Reduce customer churn

In today’s hyper-competitive global marketplace, people have a lot of choices. If you aren’t providing satisfying customer interactions, your competitors will, and they are just a Google search away. And if your client has a bad experience? It’s very likely to stick with them due to our inherent negativity bias. You’d have to fight an uphill battle to regain their trust and loyalty.

This explains why high-quality customer experience is the need of the hour. By improving consumer experiences, sales and marketing teams get higher rates of customer lifetime value, reducing customer churn or turnover.

You can be in regular contact with clients through various touch points like emails, calls and customer appreciation events. Relevant and personalized communication shows customers that you’re attentive to their needs, encouraging future purchases.

Improve brand equity

Brand equity is a customer’s perception or feelings, thoughts and emotions they associate with your brand. Providing quick and satisfactory service, good quality products, and meeting the client’s expectations lead to positive brand equity, thereby improving customer loyalty.

On the other hand, not delivering on your promises and lousy customer service leads to negative brand equity, which can greatly hurt your business in the long run. Customer experience management (CXM) enables you to enhance brand value and reduce the frequency of negative reviews. It guides you through the entire customer journey and helps the brand evolve alongside its consumers.

Increase customer acquisition and retention rates

Trying to gain new consumers who’ll buy your product is never an easy task. But once you manage to do that, you want to make sure they don’t jump ships and leave your customer base.

A good CX strategy helps you understand what exactly your customers want and how you can meet their needs.

CX prioritizes customer feedback, enabling you to improve on areas that need work. If your customers don’t like your website’s interface, you can get an IT team to work on that before clients get frustrated. If they think your service takes too long to respond, you can investigate the bottlenecks and ensure it’s more prompt moving forward.

59% of consumers think businesses should use the data they collect about them to personalize their experiences. Ensuring customers have pleasant, satisfying and tailored interactions improves their trust. And these happy customers increase your brand value through word of mouth, bringing in new clients.

Enhance crisis management

After the rise of social media, good word-of-mouth marketing, which was initially integral, has now become a necessity. A few bad reviews or a single deinfluencer video can derail your marketing efforts for good. It’s hard to anticipate which issues you’ll run into, but it’s inevitable that you will.

Creating good customer experiences prevents many issues from coming up in the first place. Prevention is better than cure, after all. And for issues that come up, the antidote is CX coupled with marketing and PR. Companies that own up to their mistakes and effectively respond to complaints can regain customer trust. This way, great customer experiences are not just the prevention of a crisis but also the cure.

Boost customer engagement

The core of customer experience is to understand that it’s not just about what your product or service does for the consumer; it’s also about how the whole experience makes them feel. And what do clients expect? They want to feel heard, understood and valued.

By creating tailored experiences and putting customers’ needs at the center of your business, you reduce the frequency of complaints and sloppy customer service. This makes clients less likely to shift from your business. In fact, 69% of consumers say a convenient experience alone can make them want to come back to a brand.

For seamless client experiences, you can provide them with multiple ways to solve issues. Self-service, FAQs, knowledge bases, social media and email queries, calls, and live chats can further improve engagement. After all, you need to reach your customers where they’re comfortable, not the other way around.

Decrease service and marketing costs

A customer-centric approach and having CX teams on board eliminates a lot of guesswork around what customers need and how to provide it to them. You can determine which products customers are likely to buy, their behaviors, market dynamics and more.

Sales, marketing and service teams can focus on their core tasks and do what they do best with CX data. It’s a win for everyone, and you can save up on budget, time and resources.

CX Strategy

Like any sport, your customer experience initiatives need a game plan to succeed. A customer experience strategy lists actionable plans required to deliver unique, positive and engaging customer experiences at every touchpoint. It should consider factors like competitive insight, company-specific vision, and market and consumer research.

Customer engagement is paramount to any business and requires a sound customer experience strategy to create meaningful experiences.

Here are some of the core components of a good CX strategy:

Buyer Personas and Customer Journey Mapping

Customers are the heart of any business. That’s why you need to understand their needs, wants and preferences. Creating buyer personas or customer profiles allows you to segment customers based on their personalities. Personas help your customer-facing teams understand who your clients are to serve them better.

Customer profiles help answer several key questions like:

• What motivates the customers?
• What do they want to accomplish?
• What elements satisfy them?

On the other hand, customer journey mapping helps you understand customer experiences at every touchpoint, channel and interaction. Viewing the journey enables you to get the customer’s perspective and look through any pain points in their experience.

Artificial Intelligence

Implementing AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants allows you to hand over rudimentary tasks and engage customers 24/7.

