What is experience-led growth?
Experience-led growth, or ELG, is a way for a business to get more customers, make more money, and be more profitable. This method is based on giving customers a great experience that makes them more loyal and likely to stick with you. The idea is that satisfied customers are more likely to buy from the business again, tell their friends about it, and be ready to pay more for goods and services.
A growth plan based on experience that tracks and improves the customer experience at all points of contact. When businesses look at customer feedback, they can quickly find places to improve and new ideas to try. ELG also helps businesses determine what parts of the customer trip work well to keep improving the experience.
For experience-led growth to work, you must give customers an event they will enjoy and remember. You must know much about user behavior and customer data analytics to create experiences that make customers feel heard, understood, and valued. One way to do this is to make each customer’s journey unique by sending them personalized messages or suggestions based on their hobbies and past interactions.
Experience-led growth tries to get businesses and customers to trust each other by ensuring that their goods, services, and experiences meet their needs. Businesses should try to figure out what their customers want so they can give them a good experience every time they deal with them. This could mean giving customers helpful support when they have questions or problems, making it easier for them to get to their goods or services, or even giving them rewards for buying or subscribing often.
Companies can be successful in the long run by understanding what customers want and giving them an experience that meets those needs. This will increase customer loyalty, happiness, brand advocacy, and sales.
Synonyms
- customer-led growth
- customer experience-led growth
- ELG
Why is it important to grow through experience?
One of the main things that sets one brand apart from another is the customer experience, which leads to long-term profits. Businesses can make more money by keeping customers because they can get more value from their current customer group. A study by McKinsey found a “strong correlation between companies’ CX ratings and their revenue growth.” The study found that companies that were better at customer experience grew their revenue more than twice as fast as companies that weren’t as good at it.
Keeping present customers happy raises customer satisfaction and lowers the number of people who leave. The Forrester Analytics Customer Experiences Index Online Survey says businesses see a high return on investment (ROI) when investing in changing the customer experience (CX). Their study shows that customers are 2.7 times more likely to spend more and 2.4 times more likely to stay with a company that solves their problems quickly.
Advantages of a Growth Strategy Based on Experience
Different benefits can come from an experience-led growth strategy for companies willing to do what it takes to make and use one. This method is based on giving people consistent, dependable, and valuable experiences that help them stay with the business and make more money.
It makes customers more loyal.
Focusing on an experience-led growth strategy can help businesses connect with their customers in more ways than just giving them goods or services. Customers are more likely to come back if they enjoyed their experience. This is because it makes them feel like they have a link to the business. This feeling of connection can also lead to more spending, better word-of-mouth marketing, higher scores and reviews, and, in the end, more sales growth and a higher customer lifetime value.
Has a positive effect on product development
A growth strategy based on experience also helps companies improve goods and services. Companies can better understand their target audience’s wants and needs by giving each customer a unique experience. This helps them keep improving their products and services. Also, companies can set themselves apart from the competition by making new events that stand out in the market and bring in more sales.
Meets or Goes Beyond What Customers Expect
Customers today expect experiences that are more and more tailored to their specific wants. Companies can meet or beat these expectations with an ELG plan that lets customers choose products and services. Companies can also use information about how customers connect with their brands across multiple channels to send them relevant, personalized content. This personalized method helps customers trust you, which means they stay with you longer.
Increases the efficiency of operations
A growth plan based on experience uses technologies to make operations more efficient while cutting costs. AI and machine learning are two examples of analytics tools businesses can use to look at real-time customer behavior patterns and find ways to improve things. With this information, businesses can make their processes as efficient as possible while providing excellent customer service.
Gets rid of data silos
An experience-led growth strategy makes it easier for departments to work together. It gives customers a consistent experience by giving team members quick access to information they can use from a single data source. Teams can work together on projects and strategies based on collected customer data if all departments can access the same analytics and insights. This helps them make better choices that will improve customers’ experiences.
Problems with Creating Growth Through Experience
When organizations make an ELG plan, they must deal with many problems. Companies have to deal with many problems to give their customers great experiences, such as confusing buying processes, old technology, and data stored in different places. Here are some of the most common problems that come up when experience-led growth is put into place.
Tricky ways to buy things
A hard-to-understand buying process can ruin the customer’s experience. Customers get frustrated and confused when the shopping process is too complex to understand, so they don’t buy as much. Also, buyers might not return if they think the buying process is too complex. Order tracking mistakes and shipping problems can also hurt customers’ trust and make them less likely to buy again.
