What Is CX (Customer Experience) – Tips and Strategies

As with anything in business, the customer experience (CX) is all about creating a positive experience for your customers that encourages them to continue doing business with you. In order to create a great customer experience, you need to understand what your customers want and expect from your business.

When it comes to customer experience, 73% of customers said CX was a major influence in their purchasing decisions.

Creating a good customer experience involves more than just providing good customer service. It encompasses every touchpoint that a customer has with your company, from the first time they visit your website to when they make a purchase and beyond.

Before we dive into how to create a great customer experience, let’s take a look at what customer experience actually is.

What Is a Customer Experience (CX)? 

Customer experience can be defined as the way customers interact with and perceive your company, from their very first interaction with you all the way through to after they make a purchase. Creating a positive customer experience is all about ensuring that every customer has a great experience with your brand at every touchpoint, whether that’s online, in-store, or over the phone.

A positive customer experience is essential to the success of any business. In fact, research has shown that nearly 42% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. Furthermore, happy customers are more likely to continue doing business with you and even recommend your products or services to others.

It can be hard for brands to control how customers feel. Customers can act and respond in unpredictable ways. The best thing a brand can do is to try to make every customer interaction positive so that the customer is more likely to be satisfied.

Who Is Responsible for CX?

In most cases, the customer experience is the responsibility of the company as a whole. Every member of your team, from your customer service representatives to your social media managers, plays a role in shaping how customers feel about your brand.

That said, there are some departments that have a bigger impact on CX than others. For example, your customer support team is responsible for dealing with customers directly and handling any problems they may have. As such, they play a big role in whether or not customers have a positive experience with your company.

Your marketing team is also responsible for CX in some ways. They’re responsible for creating messaging and campaigns that connect with customers on an emotional level. They also need to make sure that your branding is consistent across all channels.

Being in charge of CX is a big responsibility. But there are some things(which will be discussed in the below section) you can do to make sure your team is up to the task

Customer Experience vs. Customer Service

Customer experience and customer service are related terms, but they are not the same. Customer service is a part of customer experience, but customer experience includes more than just customer service.

The customer experience is a lot more than just the emotions, judgments, and reactions a person has while they’re purchasing your product. It also includes how they judged it or felt about themselves during every step of this process-even after buying.

For example: did you find out that we make great watches? No matter what kind of those questions might be (questions like “Do I really need another watch?”) our customers will have an answer as soon as possible.

Whereas customer service is the direct interaction between a company and its customers, customer experience includes all the emotions and thoughts a customer has before, during, and after they interact with your company (i.e. customer service teams).

Why Is CX Important for Businesses? 

Creating a great customer experience is essential for businesses for a number of reasons.

• Increases Customer Loyalty.
• Decreases Customer Churn.
• Increases Customer Referrals.
• Improves SEO Rankings.
• Increases Conversion Rates.
• Decreases Support Costs.
• Improves Brand Perception.
• Increases Revenue.
• Increases Customer Lifetime Value.
• Decreases Advertising Costs.
• Be less price-sensitive.
• Become brand ambassadors and evangelists.

How Can Businesses Improve Their CX Efforts? 

The thing about customer experience is that it’s always evolving. What worked yesterday might not work today. As such, businesses need to continuously work on improving their CX efforts.

There are a number of things businesses can do to improve their customer’s experience.

Some of the most effective strategies include:

Create a Clear Customer Experience Vision

Clarity behind customer experience vision is important. This will help you align your team and make sure everyone is working towards the same goal. This is especially important if you have a large team or if your team is spread out across different locations.

But what exactly should this customer experience vision look like?

A good place to start is by creating a customer profile. This will help you understand who your ideal customer is and what their needs are.

Once you have a clear understanding of your ideal customer, you can start to create a vision for the kind of experience you want them to have.

This customer experience vision should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Create an Emotional Connection with Your Customers

The best way to create an emotional connection with your customers is to tell them a story.

People are more likely to remember a story than they are to remember a list of facts. And when you can get your customers to remember your story, you’ll be more likely to create an emotional connection with them.

There are a few things you need to keep in mind when telling a story to your customers.

• You need to make sure your story is relevant to them. It should be something that they can relate to.
• Your story should be easy to understand. If it’s too complicated, they’re not going to be able to follow it.
• You need to make sure that your story is memorable. If it’s not, people will not remember it, and the essence of your story will be lost, and as a result, the emotional connection you’re trying to create will be lost as well.

Capture Customer Feedback in Real-Time

Customer feedback is essential for businesses. It allows you to understand what your customers are thinking and feeling and how they react to your product or service.

But customer feedback is only useful if you’re able to capture it in real-time and most effective if you can address it immediately.

There are a number of ways you can capture customer feedback in real-time.

• Use customer feedback software – This type of software allows you to capture customer feedback in real-time and track it over time.
• Use surveys – Surveys are a great way to collect customer feedback, but they can be time-consuming and intrusive.
• Live chat – Live chat makes it easy for you to capture customer feedback in real-time without being intrusive.

Act upon Regular Employee Feedback

Your employees are on the front lines of your business and they have a wealth of knowledge about your customers.

As such, it’s important to regularly collect feedback from your employees about their customer service interactions.

This feedback can be used to improve the customer experience.

Provide Real-Time Response and Resolution

Customers today expect businesses to provide real-time responses.

If you’re not doing this, you’re falling behind.

Not only do customers expect businesses to provide real-time responses, but they also expect businesses to resolve their issues in a timely manner.

This means that you need to have a system in place that allows you to address customer issues quickly and efficiently.

Monitor Social Listening

Never has it been easier to understand what your customers are thinking and feeling.

Thanks to social media, you can now monitor what people are saying about your brand in real-time.

This is valuable information that you can use to improve the customer experience.

How Can You Measure the Success of Your CX Efforts?

Customer experience is a journey, not a destination.

This means that you can never really say that you’ve “arrived”.

There’s always room for improvement.

That being said, it’s still important to measure the success of your CX efforts.

There are a few key metrics for measuring customer experience:

• Customer satisfaction – The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a measure of how satisfied your customers are with your product or service.
• Customer loyalty – Customer loyalty measures how likely your customers are to continue doing business with you.
• Customer churn rate – Customer churn rate measures how often your customers stop doing business with you.
• Net Promoter Score – NPS is a measure of how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service to others.

There are a number of other metrics you can use to measure the success of your CX efforts, but these are some of the most important.

Final Thoughts on CX

Uncovering what your customers want and need is essential to success. Through customer experience management, you can provide them with the best possible service and products. Customer journey mapping is another customer experience cx strategy to get a deeper understanding of how your customers interact with your brand. It allows you to see the customer expectations from their perspective and make changes accordingly.

Creating a successful customer experience strategy can be challenging, but it’s worth it to keep your customers happy. Use the above-mentioned tips and strategies to get started on the right foot.

What other tips and strategies would you add to this list to boost customer satisfaction? Let us know in the comments below!