In a survey conducted by Userlike, 68% of respondents said they liked that a chatbot answered them quickly. You can use them to handle common customer queries and FAQs. The bot can route customers to a human agent for complex tasks.

Automated bots can provide real-time answers to your customer’s queries, reducing the number of tickets raised. It can also collect generic customer details like their name, location and email ID.

Omnichannel Experience

This component lets customers conveniently interact with you on their preferred mode of communication. Your agents can use contextual information while switching between channels to deliver a consistent experience.

Sales reps can refer to past conversations, transaction history, emails customers read, what’s sitting in their cart and other such details. This way, customers don’t have to repeat themselves, keeping their journey smooth sailing.

Feedback Management

To create an effective, customer-first CX strategy, you need to identify where your business is lacking and where it’s succeeding. Collecting real-time feedback across multiple touchpoints helps you determine which areas to improve.

It’s also crucial to gather input from customer-facing teams to gain insights into their challenges. Resolving these problems translates into quicker issue resolution time.

Personalized Communication

Implementing the right tools to your CX strategy can help you optimize communication. Live chat tools, customer feedback software and even survey-based solutions can provide valuable insights, monitor customer interactions and personalize the experience.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Siloed business operations can hinder consistency. For an impactful customer experience, all departments need to be on the same page, including those who don’t interact with customers. For example, even though the finance team doesn’t interact with buyers, difficulty processing fees or bills on the buyer’s part could result in you losing out on a customer.

You also need to equip your team with proper training and update them on any product upgrades so they’re up to date. Fostering inter-departmental communications ensures your agents relay the correct information to clients.

Self-Service Options

Different customers are comfortable with different communication channels. As a business, it’s your job to meet them where they are. Some clients prefer self-service options like chatbots, FAQs, knowledge bases and training articles or videos to solve basic issues. Neglecting this aspect can frustrate customers, lowering your brand equity.

Data and Analytics

Using existing customer data, you can analyze your overall business health, efficiency and performance. With robust dashboards and reports, CXM systems can help you identify various pain points, goals and customer behavior trends. Your teams can view sales pipelines and customer journeys with a 360-degree view.

Measuring Customer Experience

After you have a foolproof customer experience strategy in place, you’d want to know whether it’s working. Here’s where CX metrics come into the picture. These metrics help you track progress, calculate the ROI of your CX program and identify areas for improvement.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

One of the most common CX metrics, NPS, measures customer loyalty based on one survey question: “How likely are you to recommend our brand/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

Responding on a 0-10 scale, you can group customers into:

• Promoters (score 9-10) — loyal customers who will expand growth.
• Passives (score 7-8) — satisfied but not enthusiastic enough and could switch to competitors.
• Detractors (0-6) — displeased customers who won’t come around for repeat purchases and could dissuade potential customers.

To calculate your NPS, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

It measures customer satisfaction levels with your business after purchase or interaction.

The survey question, “How satisfied were you with your experience?” can be answered on a scale of 1-3, 1-5 or 1-10.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Derived from a CSAT survey, the Customer Effort Score reflects the effort exerted by a customer to complete any task like finding a product, looking for information or getting an issue resolved. It helps you understand the functionality of your products and services and their relevance to customers’ needs.

Others

Aside from the metrics mentioned above, you can also gauge the effectiveness of your program through these methods:

1. Analyzing churn rates and expansion rates.
2. Creating a customer forum for suggestions and product or feature requests.
3. Analyzing support tickets, reopen rate and issue resolution time.
4. A/B testing your CX initiatives.
5. Talking to customer-facing staff to identify common pain points.

FAQs

What is customer experience?

Customer experience, abbreviated as CX, can be defined as the total of all interactions a customer has with your company. It’s the culmination of every point of contact a customer has had, from website navigation and interaction with support personnel to product delivery.

Don’t let the technical jargon confuse you (or worse, bore you). Customer experience is precisely what it seems — it encompasses anything and everything a customer experiences with your brand.

Have you been annoyed listening to the automated voice on the other end of the call, waiting for a human being to take over? Or have you felt ecstatic when a restaurant gives you a complimentary ice cream? Those were your experiences as a customer (ergo: customer experience).

To quote any spiritual guru, “Your destiny is in your hands.” It’s your actions as a company that shape the audience’s perception. And it makes a world of difference to your customer base and revenue.

Did your customers find what they’re looking for on your website? Did they receive prompt support for their queries? Did they find your new ad delightful? These are some of the factors that influence customer experiences.

What’s the difference between customer experience and customer service?

Like sweet lime and oranges, customer experience and customer service are completely different.

Customer service is the assistance or support you offer your customers before or after a purchase. It is merely a small aspect of the entire customer experience.

