Businesses are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars evaluating their customer experience, but even when they discover friction points, they do very little to address them. As a result, they’re missing out on countless repeated customer engagements, and eventually, on higher profits.
This is according to a new report from enterprise software specialists IFS which polled more than 1,700 executives and more than 12,000 consumers, finding that most companies (66 percent) invest at least $250,000 a year to evaluate their customer experience.
At the same time, more than four in five (82 percent) weren’t able to recall a “single positive example” of a recent frictionless customer experience. What’s more, of those that spotted various inflection points in their customer journey, almost a third (29 percent) did nothing about it.
Some said they were just too busy to handle the problem, while others (15 percent) said they proactively sought to pre-empt problems.
The ramifications, for businesses that decide to take no action, are “significant”, IFS further states. A quarter of consumers said a single bad experience would make them never want to engage with a brand again, while for the majority (52 percent), it takes two, or three bad takes. Also, it’s quite likely for the majority of consumers (58 percent) to share their negative perceptions with their friends and family.
At the same time, more than half (52 percent) are inclined to leave a positive review.
To achieve a stellar customer experience, IFS Chief Customer Officer Michael Ouissi believes, enterprises must “rethink how they architect their operations, “and become a ‘composable enterprise’ that harnesses a combination of packaged functions and technologies to deliver outcomes and adapts to the pace of business.”