Driving Customer Experience Initiatives in the New Normal

A global customer experience study by oracle has found that over 70% of senior executives feel that customer experience influences the desire of a customer to be a faithful advocate. Customer Experience (commonly abbreviated as CX) is defined by every interaction and experience a customer has with a business throughout the entire customer life cycle. It starts from someone navigating the website to receiving the purchased product or service and eventually becoming a satisfied and loyal customer.

CX, being a fundamental part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is important for the holistic perception that a customer will experience with a business or brand for becoming a repetitive customer. It is observed that loyal customers are five times as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 7x as likely to try a new offering, and 4x as likely to refer.

A business or a brand should always aim at delivering an appreciable customer experience for the retention of its existing customers and to build a new customer base. Good customer experience is none other than inquiring the customers’ queries, attending to their responses, and actioning their reviews during the entire customer life cycle. It is also done by implementing a computerized system to collect, analyze, and respond to feedback that eventually solves any customer challenges faced. This eventually reduces customer complaints & returns, increases customer loyalty & satisfaction, and better word-of-mouth marketing with increased recommendations.

72% of businesses say that improving customer experience is their top priority, and it is easy to see why. To retain customers and grow, businesses need to provide consistently good customer experiences. And this inadvertently depends on a business analyzing criticisms over its customer experience.

Measuring, Analyzing, and Improving Customer Experience

Since customer experience is a subjective concept, businesses rely on several divergent CX metrics that help in measuring and analyzing it. CX metrics not only tracks the improvement made by a business over time but also helps in evaluating the ups and downs of changes that might affect the customer base. Metrics often used by CX professionals are Customer Effort Score (CES), Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Time to Resolution (TTR).

Taking an insight into how to create a pleasing customer experience helps a business in improving customer satisfaction. Having a clear customer-centric vision while communicating is important while identifying different types of customers and their needs. Using a quality framework for developing the customer support team, it is important to try and create an emotional connection with customers to capture real-time feedback. A daily check on employee’s customer interactions ensures good service and identifies problems immediately. Improving and providing good customer experience is reflected while measuring Return on Investment, demonstrating the growth of the business.

What is Customer Experience Management and Why is it Important?

Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) is a series of procedures a business uses to track, organize, and manage every interaction and experience throughout any customer lifecycle. Positive or negative CX contributes to customer viewpoints and sales. It is seen that 81% of companies recognize customer experience as a competitive differentiator.

Implementing CXM strategies are necessary for various reasons. For starters, customer retention prices are less than accession and their reviews drive augmentation. Personalizing customer-fronting content helps to improve materiality and customer engagement, and along with a loyalty program to drive customers with an interest in savings and perks, it cements a more personal relationship.

By understanding customer sentiments through tools & techniques analyzing customer emotions, businesses or brands should build a befitting & engaging experience. This would help in addressing and predicting the needs of customers. It is important for businesses or brands to understand the decision making of customers for purchases to give competition to parallel businesses. Customer analytic tools should be used to evaluate customer data and constantly voice the customer feedback so then improvements and modifications are implied.

Platforms and Tools in Managing Customer Experience

Seemingly, companies with powerful omnichannel customer engagement strategies maintain an average of 89% of their customers, as compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel strategies.

The major components of the platforms centering around the Customer Experience Enterprise Software include:

• CRM to collect data from various touchpoints and channels to stop customers from repeating information.
• Marketing automation to expand marketing efficiency and abolish repeated tasks. It includes tools like customer segmentation, campaign management, and lead management.
• E-commerce to permit companies to set up an online store with capacities such as product brochures, checkout, and payment processing.
• Customer service for customers to solve their own problems by communicating through chatbots and other available omnichannel options.

A few of the essential customer experience management software tools include:

• Personalization engines, which include new technologies like mobile marketing, beacons, and location-based services. It automates communication with each individual customer.
• Automation tools to perform smaller tasks so that the humans in customer service can focus on the more severe problems.
• Voice of the Customer (VoC) software to draw out data from different channels to create a variety of customer feedback.

More Power to Customers and Business

It is seen that 81% of consumers would be willing to pay more for improved customer experience. The importance of customer experience has increased with the prominence of customer empowerment.

Customer experience needs constant nurturing with an enhanced focus on customer experience strategies. Analyzing, understanding, and adapting as per customer needs is fundamental to how customers perceive a business or a brand. A personal relationship with customers and a positive influence on customer experience reflect themselves in visible customer loyalty, higher customer retention, and increased growth of revenue.