The Basics of Creating a World-Class Customer Experience Strategy

Companies that focus on customer experience become successful in reducing churn and increasing revenues – leading to higher profits.

Customer experience definition

Customer experience(CX) has become the new buzzword for most companies across industries. It may be defined as the customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, products, channels or systems. In other words, it is essentially how customers perceive their interactions with your company.

Customer perception and customer interaction are two basic elements of CX. Customer’s overall perception about a brand can occur as a result of single or multiple interactions with a brand while seeking any information or support at different phases of the customer lifecycle. Customer’s interaction with a brand includes various touchpoints including talking to a customer support agent on call and self-service options or live chat.

What is customer experience management?

Customer Experience Management is the process by which an organization organizes and manages each customer interaction with their brand across the buyer’s journey. Customer experience management can be defined as the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and thereby increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. The objective of customer experience management is to optimize customer interactions, align with the customer’s ideal brand perception, and exceed their expectations to nurture and lay the foundation for long-term customer relationships. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, customer experience management is emerging as the key strategy to gain a competitive advantage.

Most organizations are expected to redirect their investments towards CX  innovations in the future. This also means, that your competitors are more likely to be focusing on customer experience in the future, thereby making it necessary to have customer experience management software in place. The three essential pillars of customer experience management include:

Know your customers

Brands that have a good understanding of their customers will be able to create awe-inspiring experiences for their customers. It is essential for brands to pay more attention to customer data in order to gain insights into their needs and preferences for delivering personalized experiences.

Devise an optimal customer experience strategy

After identifying the buyer persona, it is crucial to define the customer experience strategy map all the relevant touchpoints throughout the customer journey. This helps to better plan and organize the brand’s interaction with their customers at each touchpoint.

Measure customer satisfaction

It is imperative to measure customer satisfaction in real-time to estimate the success of the customer experience strategy. Customer satisfaction is devised based on regular customer feedback. This will give a clear indication regarding customer perception of the brand.

According to Infiniti’s recent study, customer experience management is at the top of the corporate agenda across industries. Are you yet to join the bandwagon? It’s never too late! Request a proposal to find out how Infiniti’s solutions can help you up your game. 

Importance of customer experience

Delivering exceptional CX is critical to any modern business. Getting it right translates to increased revenue and better customer retention by building an exceptional and trusted brand reputation. The industry experts from Infiniti Research cites the following as some of the key reasons why building a customer experience strategy is essential for modern businesses:

Reduce customer churn

The cost of acquiring a new customer often proves to be higher than retaining an existing one. When a customer is satisfied they stay with the brand and are unlikely to leave for factors like product price.

Boost revenue

Satisfied customers add to the revenue growth of businesses and incremental sales as positive word of mouth helps the organization to add more value in terms of sales, conversion, and customer retention.

Reinforce brand preference

Providing personalized experiences is the key to delighting customers. A higher number of loyal customers are garnered by brands that focus on superior customer experience across all touchpoints.

Inspire customer advocacy

Happy customers are those who have had memorable experiences with a brand. Delighted and loyal customers are the best brand ambassadors or brand advocates for a company’s goodwill and growth.

How to create the best customer experience strategy

A customer experience management strategy helps companies decide what they have to do in order to deliver a remarkable CX across interactions and measure the results. This proves to be a positive step towards improving their customer experience strategy. The right strategies coupled with an optimal customer experience platform increase brand value, reduces costs, and allows you to gain the much-needed edge to stand out from your competition.

How do you build a customer service strategy? It is vital to consider the following key factors while devising a customer experience (CX) strategy:

Personalization

The only way to make a customer experience strategy work is to ensure that it succeeds in delivering a personalized experience to individual customers. Brands that cater to each customer’s needs in a unique manner will have an edge over the competitors. A good CX strategy intelligently applies customer insights gathered at each touch-point for smart interactions.

Reachability and convenience

It is highly useful for companies to identify the channels where their customers are active. A prerequisite for an effective customer experience strategy is channel accessibility for customers. Also, a well-planned CX strategy takes into account the purchase and service convenience from the customer’s perspective.

Channel flexibility

The buyer’s journey entails multiple touch-points. A consumer might interact with a brand via different channels at specific touch-points. An ideal Customer experience strategy takes considers this requirement and ensures flexibility to switch channels for a customer without losing the context of previous customer interactions or compromising on the seamless experience.

Customer journey maps

Every brand witnesses a unique customer journey and identifying the various touchpoints where a customer interacts with a brand is essential to deliver a unified and consistent customer experience. It helps brands to plan in advance and be prepared to serve their customers throughout the customer lifecycle.

Customer experience management best practices

Build a customer-centric culture

It is vital for the entire organization to back the company’s customer experience management efforts. Begin by determining what customer-centricity means for your organization, communicate it to employees across the company, and weave it into your CX strategies. Since the success of a business largely depends on the customer, it is important to understand them in depth at each and every touchpoint. It is essential for companies to plan and implement a CX strategy with relevant tools and technology. This helps achieve a 360-degree view of their customers and analyze customer sentiment & social indexes, across customer interaction history to deliver a superior customer experience. It will also aid in leveraging the customer interaction history to identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities converting customer support departments from a cost center into profit centers.

Establish clear cross-functional accountability

Exceptional customer experience requires clear accountability between the front office functions including sales, marketing, and customer service with back-office functions such as business intelligence, procurement, reporting, and inventory management. Cross-functional accountability ensures seamlessness, and speed can be maintained across the customer query resolution process. Any changes or updates in the customer query can be captured and easily tracked across the systems on a real-time basis.

Empower Employees with Customer Insights and Knowledge

Customer support agents are the company as they interact with the customers across various touchpoints. It is vital to empower them to deliver the best customer experience in the industry. When the customer service team can access the single view of customer interaction history across the channels, they are better equipped to understand the customer’s perception and expectations from the brand. Consequently, they are better placed to deliver a seamless, personalized, and dynamic experience.

Implementing a CX management strategy is much easier than you think with Infiniti Research’s market intelligence solutions.