Crafting The Best Customer Experience
If you are planning to attain business success, then there are numerous factors to consider, among which customer experience stands out as the vital one. The reason behind this is that when you offer a good customer experience, it eventually leads to greater customer loyalty, increased ROI, and lower churn rates.
In fact, our thorough research shows that around 86% of customers are willingly paying more for a better experience. That is why there is no time like now to start investing in your brand’s customer experience strategy.
Customer experience is even known as CX, and it needs an approach that is based on the customers. To get your customer experience on the right track, you should build a robust strategy to help your entire business stay afloat in the online marketplace.
Although it might appear like a massive undertaking, the outcomes of these would speak for themselves as the studies have clearly shown that the firms investing in the robust customer experience would stand their chance of witnessing around 70% rise in their revenues in a matter of 36 months. Check at it as the way since it is noted that customer experience solutions are the thing that you need to invest in.
We have brainstormed on this topic, and today, we bring you the ultimate guide to help you understand what customer experience indicates and how your business can best use it to achieve higher success rates across online platforms while promoting business growth.
What is Customer Experience, and Why Does It Matter?
Customer experience, or CX, is the overall perception of your customer’s experience with your branding. This experience is reported through numerous touchpoints and factors, including the communication channels used, the identity of your brands, the modes of contacting, and, depending on your brand, the quality of the transaction and the customer experience with your business.
These are the key components adding up to a customer’s overall outlook on his or her complete experience with your business.
To sum up, this is what we mean when we speak of a customer experience platform. It is widespread and encompasses numerous varied features of the way the customer perceives your brand.
Now, let us discuss why customer experience matters!
Customer experience, or CX, is a portion of customer relationship management, or CRM. It is the primary factor in fostering a customer loyalty program.
Many entrepreneurs are aware that it is more convenient to keep existing customers rather than actively seeking new ones. Recent data shows that around 65% of an establishment’s business comes directly from loyal customers, and these customers spend around 67% more than the latest ones. These are a couple of the perks that aid in the cultivation of loyal customers.
Suppose you wish to retain longer-lasting customer relationships, especially with customers who will spread your brand name to their acquaintances or family. In that case, it is vital to invest in their customer experience platform. The inference here is that whenever your customers are happy, they stay loyal.
How does Customer Experience work?
Whenever there is a touch of positive customer experience, it is essential to build robust customer satisfaction and loyalty. It consists of better knowledge and meeting the expectations of the customers, offering the best services, and creating positive emotions throughout the journey of the customer.
The following are a few of the major elements of the way the customer experience consulting works:
Knowledge About Your Customers’ Needs: Firms should become adept at meeting their customers’ choice requirements and identifying their pain points. It would involve gathering data using feedback forms, surveys, and various other means to attain better insights into customer expectations.
Consistency in Communication: A compelling and convincing form of communication is the key across every level of the customer’s journey. It can use the mode of marketing messages, interactions with customer support, or follow-ups with post-purchase. Upkeep with a consistent and clear mode of communication strategies is essential.
Ease of Usage: A user-friendly and smooth experience is vital. It includes easier navigation through websites, an easier purchase process, and easy-to-reach customer support.
Personalization: You can enhance the level of customer satisfaction when you tailor their experience to their individualized choices. It would include personalized advice, well-targeted marketing strategies, and customized interactions.
Customer Support: Offering the best customer support is the key to building a positive customer experience. Instant responses to every query, helpful issue resolutions, and a friendly approach contribute to better customer satisfaction.
Post-Purchase Engagement: It is essential to continue the customer-business relationship after the purchase. Following up with your customers, asking for their feedback, and offering more support or promotions will help build relationships for the long term.
Feedback and Revision: Actively seeking and using customer feedback is essential for continuous improvement. Firms should be better able to analyze customer insights and make the necessary adjustments to upgrade the entire experience.
Customer experience is noted as a continued process that requires your complete attention. At the same time, you adapt to the rapidly changing expectations of your customers and the trends of the market. It would lead to a gain in customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and sustainable business success.
The History Behind Customer Experience
The entire notion behind the customer experience has evolved and shaped through the changes across the business practices, technologies, and business practices, along with meeting the customer expectations. Let us share a short overview of the history that lurks behind customer experience:
Early 20th Century: During the early parts of the 1900s, the aim was solely towards the quality of the product along with the greater efficiency of the manufacturing process. The real ideal of the construed customer experience had not been a primary consideration.
1950s – 1960s: The rapid advancements in greater competition and mass production led businesses to recognize the vitality of advertising and marketing to help make them stand different. However, the greater importance was still involved with the product rather than the complete customer experience.
1980s – 1990s: The entire service industry attained huge fame during this time, with firms starting to realize the importance of customer service. The aim changed to offering the best support while addressing customers’ issues.
