What is the ROI of happy users?
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
How people feel can be a very vague concept. It is challenging to measure feelings. Still, to determine the impact of users’ emotions and experiences on the business, we need data. How do you measure the effect of users’ happiness on business numbers? What is the return on investment of a good customer experience?
One of the most frequently cited examples is research from Forrester (2016), which shows that, on average, every dollar invested in UX yields a return of $100. That is an ROI of 9,900%.
Another piece of Forrester research (2018) found a correlation between a company’s customer experience (CX) quality and its stock performance. The top 20% of brands in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) had higher stock price growth and higher total returns than a similar portfolio of companies drawn from the bottom 20%.
More recent research from Forrester (2023) found that firms with high levels of alignment across customer-facing functions report 2.4 times higher revenue growth and twice the growth in profitability compared to those without alignment.
Research from Qualtrics (2022) showed when customers rate their experience with five stars, they are more likely to trust, recommend and purchase.
What is the current state of CX and UX?
Therefore, we can confidently say happy customers lead to business success. We not only believe it to be true, but numbers also support it.
But how is the current state of customer experience and the UX maturity of companies?
UX Maturity is emerging, but almost no company is user-driven (the highest stage of UX maturity).
CEOs don’t prioritise customers: CEOs reveal their top strategic business priorities, with only 6% mentioning the ‘customer’.
NPS scores in 2023 still show room for improvement.
What can we do to make customers happier and improve their user experience?
Successful companies know what makes their customers happy. Customers are delighted when they achieve their goals by completing their jobs. Therefore, successful companies help their customers get their jobs done.
What goals and ‘jobs-to-be-done’ could the visitors of the Airbnb website have?
- Get inspired by popular travel destinations
- Schedule and plan their holiday trips
- Plan team-building events
How can companies support their customers not only in achieving immediate functional goals but also in addressing their higher-level life goals, such as feeling a sense of belonging, feeling safe, feeling accomplished, getting excited, and learning something new? When companies answer these questions, they also have an answer to the question of why people should buy their product. When a product helps customers achieve both functional goals and higher-level emotional needs, customers will feel happy. And then, your investment in the customer will yield numerous returns.