Messaging that isn’t uniform across channels
Customers can get confused when brands don’t stay consistent across all platforms. This can slow down experience-driven growth strategies. Customers expect the same message on all platforms, like websites, social media accounts, and other digital channels. Because of this, companies need to ensure that their branding stays consistent at all points of contact with customers. This means using the exact words and images across all channels when discussing the business’s goods and services and ensuring that visible elements like logos and colors stay the same across all channels.
Personalized Experiences on a Large Scale
Most businesses find it hard to provide personalized digital experiences on a large scale. Customers want to be treated as unique people, but they also want to have a consistent experience with a brand. To offer contextually relevant experiences, this needs unified data and technology, which may be hard for some companies to pull off.
Out of Date Technology
Lack of or out-of-date technology can also slow down growth that comes from experience. Customers today expect a smooth digital experience because there are so many mobile devices and apps. Businesses that don’t keep up with the latest tech trends might not be able to meet customer expectations or, even worse, might give users bad experiences that could hurt the company’s image. To be successful, businesses need to spend money on new technologies like cloud computing and data tools that make digital experiences easy for customers.
Studying the Data
A lack of data analysis is another problem that stops many companies from growing through experience-led growth. Companies can’t measure performance or make intelligent choices about their customers’ needs and behaviors if they don’t have the right tools for analyzing data. Companies need to use data analytics tools like segmentation, clustering algorithms, and predictive analytics to find customer groups or figure out purchase trends so they can give each customer a better experience that fits their needs.
How to Put an Experience-Based Growth Plan Into Action
Companies must always look for ways to get more customers and grow because today’s business world is very competitive. One good way to do this is with an ELG approach. It means figuring out what customers want and need and giving it to them by making a business plan focused on them and a personalized customer journey to keep them interested in the brand.
To use an experience-led growth strategy, businesses must determine their customers’ wants and develop solutions that meet those needs. Making a plan for giving customers a great experience at all of your brand’s outlets and touchpoints will help you build a consistent experience.
To plan for a customer-focused business model, the company must first decide on the desired financial outcome and related customer-focused KPIs, such as wallet share, cross-sell rates, and retention rates. Then, it must decide which customer experiences are most important for affecting those KPIs.
Create business models that focus on the customer.
An experience-led growth plan needs a business model focused on the customer. It’s meant to put the needs and wants of the customer first, build trust, and ensure they have a good experience from beginning to end. Anil Chakravarthy, president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business, says, “It requires connecting the whole customer experience—from getting them to staying with you—and keeping them.”
Companies use research, surveys, interviews, and focus groups to learn more about their customers and make business plans focused on them. After learning about those needs, they ensure that the goods, services, and experiences they offer meet them. The main goal is for customers to feel like they are essential and that their choices are considered when they are made.
For a customer-focused business plan, a company must have strong leadership that puts the customer first. This means having people on your team ready to go the extra mile to give excellent service. It also means spending money on training programs and technology to help you talk to customers better and solve problems faster.
This kind of plan can lead to more sales because customers are happier and more loyal when they know that companies value them.
Change the way customers get to you.
If a company wants to use an experience-led growth strategy, it might have to change how the customer interacts with the company to meet their needs better and link all the different points of contact. By doing this, you will always have a good time.
To make a good customer journey, you need to know precisely what the person wants to achieve and how they plan to do it. It’s also essential to consider their reasons for doing what they’re doing, their behaviors, preferences, and goals throughout the experience. This way of doing things lets interactions be more tailored to the customer’s wants and needs, giving them value throughout the trip. Businesses can boost customer loyalty and repeat sales by planning thoughtful journeys based on personalized experiences.
When new customers come in the door, these unique experiences make it easier for them to trust your brand, which leads to better relationships in the long run. Creating innovative customer journeys builds trust between buyers and brands and boosts conversions by showing users the easiest way to complete an action or purchase goal.
Make experiences unique for each person.
Creating customized experiences is a vital part of experience-led growth. It starts with market research, polls showing how people behave, and analytics that track how people use your site. Once the company knows what kind of customer they want, they can plan to give them great experiences specifically designed to meet their needs. Some ways to do this are to offer discounts or special deals, make personalized suggestions, or make goods and services that fit your needs. Businesses must build strong connections with their customers and provide personalized experiences. You can do this by creating loyalty programs that reward customers for returning, staying in touch with customers through email or text message campaigns, or just answering their questions or comments directly.
