Largely speaking, customer experience (CX) is the total of all the interactions a customer has with your organization or brand. It is about how a brand or business engages with its customers at every touchpoint of the buying journey—from marketing to sales to post-sales service, and everywhere in between. No customer wants to give their money to a brand that treats them poorly. A PwC report found that 1 in 3 customers said that they’ll walk away from a company/brand they live with after facing even 1 bad experience. On the other hand, 63% of consumers said that they would happily share more information with a brand that provides them with a great, positive experience [1].
Another study by Segment found that, on average, 71% of customers express a level of frustration when their shopping experience isn’t personal. What’s surprising is that about 49% of shoppers have made impulse purchases after receiving personalized experiences [2].
The PwC study also found 54% of the surveyed consumers saying that most companies need to improve when it comes to customer experience. So, if you’re looking for ways to enhance how your company interacts with its customers to provide them with a positive experience, we have some tips for you.
7 tips to enhance customer experience (CX)
1. Know your audience and set a clear brand message
One of the sure-shot ways to enhance your customer experience is to revisit your brand message and check if it is in alignment with your brand. Check if it is clear and concise, because if the message isn’t clear, customers may get confused and walk away. This is why it is imperative for you to understand your target audience and craft a message accordingly.
You need to drive the main focus of your brand communications and messaging towards the value and purpose of your brand. However, it is also important to do it in a way that kept customer needs and pain points as the central focus. You should also create buyer personas to help your customer support team recognize who exactly your target customer is.
2. Integrate customer loyalty programs
Good customer loyalty programs that provide valuable benefits to customers help in generating considerable extra revenue for your business. It is one way to enhance the customer experience as well as get customer insights, like how frequently they buy, what do they buy, and much more. To boost customer experience, brands have also incorporated social and behavioural actions into loyalty programs. Referral points and rewards for user-generated content aid significantly in providing a more customized experience. The points and reward system encourages your customers to accumulate reward points, and as a result, buy again from your brand.
3. Create and implement an omnichannel strategy
A recent study found that 90% of customers (9 out of 10 customers) expect an omnichannel experience from brands with uninterrupted service across communication methods [3]. Implementing an omnichannel strategy is key for any business to get insights into customer interactions and customer behaviour across the buying journey Customers these days expect that every interaction with a brand should feel similar and familiar, be it with the sales, marketing, or customer support team. Brands need to be able to provide customers with a unified, consistent experience across all online and offline channels of communication.
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4. Gather feedback proactively to enhance customer experience
Satisfying and fulfilling customer needs is the primary goal of any business. And to understand if your brand has been successful in doing so is by proactively getting feedback. Gathering, analyzing, and taking action on constructive feedback is helpful in enhancing the customer experience. It helps you understand how your brand and products are being perceived. Picking the perfect communication channels to connect with your customers can help you greatly in gathering actionable feedback.
Channels like in-app chat and chatbots on the website allow customers to interact with your website to provide you with feedback and help you understand the customer’s satisfaction level and overall experience. Make sure that you show them their feedback and opinions are valuable. Moreover, ensure that the feedback and opinions collected that are integrated into the end product actually improve the overall product, solves a problem and satisfies a customer need.
5. Integrate the power of A.I. into your customer experience
Artificial Intelligence has been extremely successful in delivering an immersive, enhanced customer experience. Setting up chatbots helps businesses improve their customer experience and grow faster. Deploying AI-powered chatbots helps customers get their answers to their queries at any time of the day.
Getting quick answers to even the most basic questions helps customers as well as the support team. Chatbots also help you gather preliminary information, like contact number and email address, about your website visitors. Bots are also very easily scalable at the time of peak hours and deliver high-quality support without missing any chance of customer interaction.
6. Prioritize improve the employee experience as well
A huge part of the customer experience largely depends on and can be attributed to the employee they interact with during their shopping journey. If the employee feels they do not have access to the right tools to perform their job, or if the employee feels unappreciated or pressured, it can immensely affect their performance. When trying t improve customer experience, it is important you also try to identify the key pain points of employees via employee feedback tools. You can also review the current process and improve it to forge a better experience. It is important to ensure that the employees understand the core values and culture of a company.
7. Utilize customer analytics
With advancements in AI and Big Data, brands can now conveniently get their hands on customer insights and analytics Leveraging the power of customer analytics, managers can measure detailed demographic, psychographic, behavioural, and other customer experience metrics, and too, in real-time.
To sum it up
Providing a consistent and seamless customer experience provides endless opportunities that impact directly on topline performances. Having an omnichannel CX strategy in place helps in improving the overall customer experience and makes your company customer-focused with benefits in the long run. Whether you’re a startup or a well-established business, proving a lean customer experience takes you a long way.
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Sources
[1] PWC “Experience is everything: Here’s how to get it right” “The Future of CX” [Online] Available from: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/pwc-consumer-intelligence-series-customer-experience.pdf [Accessed January 2022]
[2] Segment (2017) “The State of Peronalization” [Online] Available from: http://grow.segment.com/Segment-2017-Personalization-Report.pdf [Accessed January 2022]
[3] Jarman, P. NICE inContact “Delivering an Excellent Omni-channel Experience” (2019) [Online] Available from: https://www.cxtoday.com/contact-centre/delivering-an-excellent-omni-channel-experience/ [Accessed January 2022]
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