While customer experience is a holistic process encompassing the entire customer journey that involves several touchpoints and multiple departments, customer service is one specific interaction. It’s difficult to pin down CX to a single interaction, but customer service is quantifiable as they’re most likely one-off incidents.

Another difference is that CX involves anticipating and meeting customer needs through journey mapping and feedback analysis. It proactively works on achieving customer satisfaction and ensuring there’s no snag. Customer service, on the other hand, is reactionary in nature. Customers are primarily the ones who reach out to a support service if they run into a problem.

To put it in context: Supposedly, you book a flight ticket via phone, and the airline agent is friendly, helpful and cordial. That’s good customer service. If the airline bumps you up to first class or provides a delicious in-flight meal, or if you simply had a very smooth flight, then that’s a positive customer experience.

The way Captain America: The Civil War sets the Endgame movies, a good customer experience paves the way for an overall positive customer experience. As support agents are likely to be the first human point of contact between the customer and the business, it becomes imperative to deliver great customer service to ensure an extraordinary customer experience.

What is customer experience management?

Customer experience management (CXM) is the process of monitoring, analyzing and enhancing customer interactions. It’s a fundamental part of a customer-first strategy that puts customers at the heart of the business. It helps companies improve their brand image, increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn.

The CXM approach goes beyond traditional marketing to deliver a highly personalized and engaging customer experience across all digital channels.

Customer experience management lets you:

• Evaluate customer behavior and needs.
• Segment customers for highly relevant experiences.
• Build a long-lasting relationship with customers via loyalty programs, AI-enabled services and intelligent product recommendations.
• Collect, store and analyze large volumes of data to get detailed insights into customers’ wants and make data-driven decisions.

Incorporating customer experience software into your arsenal helps you gain a 360-degree view of client interactions. It centralizes customer information and allows seamless data flow from one department to another. Access to relevant client data helps you deploy marketing campaigns, enhance lead qualification and improve support quality.

What is customer experience software?

Customer experience software is a set of tools that help companies elevate their customer experience, i.e., consumers’ thoughts and feelings about the brand throughout the buyer journey. It provides a comprehensive view of customer interactions across multiple channels like call and chat transcripts, social media comments, and online reviews.

The system automates customer service and ensures a seamless information flow between various departments. Its advanced analytics quantifies customer feedback via different survey types like CES, CSAT and NPS.

What creates a good customer experience?

A good customer experience leaves the customer feeling valued, satisfied and more likely to return. Some of the elements of a positive customer experience include:

• Easy-to-navigate websites and mobile apps
• Quick and easy access to a relevant company representative
• Self-service options
• Multi-channel engagement
• 24/7 live support
• Shorter wait time during calls
• Marketing that sets realistic expectations about the product
• Transparency about pricing

What causes bad customer experiences?

A bad customer experience results from customer disappointment — either you couldn’t meet their expectations or provided an inadequate response to their queries. These are some of the indicators of a negative customer experience:

• Confusing websites
• Slow issue resolution
• Irrelevant campaign outreach
• Long wait time
• Lack of human touch
• Hard-to-reach or arrogant customer service
• Ignoring customer feedback
• Not understanding customer needs
• Failure to offer real-time support/ unresolved issues

How do you manage customer experience online?

You can provide great digital customer experiences with an intuitive mobile app. The mobile platform should be user-friendly, responsive and as effective as the desktop version. Adequate user training is important so every employee is on the same page and assists customers as best as they can.

How can CRM improve customer experience?

CRM systems improve customer experience by helping you:

• Provide upselling and cross-selling recommendations to customers based on their purchase history.
• Analyze customer profiles to deliver personalized campaigns.
• Send automated thank-you notes or feedback forms to customers.
• Gain a 360-degree customer view for targeted messages.

Why is customer feedback important for CX strategy?

Customer feedback is data you collect from customers based on their interactions with your product, teams, service, websites, social media and business as a whole. It’s essential to measure and analyze this information as it gives insight into what meets customer needs and which areas need improvement. You can use this valuable data to personalize customer journeys and boost retention and acquisition rates.

What are good customer experience examples?

The streaming platform, Netflix, creates good customer experiences by personalizing the platform to customers’ unique needs. Netflix’s algorithm suggests accurate and helpful recommendations and has a user-friendly interface. The platform also posts relevant, youth-centric social media content to attract more customers.

How do I select CX software?

Choosing the right CX software can get overwhelming as hundreds of potential options exist in the market. There’s no one-size-fits-all; however, a good starting point would be to gather your requirements and ask peers for recommendations.

Our analysts have compiled a list of requirements and a comparison report that can make your CX software selection a whole lot easier. You can reach out to our team for more details by messaging [email protected] or via phone at 855-850-3850.