Putting the customer at the center and focusing on their success and experience is one of the great paths to organizational success; after all, prioritizing those who make the business work is what differentiates a company amidst so much competition.
And when we talk about this perspective, it's necessary to understand customer experience management, or CXM. This strategy is an approach to customer relationships that involves various moments and techniques within the customer journey.
How is your business investing in the people it serves? Learn more about this topic in this comprehensive guide we've prepared for your business!
What is customer experience management?
Before discussing the strategies that can be adopted, it's important to provide context about what this management entails. Customer experience encompasses everything a customer perceives and feels about your brand through their various interactions with it.
Many companies only worry about certain moments in this journey, such as the actual sale, and forget that the experience encompasses everything. From the moment a potential customer is researching your business, interacting to ask questions, to their post-sale, every moment is relevant in creating the best perceptions and experiences with the brand.
That said, customer experience management is the area/strategy that looks at all points of contact and ensures the constant improvement of the brand's relationship with the customer. This management involves identifying the journey and its flaws, creating processes, monitoring customer satisfaction, measuring results, and taking actions to continuously improve the experience.
Simply put, customer experience management plays the important role of observing and acting upon all points of interaction between the company and the customer, ensuring their satisfaction and, consequently, improving retention, loyalty, and increasing the customer lifetime value within the business.
Why is customer experience management important?
Now that we've provided context on what customer experience management is, let's talk about its benefits, because these are what will justify a company investing in this strategy, right?
When we talk about the experience offered to customers, there are many gains for businesses, after all, as Philip Kotler said, retaining a customer costs 5 to 7 times less than acquiring a new one!
Impact on financial results
It's impossible to talk about customer experience without discussing its impact on a company's cash flow. Customers who are well-served, feel important, and value their interactions with the business spend more and are more willing to do business with the brand again.
A study revealed that 75% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product or service if they have a better experience. Furthermore, 73% of customers would switch to a competitor after several bad experiences.
In other words, in addition to bringing positive financial impacts to the business, not investing in customer experience also means losing customers and missing out on potential gains for your organization.
Improved brand reputation
People who are satisfied with the brand recommend it to others, organically improving the company's reputation in the market and attracting new customers.
At this point, customers are essential to making the brand stronger and their reviews are crucial to the business. According to Reclame Aqui, 70% of people say that, during their buying journey, customer reviews are the source of information they trust most.
In other words, the greater your investment in customer experience, the greater the customer loyalty and spontaneous referrals, increasing your reputation and reach.
Increased customer satisfaction
Well-served customers are satisfied customers, and these customers become loyal to a brand – strongly impacting the company's sales and finances. It's worth noting that, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, loyal customers spend almost 70% more than new buyers.
Currently, loyalty goes beyond repeat purchases and is increasingly present through participation in loyalty programs, further strengthening the relationship between customer and consumer.
According to the 2022 Loyalty Panorama in Brazil, 77.1% of respondents say they participate in at least one loyalty program, and 89% would be willing to pay for a premium (paid) loyalty program as long as it offers good benefits.
Pillars of successful customer experience management
The customer experience management strategy is based on some important pillars, which are: personalization, integrity, expectations, resolution, time and effort, and empathy.
1- Customization
To provide unique and memorable customer experiences, it's necessary to personalize the service. It's not enough to create communication strategies to try and reach all your audiences in the same way; you need to individualize as much as possible at each point in the journey.
Consumers want to feel special, heard, and unique, and the high level of personalization says a lot about the experience your audience will have with your brand.
For this to actually happen, it's crucial to know your audience. Only by understanding who your people are, their pain points and needs, can you direct their desires and expectations towards the brand.
2- Integrity
A brand's integrity, trust, and reputation are essential to the customer-company relationship and are fundamental to customer experience management. This trust is earned with each interaction in which the organization genuinely cares about its customers, their problems, and guides them towards assertive and successful solutions.
It is important to remember that integrity is also linked to the attitudes taken by the company and its involvement with ESG, for example: 54% of customers want to buy from companies that prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion in their communities and workplaces, and 63% want to buy from companies with social responsibility.
3- Expectations
More than just meeting customer expectations, it's necessary to exceed them, and the best way to do that is by knowing your customer and delivering valuable experiences at the right time.
In this pillar, it's important to listen to your customers and pay attention to the satisfaction surveys received in order to work with the data coming from your database.
4- Resolution
Even with significant investments in customer experience processes and management, failures in the relationship between company and customer are common, and the ability and capacity for quick resolution defines a large part of the experience.
It's expensive to recover customers, especially those lost due to bad experiences, so it's necessary to acknowledge mistakes when they occur and focus on resolving them quickly.
