Customer experience (CX) involves a lot more than just good service. It encompasses the entire perception a customer has of a business, based on their interactions. As you may expect, companies that excel in CX outperform competitors significantly. However, you may not have realised just how significant that gap is. According to a McKinsey & Company study titled Creating Value Through Transforming Customer Journeys, businesses that provide exceptional CX can surpass their competitors’ gross margins by more than 26%, undeniably making great CX a worthwhile investment.
Beyond simple financial gains, CX is also pivotal in driving the customer loyalty necessary for long-term growth. The same McKinsey & Company study says that businesses optimising CX can achieve revenue growth of 5-10% while reducing costs by 15-25% within just two to three years, representing significant growth efficiency. It also drives home the need for all businesses to integrate a modern customer experience management platform to stay on top of all their customer interactions.
It’s clear that CX is important, but many businesses still struggle to define and solve specific, actionable issues that affect customers. Let’s explore common CX issues and some tried-and-true methods to fix them.
The most common customer experience issues and how to solve them
- Poor Customer Onboarding Experiences
A frustrating onboarding process can lead to early churn, leaving customers dissatisfied before they even fully engage with your product or service. The McKinsey & Company paper confirms this, showing that a one-point improvement on a ten-point scale on journey satisfaction correlates with at least a 3% increase in revenue growth rates.
Solution: Enhancing Onboarding Journeys
Educating customers and simplifying their journeys is critical for getting more customers to buy. Regular pulse surveys can help businesses identify ongoing onboarding pain points, enabling them to refine processes accordingly.
According to Wyzowl, a video and animated content company, 55% of polled buyers say they’ve returned a product because they didn’t fully understand how to use it. This holds true in the digital realm, with 8 in 10 users claiming to have deleted an app they didn’t understand. This all shows how important the onboarding experience is for customer retention and satisfaction.
Here’s another example: A fixed-line telecommunications company was experiencing 50% dissatisfaction rates with the installation process. Addressing this part of the customer journey resulted in a cascade of positive events that not only helped achieve early wins but also set the tone for the business’s transformation.
- Siloed Operations and Disjointed Customer Journeys
As discussed in the previous point, honing in on specific touchpoints is often necessary. However, focusing too much attention on isolated touchpoints can lead to highly siloed experiences. This can make it difficult to fully integrate customer insights, resulting in fragmented CX.
This issue is particularly relevant for B2B companies. B2B businesses score less than 50% on customer experience indices, significantly lagging behind more customer-centric B2C firms at 65-85%. With the rise of modern communications technologies, CX expectations from the B2C have already started migrating to the B2B.
Solution: Implementing a Journey-Based CX Strategy
Instead of focusing on individual touchpoints, businesses should step back and optimise the entire customer journey. The first challenge is to figure out what the customer journey looks like. Customer journeys must be mapped across all sales and marketing channels, devices, functions, and other touchpoints. From there, businesses can start identifying where customer pain points and opportunities lie.
The challenge can be more complex for B2B businesses, as they are often further removed from the ultimate users of their products, which can be truer in globalised markets. However, this just means that mapping must include all stakeholders, not just the business customers buying B2B products, but those businesses’ ultimate users, as well.
In a case described in Creating Value Through Transforming Customer Journeys, an elevator manufacturer identified critical points in the buying decision process through journey mapping. It discovered that the strongest influencers were not building owners but the actual elevator users, whose experiences reached presidents of housing-owners associations (HOAs) and facility management teams. The manufacturer recognised that a critical point in customer satisfaction was vendor proximity, which directly impacted service turnaround. After ensuring closer vendor presence and increasing transparency in dealings with HOA presidents and facility managers, the manufacturer’s CX and sales began improving.
- Lack of Personalisation in Customer Interactions
Customers often expect businesses to accommodate their needs, within reason. However, many companies fail to match this expectation by relying on generic messaging, leading to dissatisfaction. Personalised engagement makes customers feel seen, earning their trust and paving the way for future conversions. This is borne by the numbers, with the McKinsey & Company paper saying that 61% of customers are more likely to buy from businesses that provide personalised content.
Solution: Personalisation through AI and Data Analytics
Leveraging AI and predictive analytics allows businesses to create highly personalised experiences for every customer. AI-driven insights from customer surveys provide a deeper understanding of preferences, enabling more targeted interactions.
A paper by the consulting firm BCG found that banks that implemented better personalisation in customer interactions, enjoyed at least a 10% increase in annual revenue, at the conservative end. Customer churn also drops as a direct result of personalisation initiatives.
The same principle applies to other industries. Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service, integrated AI into its operations to proactively offer personalised clothing recommendations. Stitch Fix leveraged OpenAI’s GPT-4 algorithms to efficiently sort and understand size, fit preferences, purchase history, and feedback, enabling stylists to recommend stylings that matched each client’s preferences.
