With the acceleration of digital transformation in recent years, consumers are much more informed and have higher expectations for products and services. Therefore, companies must have a solid customer experience (CX) strategy as the key differentiator to attract customers.
A CX strategy requires, above all, a customer-centric mindset and multi-sector planning, as customer experience is not focused solely on one department, but rather on all areas of the company.
Therefore, you need to have a solid customer experience strategy, and this requires working across all business functions with an omni-channel approach in mind.
Shall we talk more about this subject?
What is a customer experience strategy?
A customer experience (CX) strategy refers to the holistic perception your customer has of your brand , across all interactions throughout their lifecycle.
A great customer experience is the end result of every touchpoint a customer has with your company, going through the learning/discovery, problem recognition, purchase decision, and post-purchase stages.
Therefore, every brand action impacts customer perception and their decision to engage with the brand. Therefore, excellent customer experience management is key to successfully acquiring and retaining customers .
However, a customer experience strategy isn't limited to the consumer experience alone. This approach also influences customer behavior, building memories that boost loyalty and positively impact the perception of value generated by the organization .
Check out the structure of a solid customer experience strategy in the image below.
Why is customer experience management important for your business?
customer experience management framework has a significant impact on any business. The better your customers' experience, the more likely they are to leave positive reviews and share them with their friends, while also reducing customer complaint .
The main benefits of implementing a good customer experience strategy are as follows:
- Reduces customer churn – A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95% . Companies that focus on resolving customer queries proactively and quickly through personalized conversations tend to reduce churn and increase customer retention.
- Increases Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) – Companies that focus on reducing churn and delighting existing customers increase their customer lifetime value , a key indicator in the healthy growth equation for businesses. After all, the longer you retain customers, the greater the value you provide over their lifetime relationship with your brand.
- Increases satisfaction and loyalty rates – When customers have a positive experience with your brand, their satisfaction/loyalty levels also increase. They share their experiences online with friends and family, creating a chain of word-of-mouth marketing and bringing more people to your business.
How to improve customer experience by building a solid strategy in 5 steps
Keeping your customers satisfied should be a key objective of your customer experience strategy. An American Express survey found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. This increasingly demonstrates the importance of this strategy for companies.
Furthermore, another survey conducted by SuperOffice in 2018 asked more than 1,920 professionals about their main business priority/strategy for the next 5 years, and once again, customer experience remains at the top:
Source: SuperOffice (2018)
With the cards on the table, let's understand the step-by-step process for creating the best customer experience strategies:
#1 Understand your audience and create your buyer persona
The key to making your brand stand out in the market is to make it indispensable to your consumers. And to do this, you need to understand your customer's desires, problems, and needs , and how your company can or cannot deliver that experience to them.
Collecting and segmenting data are great starting points for understanding your target audience. With the right efforts, you can apply a filter to ask comprehensive questions.
- Who exactly are my customers as individuals?
- What motivates them?
- What do they want to achieve?
- What are the fundamental causes of satisfaction?
Addressing these issues requires a focused analytical effort that helps companies design and implement an advanced customer experience strategy to achieve their goals .
Therefore, understanding your target audience and mapping customer journeys to identify all touchpoints, channels, and moments in which a customer interacts with the brand will help your company deliver excellent customer experiences.
Also check out this Webinar on Customer Journey , where expert Francisco Zapata provides a very clear explanation on creating personas starting at 18:37:
#2 Define a clear vision for your customer experience strategy
Your customer experience strategy reflects your business goals and values. It's about how you want your customers to perceive your brand. Therefore, the company must clearly articulate how its brand addresses the essential factors that constitute its CX vision.
- Customer Support – Convey what strategies or approaches your company follows to provide superior customer support.
- Mapping the Customer Journey – How you consider all touchpoints across the customer journey to gain insights into their behavior to provide a personalized approach.
- Interactions – When customers interact with your company, how they feel and perceive your brand.
