“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all” – Michael LeBoeuf
A new digitally empowered society is emerging, and marketers need to shift to a customer-centric mindset to meet the evolving needs of their customers. This has pushed understanding and improving the customer experience (CX) to the forefront.
Gartner defines customer experience as “the customer’s perceptions and connected feelings caused by the occurrence and additive results of interactions with a supplier’s workers, systems, channels or product.”
Forrester’s analysis defines it as: “How customers perceive their interactions together with your company.”
Clearly, the two basic components of a customer experience definition are perception and interaction.
Customer’s Perception is Customer Experience
Customers’ overall perception of the brand may be a result of single or multiple interactions with a brand whereas seeking any information or support at entirely different phases of the customer’s life cycle.
Interactions with the brand will enrich Customer Experiences
Customer interaction with a brand refers to various points like talking to a customer support agent on the decision, self-service selections or live chat, etc., across the buyer’s journey.
Customer Experience (CX) can be defined as – how a customer perceives the brand while interacting with it throughout their buying journey. In today’s digital era customers are hyper-connected to technology and expect services at the snap of a finger. Thus, brands need to transform and adopt a digital strategy to supersede the customer’s expectations.
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Importance of Customer Experience Management
“The customer’s perception is your reality.” – Kate Zabriskie
Product Experience Management is crucially important to the sustained growth of a business. It’s essential to have a positive CX because customers just don’t buy the product, they perceive the whole process as an experience and build brand loyalty accordingly. Therefore, organizations are investing in raising customer experience to reap the subsequent edges of the same –
- Reinforce brand Preference: Customers are delighted after they witness customized experiences. Brands that target CX across all touchpoints have a higher variety of loyal customers.
- Reduce Customer Churn: The cost of acquiring a new customer is over-retentive an existing one. A happy customer stays with the brand and is unlikely to depart for factors like product value.
- Inspire customer support: Memorable customer experience ends up in happy customers. Loyal customers are the simplest brand ambassadors or brand advocates for a company.
- Boost Revenue: Satisfied customers raise revenue with progressive sales and positive word of mouth helps the organization to feature additional worth in terms of the latest business sales.
“2022 is going to be a crucial year for brands and retailers to focus their efforts on ensuring customers get worth that goes on the far side of the product.”
Prime experiences can’t be found with the flip of a switch. It should be attained. And there are 5 key customer experience factors to mend to create that happen. These factors already exist in your organization. However, with some tweaks, these customer communications management factors can become a source of loyalty and ROI for years to come.
With that in mind, here are the Factors affecting your Customer Experience (CX) in 2022:
Organizational Structure will reflect in Customer Experiences
The first customer experience factor is your organizational structure which includes employees, stakeholders, processes, and key functions in your company. Align your organization to your experience goals at each chance. To reach the connected level, emphasize customer-centric operations, target raising efficiency, and decrease effort for customers and staff. And, assign customer communications management roles to individuals throughout your business to deeply infix your new goals.
These were a few of the factors that can affect your customer journeys. If you think that I have missed any, let me know in the comments section below.
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Interaction Strategy will make or break Customer Journeys till the next time
Each interaction affects the overall experience, creating a concept to make each interaction count. Grasp what channels you employ and what you wish to communicate through each one. To reach the connected level, target new ways in which you’ll be able to use technology. Maintain a customer-first mission with cross-channel engagement methods, self-service, and proactive support. Then create it simple to hand off customer service from one channel to another.
Technology remains the key to great customer experience improvements
Organizations are reshaping their customer communications by making use of innovative technologies. These new technologies have been helpful in gaining deeper insights from data and in better engaging with customers. According to Forrester”
3survey, “72% of business leaders named customer experience as the top priority for their company, and 63% have prioritized investing in new technology aiming to improve experiences.”Thus, keeping technologies as the core of your business strategy ultimately helps in improving customer engagement. CCM Software is one such technology that helps in revitalizing your relationship with your existing and new customers by delivering experiences in the form of interactive, on-demand & batch communications. Other technologies include call center software, CRM, etc.,
Data and Analytics integrated with Customer Journeys might just save you
Technology feeds off the info you set into it. Customers need to know that you recognize them, therefore keep track of your interactions with every customer and their personal preferences. To reach the connected level, have processes in place to repeatedly collect, maintain and update customer information. Then house this information in one place, accessible across the enterprise. And then use business intelligence, in a way to create the most out of this information once creating selections.
Success Measures would matter for Customer Experiences always
Success measure is how to facilitate success by creating changes in the factors affecting customer experience. This key performance factor elaborates on what proportion your business has full-grown and on what key factors you still need to work on. To reach the connected level, set metrics for financial, operational, and experiential goals. Target drawback resolution and sanctification, particularly in customer-initiated changes. Lastly, set metrics that lead to enterprise-wide efficiency.
For more insights related to Customer Experience Management and how to get the best out of your Customer Journeys with integrated solutions subscribe to our blog or book a demo for our winning SaaS-based CCM Software.