Four reasons the customer experience your business delivers is a bigger driver of profit than the product.
When companies consider their profitability, the first thing they think about isn’t usually their customer experience, but it probably should be. People, increasingly, place real value on the ease and consistency of a brand’s customer experience. More than half of all consumers will pay more for a good experience, even if they receive the same product or result in the end. Your digital reputation, the sum of all your customer experiences, is directly linked to profit.
Here are four reasons the quality of the customer experience, not the quality of your product or service, actually drives profit:
While people will pay more, up front, for a good customer experience, a good digital reputation has an over-sized effect on profit. Customers who have a positive experience with you are more likely to recommend your company to others online, which has a direct effect on your bottom line. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, two out of every three people make purchases based on the recommendations they receive.
It’s often easier – and more profitable – to invest in customer experience than to invest in your product or service directly. XAmplifier research shows that a positive customer experience can improve customer satisfaction, even when the product or service falls short of the customer’s expectations. Companies that focus on improving their customer experience, as much as their product or service, see a more rapid increase in inquiries.
For more than half of consumers, your online rating is the most important determinant of whether or not they’ll do business with you, according to BrightLocal. As many as 49 percent won’t spend money at a business that has less than a 4-star rating.
A Harvard Business School study finds that rating is linked directly to revenue. When companies increase their Yelp rating by just one star, they end up increasing their revenue by between 5% and 9%.
XAmplifier data confirms the Harvard Business School findings. Across the board, the quality of our clients’ digital reputation is directly correlated with the number of qualified inquiries it receives. When, with the help of xAmplifier, a client increased one of its location’s average online rating from 2.7 stars to 4.3 stars, that particular location’s inquiries skyrocketed.
“We live in a world where our online reputation is our strongest asset,” says Dr. Matt Leavitt, CEO of the XAmplifier client Advanced Dermatology & Cosmetic Surgery. “That’s why it’s important to have great word-of-mouth marketing for positive online customer reviews. It has really had a tremendous effect on our business.”
If you’re looking to boost your company’s profit, turn your attention to digital reputation first. Contact XAmplifier to get started.