What is customer experience?
Customer Experience (CX) is essentially a company’s ability to put customers first, defined by all of the interactions a customer has with a brand. Having CX strategies in place helps brands define goals and establish concrete measurements for success. Behind any successful CX strategy is good customer experience management (CXM) through all touch points of the customer journey, whether brick and mortar, social media, mobile app, or web/SMS chat. Companies who excel at CX know how to engage in an enthusiastic interaction with a customer that forges an emotional connection, inspiring brand loyalty and resulting in repeat business.
One of the best ways to measure customers satisfaction with a product or service is to use customer satisfaction surveys to solicit customer feedback throughout their journey. Insights from these surveys, as well as feedback from social channels and online reviews help organizations understand the difficulties customers face during brand interactions. Perspectives gained from data assist organizations in identifying the right people, technologies, and processes to better manage customer expectations and realize continuous improvement.
Providing good customer support is a critical to Customer Experience (CX), from initial contact to purchase and beyond. Customer Experience (CX) begins with a knowledgeable sales team and continues through the sales funnel and beyond with a responsive client service team. Supporting this digital workforce with the right tools, data and systems is important. And every interaction should be customer centric, defined by seamless communications over all preferred channels with regular QA processes in place to monitor the overall effectiveness of these interactions. Strong customer experience strategy requires a quick response, that when done well inspires customer loyalty.
Organizations are finding new pathways to growth by focusing on Customer Experience (CX), allowing them to
- Build brand equity. Managing customer experience can profoundly influence customer perceptions about brands. CX strategy focused on delivering on brand messaging through high quality products, customer satisfaction and overall responsiveness results in positive brand equity.
- Reduce churn. Good CX strategy helps companies retain customers through engagement by delivering personalization through regular touchpoints, whether customer-facing, online or over the phone, to solicit feedback, talk about special offers or hold special events, in person or in the cloud.
- Increase lifetime value. Reduced churn leads to higher retention and higher retention leads to higher profits. Customers who spend more time with a company tend to spend more. Managing customer experience through data collection helps business pinpoint how much to invest in successfully retaining these customers versus acquiring new ones.
- Navigate crisis. The impact of bad press, product recalls or sub-par customer service on a brand is easily averted with sound customer experience management. Companies with a multi-channel communication strategy in place can deflect the impact of any short-term setbacks.