Transitioning to an AI-driven approach has significantly impacted the company’s performance. From 2020 to 2024, Stitch Fix’s revenues increased by 88%, reaching USD 3.2 billion. Additionally, AI-powered personalisation contributed to a 40% rise in the average order value, reflecting enhanced customer engagement and satisfaction. Moreover, the company experienced a 15% boost in customer retention rates, attributed to the tailored shopping experiences facilitated by AI.
This technologically enabled approach not only deepened customer loyalty but also optimised inventory management and operational efficiency. With modern AI tools, businesses across all industries can find ways to personalise CX at scale and in real time.
- Inconsistent Service Across Channels
Customers today expect a seamless experience whether they’re engaging with a business online, over the phone, or in person. Disjointed service gives customers a sense that they are dealing with multiple entities rather than just one business, frustrating them and diminishing the brand’s credibility.
Solution: Strengthening Omnichannel Consistency
Aligning service quality across all channels is essential for a cohesive CX. Tracking complaints and measuring sentiment across digital, phone, and in-person channels. Businesses that unify their customer service across platforms typically see a reduction in complaints and increased customer trust.
The McKinsey & Company study points to a common pattern among B2B and B2C companies that drives this point home. Businesses that undertake broad transformations of their CX processes report better client satisfaction, better employee satisfaction, as well as revenue growth of 10 to 15%.
According to a study by Aberdeen Group, businesses employing an omnichannel contact centre strategy enjoyed a 55% higher rate of customer complaint reductions than traditional multichannel contact centres.
For example, AirHelp, a business that assists passengers with flight disruptions, had serious hurdles keeping pace with a support team operating in over 35 markets and speaking 16 languages. After transitioning to an omnichannel strategy, AirHelp reduced agent response times and improved ticket assignments, leading to better customer satisfaction.
- Employee Engagement and CX Gaps
Frontline employees play a leading role in CX and their engagement has a major impact on overall impact service quality. The McKinsey & Company paper points out that businesses with highly engaged employees see 35% higher shareholder returns compared to the broader market.
Solution: Empowering Employees to Deliver Great CX
Employee training and engagement have a direct correlation with better customer interactions. Empowering employees can lead to significant CX improvements across the board. However, empowerment can take other forms.
In a case described in B2B Customer Experience: A Practical Guide to Delivering Exceptional CX by Nick Hague and Paul Hague, fast food giant Taco Bell uncovered a strong link between employee satisfaction and business success. It found that about 20% of the stores with the lowest employee turnover had double the sales and 55% higher profits than the stores with the highest turnovers, conclusively proving a link between happy employees and satisfied customers.
In another case described in B2B Customer Experience: A Practical Guide to Delivering Exceptional CX, a UK-based logistics company trained its delivery drivers as CX ambassadors, resulting in a significant increase in service ratings. Drivers were required to wear a smart shirt and tie, and engage the public by waving and honking in response to acknowledgements. While arguably superficial, the approach undoubtedly humanised the company’s service, turning an otherwise mundane freight transport business into a respected brand with a loyal customer base.
- Technology and Digital Transformation Gaps
Many companies struggle to integrate technology effectively into their CX strategy, leaving customers frustrated with outdated processes. Even such modest updates as adopting instant messaging apps can help.
In a 2022 survey by B2B International involving 3,500 buyers of B2B businesses, 83% stated that they felt more valued when using messaging platforms, preferring them over traditional methods of B2B interaction. This bucks the perception that B2B customers prefer in-person, phone, and email. More importantly, it shows how readily available technologies can drive meaningful results.
Solution: Leveraging Technology for CX Transformation
Implementing modern AI and automation takes fallible human labour out of the equation, speeding up processes and reducing errors that negatively impact CX. These integrations aren’t just for nimble, up-and-coming startups, they can also bring sweeping CX benefits to traditional institutions.
For example, a financial services company revolutionised its dispute resolution process by investing in an AI-powered platform and training their employees to use it. These initiatives resulted in a 40% reduction in dispute resolution timewhile also boosting customer satisfaction through faster, more accurate service. These changes also generated approximately USD 2 million in annual savings, handily recouping the cost of investment.
Final words
Customer experience is and will always be key to lasting business success. Still, many companies continue to struggle with challenges such as poor customer onboarding, siloed operations, lack of personalisation, inconsistent service, disengaged employees, and technology gaps.
Fortunately, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel; there are proven solutions to address or, at least, mitigate these issues. These include journey-based CX optimisation, technology-driven personalisation, genuine omnichannel consistency, employee empowerment, and digital transformation. Adapting these solutions to common CX issues directly fixes customer pain points and reduces churn, leading to customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and brand loyalty.
If those don’t sound compelling enough, then consider the bottom line. Multiple studies demonstrate that companies that prioritise CX achieve measurable financial benefits, including increased revenue and lower costs per sale—just about what you would expect when you remove friction in customer interactions. Investing in CX optimisation should, therefore, be seen as a legitimate investment in growth rather than as an inconvenience or threat to a business’s status quo.
