• Education
    • Higher Education
    • Scholarships & Grants
    • Online Learning
    • School Reforms
    • Research & Innovation
  • Lifestyle
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Fashion & Beauty
    • Home & Living
    • Relationships & Family
  • Technology & Startups
    • Software & Apps
    • Startup Success Stories
    • Startups & Innovations
    • Tech Regulations
    • Venture Capital
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cybersecurity
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Gadgets & Devices
    • Industry Analysis
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy
Today Headline
  • Home
  • World News
    • Us & Canada
    • Europe
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • Middle East
  • Politics
    • Elections
    • Political Parties
    • Government Policies
    • International Relations
    • Legislative News
  • Business & Finance
    • Market Trends
    • Stock Market
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Corporate News
    • Economic Policies
  • Science & Environment
    • Space Exploration
    • Climate Change
    • Wildlife & Conservation
    • Environmental Policies
    • Medical Research
  • Health
    • Public Health
    • Mental Health
    • Medical Breakthroughs
    • Fitness & Nutrition
    • Pandemic Updates
  • Sports
    • Football
    • Basketball
    • Tennis
    • Olympics
    • Motorsport
  • Entertainment
    • Movies
    • Music
    • TV & Streaming
    • Celebrity News
    • Awards & Festivals
  • Crime & Justice
    • Court Cases
    • Cybercrime
    • Policing
    • Criminal Investigations
    • Legal Reforms
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • World News
    • Us & Canada
    • Europe
    • Asia
    • Africa
    • Middle East
  • Politics
    • Elections
    • Political Parties
    • Government Policies
    • International Relations
    • Legislative News
  • Business & Finance
    • Market Trends
    • Stock Market
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Corporate News
    • Economic Policies
  • Science & Environment
    • Space Exploration
    • Climate Change
    • Wildlife & Conservation
    • Environmental Policies
    • Medical Research
  • Health
    • Public Health
    • Mental Health
    • Medical Breakthroughs
    • Fitness & Nutrition
    • Pandemic Updates
  • Sports
    • Football
    • Basketball
    • Tennis
    • Olympics
    • Motorsport
  • Entertainment
    • Movies
    • Music
    • TV & Streaming
    • Celebrity News
    • Awards & Festivals
  • Crime & Justice
    • Court Cases
    • Cybercrime
    • Policing
    • Criminal Investigations
    • Legal Reforms
No Result
View All Result
Today Headline
No Result
View All Result
Home Business & Finance Entrepreneurship

95% of Businesses Fail at This One Thing — Fix It Before It Costs You Customers todayheadline

April 30, 2025
in Entrepreneurship
Reading Time: 5 mins read
A A
0
3
SHARES
7
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Every day, in every board room all over the world, leadership teams discuss their customers. They look at purchase data, renewals, new customers, loyalty metrics, reviews and survey results. Entrepreneurs pore over these same metrics at small businesses everywhere. In short, every business, in every industry, of every size, is evaluating their customer behavior and what it means for their financial performance.

Unless an obvious negative customer metric exists, most executives will declare that their businesses are healthy. Their customers are happy. A rare few will dig deeper, questioning every positive indicator, looking for the leading data that gives them cues to what they need to do to stay ahead, innovate and change before the competition. In my experience, this is less than 5% of executive teams or entrepreneurs in businesses of any size. Most leaders aren’t obsessed with unpacking positive results or thinking about staying ahead of any potential market or customer shift.

If you are reading this and you believe you are in that 5%, I’d ask you to think hard about the last time you challenged every aspect of the customer experience you provide. Why is customer experience the bellwether indicator? Because most leaders think that they do a great job delivering a great experience, and most customers think that their experience is horrible at worst and baseline acceptable at best.

Related: Customer Experience Will Determine the Success of Your Company

How NPS scores and surveys are misleading

If you have this “reality gap” in your customer experience, you have even bigger gaps in your other metrics. I have seen this pattern repeat over and over. You might be one of those companies with hundreds or thousands of “five-star” survey results and a high Net Promoter Score (NPS), so you are patting yourself on the back. These are the companies whose customers dry up overnight and no one “knows why.” Every time I audit one of these companies, inevitably I find that the questions on that “five-star” survey are measuring bare basics, like “was everyone friendly and polite?” Every single business in the world should have a 5/5 on that question. That is not customer experience success. That is the bare minimum level of service.

These inflated and misleading positive surveys mean that most companies have very little understanding of what customers really think about their experiences in every interaction, every day — and that is dangerous because in our current economy, customers will leave you in a heartbeat over one mediocre experience. Even if you are a company that thinks you have built a great experience because you have a department that focuses on customer service or customer experience, you are probably behind. Why?

Customer behavior has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and with the compression of innovation cycles, AI and technology advancements, geopolitical changes and cultural trends, customers continue to raise their standards and shift their ideas about what defines a wonderful experience. Most businesses aren’t keeping pace with all of this. Instead, they are leaning on old-fashioned ideals around customer service.

