In our last blog, we broke down the difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience (CX) and how important CX is to your company.
What is Customer Experience?
In a nutshell, Customer Experience focuses on the customer's entire journey with your brand. Designing and sustaining a customer experience can lead to an increase in customer loyalty and satisfaction and a reduction in customer complaints, which in turn can lead to an overall increase in your company’s revenue.
Now that we are aware of the benefits of designing an experience for your customers, the next question is how.
There are many ways you can ensure you are delivering the service which creates the perfect experience for your customers.
These include:
Understanding your customers' needs and wants
Treating your customers respectfully
Acting on promises made to your customer
Handling complaints and returns gracefully
Exceeding customer expectations
Going out of your way to help your customer.
All of the above approaches will contribute towards your customers feeling valued which over time can maximize their customer lifetime value with your business.
So, what then is a Service Strategy?
The strategy defines the standards of care and service that you offer customers and sets the requirements for meeting those standards; that is an actionable plan. A customer experience strategy plays an important role in building customer satisfaction, helps you to retain loyal customers and increase customer retention levels. Loyal customers buy more often, spend more, and refer their friends and family to you. They will also leave positive customer reviews.
*Check out our blog on Are bad reviews good for business? https://www.kmorasimbeatik.com/post/are-bad-reviews-good-for-business
How can you design a Service Strategy that shapes your Customer Experience, you ask?
By designing a Customer Experience Strategy.
If you already have a customer experience strategy, still read on as this may help you to improve your plan. Your customer experience strategy specifies your business goals and values. It is about how you want your customers to think about your brand and it must clearly identify major components of your company, how they are to be handled and most importantly be aligned with the company’s mission and goals.
Some of these components include:
Mapping customer journey – Here you will identify those important touchpoints and prioritize investment to create an experience that will drive growth, regardless of which employee or group is responsible for delivering the experiences at those touchpoints. https://www.kmorasimbeatik.com/post/mapping-your-customers
Processes & procedure – Your customer’s journey will help design processes and procedures needed to produce your company’s end product or service, allowing you to be able to manage or even improve quality control. Therefore, helping you to identify any service gaps or any processes that do not add value to the overall end product or service.
Customer support – Your goal should be to not just deliver a product/ service but to deliver an experience. Here you identify strategies to manage your touch points (each point of interaction the customer will have with your brand), what do you want them to see, hear or feel? What perception would you like your customers to have of your brand? How will you handle your customer complaints and feedback? All of these questions and more should be addressed.
The customer experience should be an essential part of your vision. It is a vital step to transform the way your company provides a product or service to its customers. Thus, the customer experience strategy outlines the principles to guide and inform the experience you deliver.
Creating a clear roadmap helps to serve as a good idea to enhance the customer experience across all the channels. It drives user engagement and delivers results for your business.
Other key areas to focus on when designing a Customer Experience Strategy
Target the right customer/ segment.
Learn who your customers are, what their pains, needs and expectations are.
Routinely collect customer feedback, utilizing the data collected and analyzed to remove or reduce any service gaps (does not add value to your customer) and for continuously improving your customer experience.
Identify your customer touch points. These can change based on your product or service and how you prioritize particular touch points.
Ensure that there is alignment between your brand, company goals and your touch points.
Measure your customer experience metrics. This will allow you to identify areas for improvement and to duplicate any success factors.
Reward loyalty, Daymon Worldwide found in its study that more than 29% of millennial customers buy from the same brand. This applies for both your employees and your customers, because your employees are the ones who will ensure that your customers are satisfied, their complaints rectified based on your brand standards and that your customers become repeat customers. Therefore, your employees should be well trained, they should feel empowered and should have the necessary tools to get the job done each and every time.
As per the Walker study, “By 2021, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.” You must create a WOW experience for your customers, as they are no longer looking for just a product or service, they want an experience. This experience should also be personalized and proactive.
Customer service and experience are often at the heart of a business which aims to provide an exceptional experience that leaves the customer feeling valued and respected. While designing a Customer Experience and Strategy, can involve extra resources, time and money, and the management of all implemented processes and procedures. But when you get it right, it will enable you to stand out from your competition, maintain a positive reputation among future customers and encourage existing customers to purchase from your company again. Remember, it is five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer!
These are just a few of the strategies that can help you create an experience for your customers and will vary based on the status of your company, your customers and your resources.
We at Kmora Simbeatik help companies create thorough plans to handle customer touch points, which in turn will allow your company to provide a consistent customer experience throughout the customer journey.
What are your thoughts on Customer Experience and Customer Experience Strategies? We’d love to hear from you.
Comment below or send us an e-mail.
Look out for my next article: Service Blueprints and how they can help your business.
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