The value of customer experience allows brands to recognize the value of customers at the point of contact and decide how to maximize these personalized interactions, designed to deliver the best possible experience and generate the least amount of effort for the customer .
In this context, developing a customer experience vision is a vital step in transforming the way your company delivers services to customers. The vision outlines the principles that guide and inform the experience they provide.
#3 Invest in the right tools to improve the customer experience
Investing in the right tools is one of the best practices for improving the customer experience. By investing in proactive communication channels, or strategic channels for collecting feedback , you improve communication, making it easier for your company to connect with your customers and reducing the effort they need to spend on contacting you, rather than sending an email or even having them call your company.
Choosing and implementing the right tools is important to encourage customers to engage more with your brand. However, the ultimate goal is to meet customer expectations as best as possible .
Brands focused on improving customer experience should combine digital and traditional tools to engage customers. Using these tools helps respond in a timely manner, monitor customer behavior, and take proactive action. They also help address customer complaints more quickly and provide effective solutions.
The tools that can play a key role in your CX strategy are the following:
- Live Chat – Investing in a live chat channel helps provide immediate responses to sales and support inquiries and increases customer satisfaction . It provides valuable insights into the customer journey , helping you deliver personalized engagement and satisfied customers.
- Centralized feedback platform: The main goal of every business is to please customers, satisfy their needs, and ultimately, retain them. Therefore, it's essential to have a tool that centralizes all customer feedback to make the analysis and improvement process more efficient for companies, creating a flow of continuous experience improvement.
#4 Monitor customer experience metrics
One of the world's largest consultancies focused on customer experience ( Forrester ) states that: “Companies are increasingly using analytics techniques for customer satisfaction, customer engagement, and journey analytics to understand and improve the customer experience.”
This shows that measuring customer experience is vital for all businesses, as it helps you understand your business performance and your customers' perception of your products and services.
Check out the main customer experience (CX) metrics:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS ) – The NPS metric measures the level of customer loyalty, based on how likely they are to recommend you to their friends and family.
- Customer Effort Score (CES) – The CES metric measures the level of effort a customer put into resolving a specific issue with your company.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – The CSAT metric measures the level of customer satisfaction based on the use of your product/service.
Check out our webinar!
#5 Incorporate customer feedback for continuous improvement
If you don't understand how your customers perceive your brand, you won't be able to offer them the best customer experience. Their feedback on their experience with your brand is valuable information that you can use to adjust your business to more accurately meet their needs.
Incorporating feedback is a vital part of your customer experience strategy , as it provides insight into their experience with your brand. It also serves as the best resource for improving the customer experience and tailoring your actions to their needs.
Check out our webinar on what the feedback economy is and why you should care.
5 factors that show the importance of customer feedback for your company:
- Customer feedback is insight into what is working well or poorly with your product or service, and what should be done to make the experience better;
- These opinions help ensure that the final product will actually meet expectations and solve your problems and needs;
- By asking your customers for feedback, you communicate that their opinion is important to you. You involve them in shaping your business, making them feel more connected to the brand.
- Listening to your customers helps build stronger relationships with them. This is the best way to gain valuable brand advocates who will spread positive word of mouth about your company.
- Feedback is a reliable source of tangible data that can still be used in business decision-making. Customer insights will help you understand your customers and their needs more deeply.
Conclusion
Planning an customer experience strategy involves more than just ensuring your customers receive the products and services they want efficiently. Every company must understand the importance of keeping its customers happy and satisfied, above all else.
When your company delivers an effective customer experience, it creates significant value for both customers and the company. The value of the experience created allows companies to identify the true value customers have for the company.
Therefore, customer experience is an area that requires constant care and stimulation, and with a greater focus on customer experience strategy, companies will see a positive impact on customer loyalty , greater retention, and greater revenue growth.
Therefore, customer experience is definitely the way forward. Especially since companies that offer a good experience grow more than twice as fast as their competitors .
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