Most are still using customer service, hospitality and customer experience as interchangeable concepts. They believe these are all the same things. In reality, they are all wildly different concepts. All are needed, but each needs to be considered, designed and regularly updated to delight the modern consumer. Your hospitality program, your customer service and your customer experience must all be layered to create a positive impact on the customer.

What this confusion means is that for most companies, your customer experience is on dangerously thin ice, and you won’t be aware of it until customers are leaving you. Revenue will be down, loyalty metrics will shift overnight, survey results will still be good and new customer acquisition will slow to a crawl. You’ll be in a spiral that is hard to reverse. Your customer experience has failed you.

If this scares you, good. You have an opportunity to move into the 5% that obsess over their “great” customer experience, question all those positive metrics, and you can be one of those companies that stay in front of their competitors and are prepared to weather market shifts.

Related: I Was a Highly-Paid Executive In Customer Experience. Then I Started Working Minimum Wage Jobs, And Realized Everything I’d Gotten Wrong.

How to find out the real state of your customer experience

Now what do you do? Start by acknowledging that old-fashioned ideas about what creates a great experience are exactly that … old. Modern consumers have decided that being polite, efficient, having good manners and personalizing interactions are baseline service principles. Delivering a warm welcome, using the customer’s name and executing a fond farewell are basics. Answering their questions and delivering things they ask for quickly and accurately? That’s another basic.

If you already think about “wow moments” as an important differentiator, you are ahead of most. Wow moment programs must be carefully designed, scaled and measured. Wow moments don’t just “happen.” But for that to make any impact on the modern consumer, it must be something that you do for every customer, every time … and even then, you are still at customer experience circa 2018. The new standard is way beyond that.

Modern consumers don’t care how big or small your business might be. You can be a global 50 company or a single outlet on their local street corner, and they expect that you will know them, deliver excellent hospitality and then wow them with your ability to deliver an immersive storytelling experience that leads to a “wow.” You’ll master an expert and artisanal experience from your own employees, you’ll understand the customer’s unique story and build a multi-layered set of wow moments that reflect that knowledge, you’ll deliver a sense of place that capitalizes on your geography or history, and you’ll provide a set of brand signatures that demonstrate your unique point of view. These are the critical items that every business must have to claim that they are focused on customer experience.

Most companies don’t deliver any of the above and are instead delivering the basics, and those basics do not confer any competitive advantage. Some are delivering an occasional wow moment, but that is also very old-fashioned. As an example, if you are an automotive dealership, and you observe that your customer has a child seat installed in their backseat when they bring their car in for service, and then you leave a teddy bear in that child seat when they pick up their vehicle, you are delivering a baseline wow moment. That isn’t the personalized, multi-layered wow moment journey that consumers expect. That customer could probably go to 10 dealerships in your market for a teddy bear — it’s that common. You are not unique.

Related: You’ll Never Satisfy Your Customers — or Grow Your Business — Without Doing These 3 Things

Every company has limited resources, so it is critical to use those resources to maximum impact. Customers are looking for you to deliver exceptional baseline hospitality, excellent, efficient customer service, and then to craft a set of customer experiences that make you stand out. These experiences wrap around your product to expand your story. These experiences capture narratives that are powerful reminders of why they chose you over all others. They validate their choices and reinforce that they belong in your tribe. You deliver moments that make customers feel seen and known — where their individual story is important, understood and acknowledged.

You may feel intimidated by that mandate, but it is within reach. Utilizing modern CRM technology, creating a powerful culture of customer-centricity, empowering employees to create meaningful moments, investing in an experience model and building a company culture that values creativity, innovation and bold action can make all of this possible. Those of you with an hourly workforce, remember that hiring is essential. Hire for personality and cultural fit. Train vocational skills. Give everyone the power to delight customers. Creating experiences is fun, and it is directly correlated to employee retention metrics.

Above all, remember that your customer experience is essential to the long-term success of your business. If you sit at your customer metric dashboard and never question your success, you’ll soon find yourself at the back of the pack.

Tags: Business ProcessbusinessescostsCustomer ExperienceCustomer ServicecustomersfailfixGrowing a BusinessGrowth StrategiesMarketingtodayheadline
Previous Post

‘Unholy choice’: Embattled Republican’s $500 billion ‘red line’ for Medicaid cuts slammed todayheadline

Next Post

Federal Signal Q1 2025 slides: record orders and raised guidance drive shares higher todayheadline

Related Posts

Ultimate Email Backup Solution | Entrepreneur todayheadline

May 25, 2025
4

AI Turns Stock Market Volatility Into Opportunity todayheadline

May 25, 2025
7
Next Post
Federal Signal Q1 2025 slides: record orders and raised guidance drive shares higher

Federal Signal Q1 2025 slides: record orders and raised guidance drive shares higher todayheadline

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Family calls for change after B.C. nurse dies by suicide after attacks on the job