With predictive analytics, you can send the right messages to people at the right time in their journey as a customer. Personalizing messages based on language, location, audience segment, and other customer data can help make them more exciting and powerful. At this level, personalization does a lot to keep customers interested and coming back.
Add value at all stages of the customer lifecycle.
To achieve experience-led growth, you must add value at every customer journey stage. Creating value means giving great onboarding and help to new customers, cross-selling based on customer data, upselling based on customer behavior, and sharing special offers for current customers.
After looking at studies on how to grow through customer experience, McKinsey found that “successful experience-led growth strategies—those that increase customer satisfaction by at least 20 percent—can deliver a range of significant financial benefits.” They can boost businesses’ share of wallets by 5 to 10 percent, increase cross-sell rates by 15 to 25 percent, and make customers happier and more engaged by 20 to 30 percent.
Use technology for sales and billing.
Companies can ensure their customers have a consistent and reliable experience with the sales and billing process by using CRM, CPQ, and billing tools that work together and put the customer first. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools help companies understand how their customers act so they can make choices that make the whole experience better for their customers. Companies can keep track of their contacts with customers and give each person tailored service with CRM based on their specific wants and needs. This lets businesses tailor their approach to each customer, which builds better relationships and brings in more sales.
CRM platforms also let companies automate specific jobs, like following up with customers or sending surveys to learn more about the experience. This helps businesses quickly find places to improve and improve the customer experience. Companies can get a complete picture of the customer experience by combining data from different systems, like analytics or marketing automation. This helps them make targeted campaigns and improve the whole trip.
Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) is another essential tool for driving ELG and improving the B2B customer experience. CPQ solutions are pieces of software that help companies automate the process of quoting and placing orders. CPQ software helps businesses match their sales operations with experience-led growth strategies by configuring products, setting prices, and making customer quotes pleasant. With guided selling in CPQ, sales teams can focus on what the customer wants while choosing the best products or bundles. CPQ also speeds up time-consuming tasks like creating contracts, figuring out prices and discounts, getting approvals, and more. This lets sales teams respond faster to customers’ requests for price quotes. By automating these tasks, CPQ solutions free up more staff time for companies to focus on giving customers a great experience that builds loyalty and long-term sales. CPQ solutions also give you the tools to analyze data so your ELG plans work.
Companies also digitize billing to improve the customer experience in this area of their business. By making the payment process more manageable, billing platforms are now used to help companies grow through the customer experience. For customers, they offer a safe and dependable way to pay online or on their phones. This cuts down on paperwork and boosts productivity, letting companies focus more on making experiences that people will remember, like offering engaging customer service or personalized product suggestions.
By making billing processes more efficient, billing systems can also help keep customers returning. For instance, they might offer subscription and payment plans that let customers pay in flexible amounts or all at once. This will build trust in the business and ensure steady streams of income. Billing platforms may also offer real-time analytics that helps businesses learn more about their customers’ habits and tastes, which lets them make the experiences more relevant to those needs.
How to Measure Effectively CX
Gathering valid customer data is one of the most essential parts of creating a good ELG plan. Surveys, focus groups, interviews, and other study methods can be used to get feedback. But it’s essential to remember that old-fashioned ways of getting feedback aren’t always helpful because they don’t show how well a company is doing. So, when you ask customers for feedback, you need to use more advanced methods like mood analysis and voice analytics.
Using data analytics tools like heatmaps and NPS (Net Promoter Score) numbers is another essential part of measuring the customer experience (CX). Heatmaps move the mouse’s movements to show patterns of how people use different pages on a website or app. On the other hand, on a scale from 1 to 10, NPS scores ask customers how likely or unlikely they are to suggest a product or service. This shows how loyal the customers are. Businesses can find places to improve and make new goods or services based on user needs by looking at these metrics over time.
Lastly, for businesses to successfully use effective CX measurement, they must constantly compare their performance to best practices and industry standards. Before starting any ELG projects, companies must ensure they have clear goals to keep track of their progress over time. Businesses should also try to use relevant KPIs to compare performance levels to those benchmarks. This will help them figure out how successful they are.
