The customer experience (CX) and customer service are more often misconceived as a similar concept. But, communication, assistance, and problem-solving are at the focal point of customer service. And customers’ experience is measured through their overall response from the first point of contact until the end of their journey.
Here we notice that customer experience focuses on the provider’s methods of providing services.
Why stress on Customer Experience?
The entire customer journey includes several checkpoints from the first contact in customer engagement to purchase formalities and customer support. So, a business follows this cycle to achieve excellent customer satisfaction, brand awareness and finally close a sale. However, the ultimate goal for any organization should not be to sell one time to a customer but to earn customer loyalty for repeat business. Excellent customer experience is key to achieving this.
According to American Express research, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Research indicates that providing a seamless approach will allow you to learn more about your customers’ behaviour, interests, and dislikes.
Let’s dive into the top 6 secrets of achieving an excellent customer experience.
1) Personalized Customer Service & Deft handling
A team effort focused on delivering personalized service will affect customer emotions at every checkpoint. To keep the customer engaged, it is necessary to maintain interactive, responsive and insightful communication. However, customers should never feel they are being struggled by customer service representatives. No matter whether the customer speaks to a sales representative over the phone or has a face-to-face interaction, they must feel comfortable enough to continue the conversation.
According to Oracle’s global CX study, 74% of senior managers believe that a positive brand experience motivates customers to remain loyal. Furthermore, employee satisfaction and employee engagement are also important factors to motivate employees. So, they can provide excellent client service. A truly excellent customer experience cannot be achieved without excellent service during and after the sales process.
2) Customer First Approach
In 2017, Gartner research revealed that 81% of companies not only plan to make customer experience a top priority in 2019 but also make aggressive efforts to grow. Adding loyal customers to the customer experience is the quickest and most cost-effective way to increase recurring business (Marketing Metrics, 2010). Without a doubt, customer-focused and customer-first approaches in business will ultimately increase customer retention and grow the business. Additionally, companies should never underestimate the power of loyal customers for the marketing of their brand.
3) Design Online Journey
Reduce the amount of effort required for users to buy using your online store, mobile apps, or social media accounts. It’s best when clients don’t need to apply a ton of energy to purchase or to get issues settled. Remember customer experience throughout the entire customer journey. For instance, keep your brand appeal consistent across all platforms such as social media, your website, and email.
On eCommerce platforms a customer looks for:
- A user-friendly website or mobile app
- A fast and feasible checkout process
- Personalized customer support
- Clear product pages
- Easy complaint handling process
- Outstanding shopping experience
4) Unified & Reliable CRM
Currently, customer experience is taking a dramatic turn that involves an omnichannel strategy to connect with customers in new and exciting ways. However, to remain a leader in the market, the deployment of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software should be the utmost priority.
Moreover, the tech-adept CRM software lets you access customer purchase histories and develop accurate forecasts of customers’ future needs based on that data. Besides that, if you’re able to predict customers’ likelihood of future needs, you’ll have a great chance of keeping them before your competitors.
- Provide related products based on purchase history
- Create and deliver targeted email marketing campaigns
- Understand the 360-degree view of the customer
Clearly, customer service is one of the key ingredients in compound elements of the entire customer journey. However, an innovative CRM tool creates the infrastructure to fortify customer relationship approaches.
5) Identifying Common Pain Points
Revaluate your customer experience periodically to identify pitfalls that could potentially harm your bottom line. Following are the few common pain points identified by experts.
i) Service/Support pain points
- Response not sent in real-time
- Inadequate product knowledge
- Unavailability on customers preferred channel
ii) Efficiency pain points
- Inconvenience in using the product
- The lengthy and complex buying process
iii) Financial pain points
- Subscription/membership fees
- No leverage on repeat purchases
iv) Process pain points
- Complaint handling
- Application submission
6) Monitor Customer Experience Metrics
Try to measure customer retention rate, real-time taken for a response, customer satisfaction, and other relevant metrics. If your business tracking dashboard is showing an increase in traffic of repeat purchases then it is a good indicator of a great customer experience. However, measuring the CX return on investment can be a crucial or challenging task. Therefore, many organizations use Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS collects valuable information in a subset of questions through surveys. In other words, many organizations are using it as a standard benchmark to measure customer experience. Above all, with periodical CX measurement monitoring you can frame a suitable CX strategy with more transparency.
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