feature based’ but is rather ‘value based’. Customers these days like to use self-guides and engaging content for solving their problems. Thus, creating a solution that puts customer in the driving seat can give enterprises a means of self-directed sales.

Cross Platform Support for a Seamless UX

IoT has enabled so many platforms and services that having a UX for singular platforms is no longer feasible. A customer should be able to take the experience with him when switching between platforms. For example, your desktop site cannot be worse off than your mobile website or app. You can however, include perks to guide customers to your preferred platform, as is done by Amazon for its mobile app.

Targeting B2B Customers

According to studies, most B2B customers have come 57% of the way through a buying cycle before having a one-on-one with your sales representatives. Thus, the number of lost deals for B2B marketers should be unsurprising. If you are a B2B seller, then your UX should be able to communicate with your customers at every turn in terms of features and value. This way, when your sales representative presents his case, it will already be a done deal (the importance of self-directed sales, remember?).

Online and Offline Parity

Being able to provide a seamless experience when a customer interacts with you offline – either without internet access or physical visits – is also an important aspect of UX. Consider Apple’s website, call centre and store services as an example. Users get the same ‘cared for’ feeling when interacting with any of the company’s sale and service points of contact. Which in turn allows Apple to charge exorbitant margins on its products.

Dependable User Analytics

All processes which rely on user experience require constant tweaking and refinement. Therefore, getting actionable analytics data on user preferences and behaviour is imperative for driving revenues with UX. Analytics also help you understand the nature of ROI on your UX experiments. Using cloud computing and machine learning tools can put you ahead of the competition in understanding trends and market outlook.

Constant Improvement is Necessary

For continued revenue growth, a continued effort in the user experience is a must. Customers should not feel neglected after you have made the sale. Constant engagement through emailers, app updates, notifications, etc. not only makes users loyal, but also drives brand image and boosts sales.

Concluding thoughts: User experience is a key indicator of a company’s commitment. A positive UX strategy can boost your company’s revenues, just like it does for Apple, and a negative one can do the opposite, just like it did for Nokia.