Customer experience, or what we refer to as CX is the benchmark of business today. Why is this so? Because 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience, and let’s face it, in today’s day we expect customer service with any product or service, but sadly not many businesses offer a great customer experience. Businesses get so caught up in the service delivery they forget about the customer journey and the interactions each customer has with their business throughout this process, from the first contact to becoming a loyal customer.
So, what is the customer journey?
The customer journey, which is also somewhat misunderstood, is the path our prospect clients take to find us. Going through what we also call the customer lifecycle, they first become aware of a problem they have, then they start looking for a solution and in so doing they make an informed decision, had they been given the right information, to make a purchase.
But often this process is not taken seriously and so as the customer finds himself on a path, he either gets led directly to you to make an informed decision or he is taken off the path, which is what we don’t want, so we need to manage these interactions along their journey to ensure they are led to the right place, to make a purchase.
Why should we improve our CX?
There are three main reasons why businesses proactively manage and invest in customer experience:
- Improves customer retention by 42%
- Improves customer satisfaction by 33%
- Increases cross-selling and up-selling by 32%
How can you ensure great customer experience?
- Know who the customer is
It is important to first understand who your customer is so you know what it is they need help with so you can build your marketing and content strategy around them.
- Listen! What is the customer thinking or feeling?
Then it is time to take note and listen, see what they are asking for, what are they thinking and try to understand what they are feeling?
- What is the customer’s action?
Understand what it is they want or need once they have recognised their problem and since started to ask for help.
- What is the customer’s touchpoint with your business?
The most important one, once you have clarity of the target market and understand how you can help them, it is important for you to build that customer journey for them that they can easily find their way to you. So, take the time to recognise what touchpoints they will have access to, and then optimise and add value to each of them (and test them too!).
- How does it make them feel?
Lastly, always ask them for feedback, ask them why they made the decision they did, or if they did purchase from you ask them how they found the customer experience. It is important not to assume just because they purchased from you, they found the customer experience satisfactory, but rather ask as they may have great advice how you can improve it for the next client and the next.
It’s important to remember, businesses that optimise for an emotional connection will outperform their competitors by 85% in sales growth. Make listening to customers a top priority across the business as each customer has a different expectation. Use customer feedback to develop an in-depth understanding of your customers and what it is they want or need. You can only anticipate the or intentionally create a customer experience, but the best feedback is that of a customer to make it even better. And when you can achieve a 100% client satisfaction for your customer experience they will start sending people to you.
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