Late 1990s – Early 2000s: The birth of e-commerce and the internet brought about a notable change. Firms started expanding their base with their online presence and customer experiences that extended across every digital platform. The ease of online interactions became a vital feature of customer satisfaction.
The mid-2000s – Present: The complete rise of social media, along with online reviews, offered customers a strong voice. Businesses eventually started identifying the effect of word-of-mouth marketing and the key role played by customer feedback in shaping whole new perceptions of the business. The customer experience was the holistic approach, consisting of the stages of pre-purchases and post-purchases.
The evolution of the customer experience reflects the massive shift in business patterns from product-centric to customer-centric. The continuous advancement in technology and the evolution of customer expectations lead to a history where the customer experience continues unfolding with the latest strategies and innovations.
Terms to Know
Let us now list a few of the terms that prevail in the customer experience niche, explaining them mainly if we have already mentioned them in our guide today.
Customer journey: It is the whole end-to-end experience a customer has with a firm, including every interaction from the beginning of awareness to the post-purchase support.
Touchpoints: These include the distinctive points of interactions between the business and the customer, like visiting the website, customer service calls, or social media engagements.
Omnichannel marketing: It involves offering smoother and integrated experiences across several channels, such as in-store, online, social media, and mobile.
Customer Persona: The semi-fictional representation of the perfect customer based on real data and market research helps businesses the better knowledge and target their audiences.
User experience (UX): It is the total experience a person has whenever they interact with the system, product, or service. It is often linked to the design of the app and website.
Benefits Of Customer Experience
Before we discuss a few of the benefits related to customer experience, you should understand that customer satisfaction depends on a great customer experience, and a good one should satisfy everyone, including your support and sales teams, as well as your existing customers. Here, you can also seek help from a renowned customer experience management consultant.
Customer Loyalty: A perfect customer experience helps foster loyalty. When customers are satisfied, they are likely to return to doing business with the firm, thereby reducing the need for expensive customer acquisition.
Positive Word-of-mouth: When your customers are happy, they start promoting your brand. They will likely recommend your products and services to their family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, thereby contributing to the organic growth of traffic with positive word-of-mouth marketing.
Greater Revenue: Loyal customers often tend to spend more time. They offer the best experience, thereby helping businesses maximize the lifetime value of the customer with a greater overall revenue.
Competitive Edge: A premium-grade customer experience often makes your firm unparalleled from its competitors, especially in a crowded market. It is their unique selling point, attracting and retaining a greater number of customers.
Reduced Churn Rate: A positive customer experience can aid in the prevention of customer churn. If your customers are satisfied, they will always stay loyal to the competitor while reducing you from losing your valuable customers.
3 Examples of Customer Experience
Let us now share with you the top five instances of the best customer experience campaigns that a few of the major brands have followed!
Nike’s “You Can’t Stop Us”: It is the campaign that has set a potential example of matching a brand with the massive cultural narrative. The campaign primarily aims on the themes of unity, resilience, and overcoming tough challenges. They connected with their customers on an emotional and deeper level. Nike does not believe in simply promoting their products, but they have turned out to be linked with the empowering and positive message that upgrades the whole customer experience.
Airbnb’s “Live There” Campaign: Here, Airbnb promotes the notion of experiencing the destination like the locals and not like tourists. A greater emphasis of this campaign is on the unique and personal features of each accommodation while encouraging their users to accept themselves to the local culture. The approach matches with the significant shift towards experiential travel resonating with the customers in search of authentic experiences.
Starbucks’ Mobile Order & Pay: It is the campaign that features the customer-based initiative that would help simplify the process of ordering. Customers can easily place their orders with the help of their mobile app, pay in advance, and later pick up their drinks without waiting in a queue.
How to Outsource Customer Experience?
Outsourcing customer experience becomes a strategic move made by businesses seeking to boost their service quality, reduce costs, and target their main competitors. So, how would you outsource your customer experience? Let’s check it out!
Define Your Objectives Clearly
Ensure that clearly outline the goals and expectations through outsourcing the customer experience. Having a clear set of objectives will help guide you with the outsourcing strategies, whether it involves enhancing efficiencies, reducing the response periods, or expanding the service times.
Identify the Main Touchpoints Of Customers
Determine the features of the customer experience that you aim to outsource. These might include customer support, email responses, live chat, social media management, or a combination of all these factors. Identifying the customer touchpoints should match your business priorities. You can take the assistance of a customer experience strategy consultant.
Research and Pick The Right Service Providers
Conduct thorough research to identify potential outsourcing partners. Look for providers with a proven track record of outsourcing customer experience. Consider factors such as industry expertise, language abilities, and the capacity to scale your business.
