Why Customer Experience Matters When Leveraging Technology

In a technology driven era where customers are raising the bar, businesses are flexing their creative prowess, showing off their personalities and leveraging technology to elevate the customer experience. A decade old study by Cornell University Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchases, argued that experiential purchases (money spent on doing) tend to provide more enduring happiness than material purchases (money spent on having). The happiness we feel from material goods fades over time, experiences, on the other hand, continue to bring us joy every time we think about them.

Today, nearly 90% of buyers say that the experience a company provides is just as important as the quality of its products or services. Given this shift in customer preferences, here are a few ways businesses are leveraging tech to form memorable encounters to develop and maintain long-term relationships with their customers.

Embracing the Tech-Savvy Customer

Today's tech-savvy customers are hyper-informed and demand more than ever before. This presents a significant opportunity for transformation. With longer sales cycles, complex buying journeys, and omnichannel expectations, companies need to be as efficient and adaptable as possible. Leveraging the right technology can ensure a positive experience and satisfied customers.

Optimizing IT cloud digital communications is one way to provide immediate value through various customer touchpoints. Modernizing business communications including voice, chat, text/SMS and video conferencing creates easier methods for customers to engage throughout their journey resulting in positive experiences they are accustomed to and likely to remember.

Navigating Tech to Create Unique Customer Experiences

Understanding your audience and how they perceive your offering is crucial in determining how to leverage technology in ways to heighten their experience and please them.

Hotel Hospitality, an industry known for creativity in delighting their guests, figured out an inexpensive way to continually inspire an emotional response among their guests at check-in using an ePaper display in their lobby.  With a zero-watt power consumption, not only is the ePaper one of the most environmentally sustainable displays around, but the clever messages displayed, made guests laugh and feel personally relevant as if they were right where they should be, with a friend who’s relatable and wanting to build a relationship with them in a meaningful way.

In Education, a PTC foundation, known for engaging students and families, found a creative way to leverage projector technology. They hosted outdoor neighborhood movie nights to raise extra funds to purchase new books for their classrooms. This became a tradition, an event families looked forward to attending and donating to every year.

Food Service, another industry, cleverly leverages commercial display technology to create immersive experiences beyond the show me what’s good to eat, digital menu. They engage their patrons with games as they wait in line to place their order, offering discounts for social media reviews or even a free sandwich to anyone who happens to drop in with the name of the day - if your name happens to be “Jane,” on a random Tuesday, you get a free sandwich.

With fierce competition and high expectations, opportunities to leverage tech to create experiences are endless and can help your business stand out, be original and create deeper connections with your customers.

Where do we go from here?

The shift towards an emphasis on the customer experience reflects a broader trend in customer behavior. By understanding and anticipating the customer’s needs, companies can provide lasting joy, build stronger, more loyal customer relationships by leveraging technology in creative ways. In this new era of heightened expectations, those who prioritize and innovate harmony between people, tech and business will lead the way in transforming their business models for long-term success. Companies need all the help they can get to be as efficient as possible. Be creative. Elevate your customer experience with the latest technology and create a unique customer experience with Sharp. Find resources to make you simply smarter about business.