Family calls for change after B.C. nurse dies by suicide after attacks on the job

April 2, 2025
Pioneering 3D printing project shares successes

Product reduces TPH levels to non-hazardous status

November 27, 2024

Hospital Mergers Fail to Deliver Better Care or Lower Costs, Study Finds todayheadline

December 31, 2024

Police ID man who died after Corso Italia fight

December 23, 2024
Harris tells supporters 'never give up' and urges peaceful transfer of power

Harris tells supporters ‘never give up’ and urges peaceful transfer of power

0
Des Moines Man Accused Of Shooting Ex-Girlfriend's Mother

Des Moines Man Accused Of Shooting Ex-Girlfriend’s Mother

0

Trump ‘looks forward’ to White House meeting with Biden

0
Catholic voters were critical to Donald Trump’s blowout victory: ‘Harris snubbed us’

Catholic voters were critical to Donald Trump’s blowout victory: ‘Harris snubbed us’

0
All-party delegation led by Tharoor arrives in Guyana to convey India's message of zero-tolerance for terrorism

All-party delegation led by Tharoor arrives in Guyana to convey India’s message of zero-tolerance for terrorism

May 26, 2025
Morten Bødskov

Copenhagen hits back as Berlin and Paris push to scrap rules on green supply chains

May 26, 2025
Egypt working to integrate railways in Asia-Europe network

Egypt working to integrate railways in Asia-Europe network

May 26, 2025
Is Chick-fil-A open on Memorial Day?

Is Chick-fil-A open on Memorial Day? todayheadline

May 26, 2025

Recent News

All-party delegation led by Tharoor arrives in Guyana to convey India's message of zero-tolerance for terrorism

All-party delegation led by Tharoor arrives in Guyana to convey India’s message of zero-tolerance for terrorism

May 26, 2025
0
Morten Bødskov

Copenhagen hits back as Berlin and Paris push to scrap rules on green supply chains

May 26, 2025
4
Egypt working to integrate railways in Asia-Europe network

Egypt working to integrate railways in Asia-Europe network

May 26, 2025
1
Is Chick-fil-A open on Memorial Day?

Is Chick-fil-A open on Memorial Day? todayheadline

May 26, 2025
6

TodayHeadline is a dynamic news website dedicated to delivering up-to-date and comprehensive news coverage from around the globe.

Follow Us

Browse by Category

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Basketball
  • Business & Finance
  • Climate Change
  • Crime & Justice
  • Cybersecurity
  • Economic Policies
  • Elections
  • Entertainment
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Environmental Policies
  • Europe
  • Football
  • Gadgets & Devices
  • Health
  • Medical Research
  • Mental Health
  • Middle East
  • Motorsport
  • Olympics
  • Politics
  • Public Health
  • Relationships & Family
  • Science & Environment
  • Software & Apps
  • Space Exploration
  • Sports
  • Stock Market
  • Technology & Startups
  • Tennis
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Us & Canada
  • Wildlife & Conservation
  • World News

Recent News

All-party delegation led by Tharoor arrives in Guyana to convey India's message of zero-tolerance for terrorism

All-party delegation led by Tharoor arrives in Guyana to convey India’s message of zero-tolerance for terrorism

May 26, 2025
Morten Bødskov

Copenhagen hits back as Berlin and Paris push to scrap rules on green supply chains

May 26, 2025
  • Education
  • Lifestyle
  • Technology & Startups
  • About us
  • Contact
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy

© 2024 Todayheadline.co

Welcome Back!

OR

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Business & Finance
  • Corporate News
  • Economic Policies
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Market Trends
  • Crime & Justice
  • Court Cases
  • Criminal Investigations
  • Cybercrime
  • Legal Reforms
  • Policing
  • Education
  • Higher Education
  • Online Learning
  • Entertainment
  • Awards & Festivals
  • Celebrity News
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Health
  • Fitness & Nutrition
  • Medical Breakthroughs
  • Mental Health
  • Pandemic Updates
  • Lifestyle
  • Fashion & Beauty
  • Food & Drink
  • Home & Living
  • Politics
  • Elections
  • Government Policies
  • International Relations
  • Legislative News
  • Political Parties
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Cybersecurity
  • Emerging Technologies
  • Gadgets & Devices
  • Industry Analysis
  • Basketball
  • Football
  • Motorsport
  • Olympics
  • Climate Change
  • Environmental Policies
  • Medical Research
  • Science & Environment
  • Space Exploration
  • Wildlife & Conservation
  • Sports
  • Tennis
  • Technology & Startups
  • Software & Apps
  • Startup Success Stories
  • Startups & Innovations
  • Tech Regulations
  • Venture Capital
  • Uncategorized
  • World News
  • Us & Canada
  • Public Health
  • Relationships & Family
  • Travel
  • Research & Innovation
  • Scholarships & Grants
  • School Reforms
  • Stock Market
  • TV & Streaming
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy & Policy
  • About us
  • Contact

© 2024 Todayheadline.co