In order for your business to survive, you need customers. It’s not just about getting customers through your door, but to ensure you maintain a loyal base, while still attracting new followers. This is why it’s important to create a customer experience strategy.
What is a customer experience strategy
A customer experience (CX) is the number of activities that a company undertakes to deliver a series of positive interactions. Together, the result is an exceptional product or service offering. Creating a customer experience strategy is important because you get the chance to deliver more and also ensure efficient productivity.
The CX should consider the following:
- Reachability
- Purchase convenience
- Service convenience
- Personalisation
- Simple processes
- Flexibility
Difference between customer experience and customer service
While the two are often assumed to mean the same thing, there are differences. Customer service is the interaction with customers while customer experience focuses on the customer’s journey with your company.
Why you should have a customer experience strategy
While it sounds like a lot of work, developing this strategy has numerous benefits including:
Increased customer engagement
Customer engagement builds loyalty and in today’s consumer climate, people care more about what brands have done to make their experience a positive one. With an effective customer experience strategy, consumers will keep coming back for more.
Customer conversion
A good customer experience strategy creates a life-cycle of feedback that will increase conversion rates. By prioritising relationships with customers, you’ll start growing your customer base. You’ll also have a better chance of buy-in when you start launching new products or expanding.
Word of mouth marketing
When more and more people are experiencing positive customer engagement, it could lead to word of mouth marketing. This is basically the best type of marketing for your business – it’s free and comes from a reliable source (a satisfied customer).
What to include in your customer experience strategy
According to a study by consulting firm Walker, by next year, customer experience will be the most important factor customers consider when it comes to a brand differentiator. Look at the following when designing your customer experience strategy:
Know your customer personas
The first step in the process is researching your customer’s persona. You should create a group of 1-5 personas that usually frequent your store. The idea is to determine the needs of these customers and to make sure you’re always offering what they want. You want to empathise with them if they face a challenge and provide the ultimate support.
What is your customer experience vision?
You need a customer vision that needs to be embedded within all facets of the organisation. What is a customer experience vision? It’s basically a mission statement. The statement could be something along the lines of “Always be humble” or “Provide innovative service”. These statements should be immersed within the company and should reflect when you’re interacting with customers.
Rely on customer feedback
How else will you know if you’re doing right by your customer? Feedback helps you determine what you’re doing well and where you could improve. Capturing feedback could be in the form of a survey or customer email. If you have the capacity, outbound calls could work too. You could review the feedback monthly, weekly, or yearly.
You can enhance your customer management experience on the job or by looking at short courses that will help you develop these skills. The great benefit of the courses is that you can use the skills on the job. Develop core principles to set your brand apart from the rest.
