What is customer experience (CX)
Customer Experience is the sum of all customer experiences that it gains in contact with a given product / brand. At present, when services become more and more similar, the consumer pays special attention to details that meet him on the way to purchase a given product, including service quality, additional bonuses, delivery time, store usability, packaging quality, return and exchange options, color availability, offer presentation method, etc.
What influences Customer Experience
Marketing activities that can direct the client to a certain way of thinking and associating the company. As part of marketing activities, it is worth distinguishing between affiliate marketing, which can bring great results. Using affiliate managers to promote your business is a great brand ambassadorship and motivates you to provide a great customer experience.
Opinions - not only of the interested party but also of other customers. A consumer interested in a product or service may be seeking information about your business. You may also come across recommendations or negative comments on social media or from friends.
The sales process - the consumer pays special attention to whether he ran smoothly and in a nice atmosphere. Whether the product was available immediately, with home delivery, to what extent the offer was personalized, etc.
Price - as in the case of opinions, the customer can compare the prices of similar products using specialized websites.
Customer service not only at the pre-purchase stage, but also in the event of a problem with the use of the product, providing a warranty on its operation, or an intuitive return system in the event of cancellation.
Product quality - its reliability, price, design and security are the company's best advertisement and incline customers to make good associations and make further purchases whenever possible.
How to improve Customer Experience
Develop a Customer Experience strategy taking into account all areas of the company's operations. Subordinate every move to build good customer experience. Many companies downplay the strategy. Once they have this client, they suddenly become convinced that nothing will happen unless they accomplish some of the little things they promised. Therefore, it is good practice to implement the "promise less, provide more" principle. This will increase the chances of good customer experience.
Understand your customers. The next step, based on customer service policies, is to bring different types of customers to life. By creating types of people, the customer service team can recognize who they are and understand them better. It is also an important step towards a truly oriented experience and customer satisfaction.
Make sure that every employee presents an open approach to the customer and serves him as if he wanted to be served himself. Change perspective. It's about moving from looking as "we" to looking as "they", or our customers. How to do it? Very simply. All you need to do is leave the desk and outside the company.
Try to experience what your customers experience. It is worth not to be a one-off event but a repetitive process that will inspire you to discover new areas for improvement.
Improve communication by investing in the Customer Service and Customer Care departments - create templates for answering frequently asked questions and ensure easy, trouble-free contact from the client. Monitor reviews. You have to ask, and it's best to do it by monitoring the feedback in real-time. Interaction surveys can be delivered using a variety of tools, such as email, online services, or a hotline. Of course, it is even possible to make outgoing calls to customers for more insightful feedback.
What is important is the ability and ability to link customer feedback with a specific customer service department or hotline. This will show each team member the quality difference their work can do.
Follow the changing trends in customer service - the transfer of most interactions to the Internet and the dynamic development of technology has meant that responding quickly to innovations and improvements can help you increase customer satisfaction before the competition does it. For example, you might think about implementing IVR - Interactive Voice Response - to better your services.
Interactive Voice Response
How to measure customer experience
And finally, let's think: how do you know if all these investments in your teams, processes and technologies work and pay off?
The answer is in business results. Measuring customer satisfaction is one of the biggest challenges facing organizations, which is why many companies regularly use the Net Promoter Score methodology. Thanks to it, they collect valuable information, asking one simple question: Would you recommend this company to a family member or friend?
NPS, which was created by Rob Markey and Fred Reicheld at Bain & Company, is a suitable benchmark for customer experience data because many companies use it as a standard measure of customer experience. And the fact that it is simple to implement and measure makes the NPS methodology a favorite for company boards and executive committees.