:”Customer Experience is the next competitive battleground.It’s where businesses are won or lost.”
-Tom Knighton
Customer experience (CX) refers to a customer’s perception of their overall interactions with a company.
Since customer expectations are higher than ever, customer experience has become a key driver of customer retention and acquisition. Comparatively, customer services refer to specific touchpoints within the experience, where a customer requests and receives assistance or help.
Customer Experience Strategy
- Understand your audience & create buyer personas
To create the best customer experience, you have to first understand your customers – who they are, their motivations, and concerns. If your organization wants to deeply understand customers and empathize with them, you need access to in-depth intel. - Work backward from the experience you want to deliver
When planning your customer experience, it’s easiest to work backward. Apple is known for its premium customer experience, and for obvious reasons. Steve Jobs, who was responsible for the brand Apple grew to be, famously advocated his principle of “beginning with the customer experience and working backward to the technologyâ€. - Hire team players and get them invested in the process
At the other end of customer interactions with your brand are employees, who are key to creating a great customer experience.
Here are two tips to hire and initiate the right talent to enable great customer service –
Focus on the skills that matter – interpersonal skills, the ability to interact and connect with people, presentation, hospitality, and the ability to maintain a cool mind through crises.
Create a set of principles for your customer executive and sales personnel to follow, so their interactions with customers are smooth and pleasant. - Be attentive to customer needs & use feedback loops
How do you know what your customers’ needs are if you don’t ask them? How can you assess what your brand’s value is if you don’t ask your customers?
That’s why it’s essential to create feedback loops. Here’s how you can –
Use post-interaction, real-time feedback surveys. You can even follow up with customers over the phone for more details.
Pay attention to what is being said about you on social media, this is where customers are usually the most honest.
Customer experience is one of the biggest opportunities that businesses have to capture prospects’ interest, get them to act, and stay with the brand as loyalists. There is no limit to what a good customer experience strategy can enable, and this post is a great start.