Customer Experience or the so-called CX is the overall impression that the customer has towards your brand. It is related to how happy and satisfied the customer is when they use or purchase your products or services and how everyone in the business interacts with the customer or provides solutions when the customer encounters problems during their customer journey.
Why Customer Experience is Important
It should be the number one priority in your organisation to always provide an exceptional customer experience to each and every customer, every time they engage with the business.
The customer’s experience and perception will determine the current and future investments they make in your business’ products and services.
No business can exist without customers and retaining existing customers is “cheaper” than acquiring new ones.
A great customer experience promotes brand loyalty which leads to many positive customer reviews. And, in these socially-driven times, positive reviews are extremely helpful in attracting new customers and sustaining business growth.
Here are 4 Ways to Create a Great Customer Experience:
1. Design a Clear Customer Journey
Before coming up with a customer experience strategy, you need to create a plan that will guide the leaders and team members of your business in providing a great customer experience. Once the plan and the goals are created, everyone’s behaviour towards the goals will follow through.
2. Know Your Customers and Connect with Them Emotionally
It is also imperative to understand whom you are creating the plan for.
To do this, you need to identify the different personas in your target market and ensure you can connect and empathise with them throughout their customer journey.
Emotionally-engaged customers are most likely to re-purchase your products, recommend your brand, or shop around in your store, and are also much less sensitive in terms of the pricing of your products or services.
3. Measure Customer Experience
Feedback from your customers is valuable in improving the customer experience that you create for your customers. However, getting direct feedback from your customers may not always be easy.
To facilitate the feedback process, you may conduct a short mobile SMS survey after a purchase. This is one of the most effective ways for you to identify how satisfied your customer is. In the survey, you can ask about the customer’s experience with the product as well as their experience with the staff that accompanied them during and after the sales process.
Other methods may include: following up feedback through emails, engaging customers on social media platforms, sending thank you postcards or offering incentives in exchange for feedback.
4. Provide Development Training for Your Team
Your team will also be responsible for delivering a great customer experience. Hence, it is vital that your team members are equipped with the required skills and attitude that will deliver a consistent and repeatable level of service and quality standard.
In order to meet customers’ expectations, you need to be very careful when it comes to providing an exceptional customer experience. Coming up with and focusing on a customer experience strategy will have a substantial impact on your business.
An exceptional customer journey will strengthen customer loyalty and allow for “word of mouth” to travel from one person to another, thus, contributing to your business’ likelihood of acquiring more customers and increasing its revenue.