Set Clear Expectations
Communicating your standards, expectations, and the KPIs or the key performance indicators to your outsourcing partner is essential. Ensuring defining the SLAs or the service level agreements and ensuring that the vendor knows the quality and the responsiveness one should expect is important.
When you are outsourcing, it involves ongoing customer experience management and careful planning. When these are executed effectively, they significantly contribute to the business’s overall success, offering an efficient and positive customer experience.
7 Best Practices To Improve Customer Experience
Give Ears To Customer Feedback
Ensure that you actively seek and listen to customer feedback through reviews, surveys, and social media. You can use this information to identify areas for improvement and better understand customers’ choices.
Personalize Interactions
Try to leverage the data of the customer for personalized interactions. Tailor all your communications, recommendations, and promotions to meet individual choices while creating a highly personalized and engaging experience.
Offer Multi-Channel Support
It is essential to offer better support across numerous channels like live chat, email, phone, and social media. Ensure better consistency in your experiences irrespective of the channel, which will enable the customers to pick their preferred mode of communication.
Implementing Self-Service Options
Try developing self-service options, such as FAQs, knowledge bases, and tutorials. It will empower your customers to find solutions on their own, improving satisfaction and saving time for both parties.
Optimizing Website and User Experience
Ensure that your online platforms and website are user-friendly, as you offer a positive experience. An appropriately designed website that contributes to the entire impression of the customer that has your brand.
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
Try fostering a culture in your company that emphasizes more on customer satisfaction. Ensure that each department knows the role it plays in delivering a positive customer experience.
Monitor On the Key Metrics
Ensure tracking of the KPIs or key performance indicators linked to customer experiences, like customer satisfaction scores, customer retention rates, and NPS (Net Promoter Score). Review and analyze these metrics to identify areas and trends for improvement.
Checklist for Customer Experience
Here we bring for you the entire checklist of the customer experience that would help guide you with your efforts:
- Give Ears To Customer Feedback
- Personalize Interactions
- Offer Multi-Channel Support
- Implement Self-Service Options
- Optimize Website and User Experience
- Building a Customer-Centric Culture
- Monitor On the Key Metrics
Commonly Asked Questions
What does customer experience mean?
Customer experience, or CX, is the holistic outlook of your customers and their experiences dealing with your brand or business.
What’s the difference between CX and UX?
The customer experience goals are centered around pleasing customers and satisfying them across every stage of the brand experience.
What skill is customer experience?
Customer service primarily entails numerous traits like actively listening, emphasizing, communication, and the power of problem-solving.
What are the 4 stages of the customer experience?
Four main stages are included in a customer’s journey: loyalty, awareness, decision, and consideration. Each stage presents marketers with its own set of opportunities and challenges.
Is CX part of CRM?
CX is the customer’s perception of your brand based on every interaction. It is a vital part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as it aims to attain a thorough insight into the customer’s requirements and proactively influence their perception of the services and products.
Aspects of CX include any interactions with the Contact Center multiple channels (email, phone calls, in-app messaging, 3rd party messaging/DMs, etc.), the website’s e-commerce interface, and if they have physical locations, the team members they may meet. This all feeds the overall customer experience.
Challenges With Customer Experience
When we are into the topic of customer experience, it comes with its own set of challenges. Let us check out a few of them:
High Customer Expectations
Challenge: Recently, customers have had greater expectations for personalized and easy experiences, making it tough for businesses to meet these demands consistently.
Omnichannel Consistency
Challenge: It is extremely challenging when it comes to ensuring a consistent experience across numerous channels, and it needs careful coordination.
Concerns With Data Security
Challenge: The proper balance of the use of customer data for better personalization while addressing the rising concerns regarding privacy and data security is essential.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Ignoring Customer Feedback
- Inconsistent Messaging
- Lack of Personalization
- Poor Employee Training
- Overlooking Employee Satisfaction
- No Crisis Management Plan
- Ignoring Omnichannel Experience
Outsourcing: The Key to Scaling Success.
Conclusion
There is a constant rise in customer expectations, and they have turned out to be more empowered ones. The importance of the customer experience as a best practice can always be noticed. Customer experience requires greater attention and continuous nurturing since it eventually aids in creating better brand advocates who share their successful experiences with the best word-of-mouth promotion of your business.
Your customers would surely share your products or services without getting encouraged to do so if your business aims at being responsive, cheaper, and convenient while offering a personalized experience or a top-quality product compared to your competitors. A greater aim made on the methods of your customer experience and framework would render your company the benefit of loyalty of customers, greater retention rate, and higher revenue.
Build a robust customer experience with Outsourcing Center. Connect with our experts today!
Get 3 Free Quotes 
- Save 70%
- Unrivaled expertise
- Verified leading firms
- Transparent, safe, secure
Dive into “Outsourcing”
A Guide to … Selecting the Correct Business Unit … Negotiating the Contract … Maintaining Control of the Process