Innovating Analytics: How the Next Generation of Net Promoter Can Increase Sales and Drive Business Results

Chapter 6

Why the Customer Experience Matters

In the previous two chapters, I have argued that customers' satisfaction with their experiences drives customer retention, customer upsell, marketing-driven customer acquisition, and word-of-mouth acquisition—all of which drive financial success. As satisfaction increases, sales increase. As satisfaction increases, transactions increase. As satisfaction increases in one channel, it drives sales in other channels. As satisfaction increases in comparison to the competition, the likelihood to purchase increases while the likelihood of purchasing from a competitor dramatically decreases. And as satisfaction increases, positive word-of-mouth True Promoters increase and negative word-of-mouth True Detractors decrease.

Many people use the terms “customer satisfaction” and “customer experience” interchangeably and there are some overlaps between the two concepts. The first important point is to consider a broad definition of “customer” for both definitions. Customer should mean any person or organization that interacts with a company as a customer, prospect, trading partner, or in some other similar capacity. A customer should be not be restricted to mean a person or organization that buys goods or services from a company.

A customer experience is the interaction between a customer (as defined above) and an organization. A customer experience is the sum of the components of the individual experience, and a few examples are elements such as ...