Putting the customer at the center and focusing on their success and experience is one of the great paths to success for organizations. After all, prioritizing those who make the business go round is what sets a company apart from so much competition.
And when we talk about this perspective, we need to understand customer experience management, or CXM. The strategy is an approach to customer relationships that encompasses various moments and techniques within the journey.
How is your business investing in the people it welcomes? Learn more about this topic in this comprehensive guide we've prepared for your business!
What is customer experience management?
Before we discuss the strategies that can be adopted, it's important to provide some context about what this management entails. Customer experience is everything customers perceive and feel about your brand based on their various interactions with it.
Many companies focus only on a few moments of this journey , such as the actual sale, and forget that the experience is everything . From the moment a potential customer is researching your business, interacting to ask questions, to their post-sale , every moment is relevant to creating the best perceptions and experiences with the brand.
That said, customer experience management is the area/strategy that looks at all touchpoints 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 continually improve the experience.
Simply put, customer experience management plays an important role in monitoring and acting on all points of interaction between the company and the customer, ensuring their satisfaction and, consequently, improving retention, loyalty, and increasing the customer lifecycle within the business.
Why is customer experience management important?
Now that we've contextualized what customer experience management is, let's talk about its benefits. After all, they're what will justify the company actually investing in this strategy, right?
When we talk about customer experience, there are many benefits 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 mentioning its impact on a company's cash flow. Customers who are well-served, who feel important, and who value their interactions with the business spend more and are more likely to return to the brand.
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 failing to gain them for your organization.
Improved brand reputation
People who are satisfied with the brand recommend it to others and organically improve the company's reputation in the market, attracting new consumers.
At this point, customers are essential to making the brand increasingly stronger, and their reviews are crucial to the business. According to Reclame Aqui , 70% of people say that, during their purchasing journey, customer reviews are the source of information they trust most .
In other words, the greater your investment in experience, the greater the loyalty and spontaneous referrals from your customers, increasing your reputation and reach .
Increased customer satisfaction
Well-served customers are satisfied customers, and these become loyal to a brand —significantly 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.
Nowadays, loyalty goes beyond recurring purchases and is increasingly present through participation in loyalty programs , further strengthening the relationship between customer and consumer.
According to the Panorama of Loyalty in Brazil 2022 , 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- Personalization
To provide unique and memorable customer experiences, you need to personalize your service. It's not enough to create communication strategies to try to reach all your audiences in the same way; you need to individualize as much as possible at each stage of 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 their needs, can you target their desires and expectations for your brand.
2- Integrity
A brand's integrity, trust, and reputation are essential to the customer-company relationship and are crucial to customer experience management. This trust is earned with every interaction in which the organization truly cares about its customers and their problems, and guides them toward assertive and successful resolutions.
It is important to remember that integrity is also linked to the actions 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 meeting customer expectations, you need to exceed them, and the best way to do this 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 you receive to work with the data coming from your database.
4- Resolution
Even with large investments in the process and customer experience management, it is common for there to be gaps in the relationship between company and customer, and having the capacity and action to resolve issues quickly defines a large part of the experience.
It's expensive to win back customers, especially those lost due to bad experiences. Therefore, you need to acknowledge mistakes when they occur and focus on resolving them quickly.
According to a customer experience trends report , the elements that stand out as generators of a good experience include: fast 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 crucial factors in determining whether their experience is positive or negative. Consumers increasingly expect agility and want to buy from companies that offer quick, easy, and straightforward transactions.
To achieve this, it's important that your company understands its contact points well, minimizes difficulties and bureaucracy, and creates a quick and simple journey for your customers, whether it's customer service, resolving queries, or actually making a purchase.
6- Empathy
The final essential pillar for customer experience management is empathy—putting yourself in the customer's shoes to deliver the best in your interactions. To achieve this, you need to invest more than just in tools, but also in your people, ensuring they convey the best of the brand to the public.
Provide training, ensure everyone understands the importance of customer engagement, and ensure everyone follows 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 put into practice in your business
By understanding the key pillars of this strategy, have you figured out what's working and what's not working in your business? In addition to these guidelines, we've compiled some key actions to help your organization truly take off in customer experience management:
Create a customer-centric culture
Being customer-centric , that is, having a customer-based strategy, is essential and 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 to always think 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 only works when everyone is on board.
Define your touchpoints and communication channels
Once you get to know your customer, you need to define the entire communication journey between them and your company. These points of contact are known as touchpoints, and they can occur at various points in time.
From where the public asks questions, makes purchases, provides feedback, makes complaints and compliments, and more, each of these must be mapped and defined and integrated for a complete, seamless, and seamless experience.
Whether physical or digital, your channels need to communicate with each other, and the customer needs to have a single experience. They can't go to a physical store and feel one way, while feeling like they're in another store when communicating online.
Value organizational culture
For customer experience management to be successful, the culture must 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, the strategy must be clear internally and the organizational culture must be aligned with 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 communicating what the company is like outside the company, and investing in training is necessary for it to truly take root.
Conduct effective onboarding processes so that your new employees are well-versed in organizational strategies and guidelines, and invest in knowledge throughout their journey.
When employees are motivated and satisfied, they will certainly pass this on to their customers 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 the most diverse points of contact with the customer.
Take engagement actions and get closer to the customer
For a customer-centric strategy, you need to understand what customers expect from the brand, so they can't be left out of the planning and efforts. Take action to engage your customers 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 they say, whether positive or negative. Customers have a lot to say about the brand, and from these insights, important areas for improvement can be identified.
Also consider actions to increase customer loyalty, such as programs and benefits. After all, the longer they stay with your brand, the better for your business!
Measure customer experience
All customer experience management must be measured to be evaluated and improved, and metrics can't be left for later. Whether it's NPS , First Contact Resolution (FCR) , Average Wait Time, Average Handle Time, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) , Customer Effort Score (CES) and many other possible metrics, they need to be measured!
Understand which ones make sense for your interactions, measure, and evaluate them so they can guide your continuous improvement within your strategy.
Investing in customer experience management is no longer just a differentiator; it's a necessity to stay in the market or not. 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 ensuring your brand creates a structure and culture focused on your 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 on every social network; it's about creating genuine strategies to ensure 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, consider what can be implemented, and create new best practices based on our tips!
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