According to a report on customer experience trends, among the elements that stand out as generating a good experience are: quick problem resolution, 24/7 real-time support, support available across multiple channels, no repetition of information, and agent behavior.
5- Time and effort
Just as we discussed resolution, the customer's time and effort are important factors in their experience, whether positive or negative. Consumers increasingly expect speed and want to buy from companies that offer fast, easy transactions that don't require excessive complexity.
To achieve this, it's important that your company is well-versed in customer contact points, reduces difficulties and bureaucracy, and creates a quick and simple journey for your customers, whether it's for service, resolving questions, or actually making a purchase.
6- Empathy
The last essential pillar for managing customer experience is empathy, that is, putting yourself in the consumer's shoes to provide the best possible experience in their interactions. To achieve this, it's necessary to invest not only in tools, but also in your people so that they can convey the best of the brand to the public.
Provide training, ensure everyone understands the importance of customer contact, and follow the same brand structure. Think of your company as a person and how it would communicate with others.
Customer experience management strategies for you to implement in your business
Having learned about the key pillars of this strategy, have you been able to identify what is or isn't being done in your business? In addition to these pillars serving as a comprehensive guide, we've compiled some important actions to help your organization truly take off with customer experience management:
Create a customer-centric culture
Being customer-centric, that is, having a strategy based on the customer, is essential, and this requires a series of adaptations in the way the company works.
For this to happen, the first step is planning and knowledge: you need to know your customer to understand how their journey can be tailored to them, their expectations and needs. Therefore, know your audience, understand their habits, and plan accordingly to improve each of your touchpoints.
The key to this strategy is always thinking about the customer, and this shouldn't be done solely by the customer service or sales team. Putting the customer at the center is a company-wide strategy, and it only works when everyone is aligned.
Define your touchpoints and communication channels
When getting to know your customer, it's necessary to define the entire communication journey between them and your company. The famous touchpoints are these points of contact, and they can occur at various times.
From where the public asks questions, makes purchases, provides feedback, makes complaints and compliments, among other things. It is necessary to map and define each of them and integrate them for a complete, fluid and repetition-free experience.
Whether physical or digital, your channels need to communicate with each other, and the customer needs to have a consistent experience. They can't go to a physical store and feel one way, while feeling like they're in a completely different store when communicating online.
Value the organizational culture
For customer experience management to be successful, the culture needs to be ingrained within the business, across all teams. Everyone needs to be prepared to provide the best for the customer and to act as an important part of the brand.
Therefore, it is necessary that the strategy is clear internally and that the organizational culture is geared towards what the company is and who it wants to be.
Invest in training to strengthen the culture
As we said, organizational culture is crucial for conveying what the company is about to the outside world, and investing in training is necessary for it to truly take root.
Provide effective onboarding so that your new employees come in with a strong understanding of organizational strategies and direction, and invest in their learning throughout their employee journey.
When employees are motivated and satisfied, they will certainly pass that on to their clients and the market. Therefore, as we have said several times in this text, investing in your people is investing in your brand and the experience it will provide at various points of contact with the customer.
Take engagement actions and get closer to the customer
For a customer-centric strategy, it's essential to understand what the customer expects from the brand; therefore, they cannot be left out of the planning and efforts. Take actions to engage your customer and invite them into the conversation!
Invest in research, listen to your customers, and strengthen your relationships during these times. Seek feedback and, of course, value what is said, whether positive or negative. Customers have a lot to say about the brand, and from these insights, significant areas for improvement can be identified.
Also consider actions to further increase customer loyalty, such as programs and benefits; after all, the longer a customer stays with your brand, the better for your business!
Measure the customer experience
All aspects of customer experience management must be measured to be evaluated and improved, and metrics cannot be postponed. Whether it's NPS, First Contact Resolution (FCR), Average Wait Time, Average Handling Time, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES) or any of the many other possible metrics, measurement is essential!
Understand which of these make sense for your interactions, measure and evaluate them so that they can guide your continuous improvement within the strategy.
Investing in customer experience management is no longer just a differentiator; it's a necessity for staying in the market. After all, if the customer isn't satisfied, they'll certainly look for your competitor and continue making purchases.
Therefore, putting the customer at the center, taking actions to make them feel valued, and creating a brand structure and culture focused on the consumer is essential for your organization to go further and achieve healthy growth in the market.
Focusing on the customer is more than just running a promotion or being present on every social media platform; it's about creating genuine strategies so that they are heard, valued, feel unique, and have seamless experiences throughout their journey with the brand.
How is your company viewing its audience and investing in customer experience management? Now that you know a little more about the strategy, reflect on what can be implemented and create new best practices based on our tips!
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