The basics of better customer experience

Customer experience has seen a mighty resurgence recently as digital trends shape what people expect from companies they transact with. The limitations of a brick-and-mortar world no longer apply, and customers have grown to expect more. The question then becomes: can you give them ‘more’?

This guide will make sure you understand the basics of customer experience, including why it’s important and how to improve upon your current practices. Let’s make sure that you understand how to keep customers happy in the modern landscape, because your competitors are always one click away.

What is customer experience?

Customer experience (CX) is how a customer thinks about a company based on their previous interactions with them. A customer’s positive or negative perception is shaped by events such as using a company’s homepage, making a purchase, or speaking with customer service reps.

The three things most responsible for building customer experience are:

• People. You probably have vivid memories – both good and bad – of the times you interacted with a customer support representative when trying to get answers to a question.
• Products. It’s easy for a customer to get frustrated by a bad product, just as it’s easy to fall in love with an amazing product.
• Services. Customers expect a service to be delivered and executed just as it was promised.

These are just a few basic things that show the elements involved in building amazing customer experience.

The importance of customer experience

Almost everyone instinctively understands that businesses need to deliver great customer experiences, but not everyone knows the many details surrounding why it’s so important. Here are some of the most notable positives that are a direct result of strong customer experience:

• Drives endorsements
• Ignites company buzz
• Creates lifelong customers
• Keeps customers happy

Another thing to keep in mind is that the modern customer holds many more of the cards when it comes to where they do business and who they do it with. The digital landscape affords them endless choices. If you want to stand out, you can’t rely on being the only available option. Instead, your customer experience needs to stand out. If it doesn’t, it’s easy for a customer to take their business elsewhere.

With how important customer experience is, do you feel comfortable in the level of excellence you provide? Here are some key ways to improve.

Improve your customer experience process

One of the best ways to improve at something is by creating a blueprint to help map out your strategy. Customer experience is no different, as you’ll see when you begin building strategies to improve it. Since planning is the first step to improvement, let’s talk about one of the best ways to plan for better customer experiences: creating a Customer Journey Map.

A Customer Journey Map gives companies a visual representation of the paths customers take when transacting with a company. The map shows what types of areas are good and bad for customers along the journey.

To create an effective customer journey map, it’s important to:

• Focus on target audiences
• Account for all touch points
• Be willing to make changes to the map in the future
• Create mapping goals
• Identify customer personas

If the task sounds daunting, don’t worry – there are plenty of templates available to help guide your process. For example, the following is a template available from Custellence:

Strive for consistency

Once you’ve completed the planning phase and have an effective Customer Journey Map, it’s time to focus on improving the many different touch points a customer comes into contact with. For example, if a customer had a question about a service they purchased, what types of avenues would they be able to take to get an answer? If they are able to get it answered on social media, via customer service representative, via chatbot 24/7, or via email, they’ll likely be happy with the less restrictive options they were given.

Next, it would be important that each avenue give a consistently helpful and good experience to the customer asking the question. If the response they get on Twitter isn’t as friendly as the response they might get from a customer service rep, that’s a big issue.

Keep things easy for the customer, and keep lines of communication open for them. Remember also that the customer buying journey has many different touch points that need serious consideration in order to create a pleasant experience for them at each stage.

So how can you tell if you’re giving the best customer experiences possible? The key is evaluation.

Evaluating your customer experience efforts

Before you’re able to make adjustments across the board, you’ll need some solid feedback on how your current processes are working. Here are the best way to evaluate your customer experience efforts:

• Examine response time. This one can be tricky, as customers are unique individuals with dynamic preferences, especially for how quickly they expect their issue to be dealt with. However, with a bit of research you can find a quality average time to aim for that will be pleasing to the most amount of people.
• Keep an ear to the ground. Go the extra mile to familiarize with how customers want features, services and products. This can be through either direct communication with customers (surveys, etc.) or indirect communication (buzz/rumors from social media, word of mouth, etc.).
• Investigate commonly experienced issues. For efficiency’s sake, make sure to focus a lot of your research on high-volume issues customers are dealing with. This can be found in saved data about customer service logs.
• Offer surveys/feedback. Getting direct customer feedback and surveys is the tried and true method which still has plenty of value. If you’re not getting as many completed surveys as wanted, try incentivizing customers to fill them out. Surveys are also a boost to customer engagement.

3 Examples of great customer experience

Some of the best ways to improve at something is to see other successes. Therefore, I’ve found three real-world examples of amazing customer experience.

1. McDonald’s

McDonald’s has some of the most effective, memorable marketing campaigns. Their advertisements stick with audiences for long periods of time, and build on their successful brand recognition efforts.

However, when McDonald’s realized they weren’t hitting their sales goals, they pivoted strategies and put more effort into improving customer experience.

What they did: The approach they took was a customer-focused effort, improving many in-restaurant problems. They pinpointed these problems through extensive customer feedback. This resulted in upgrades to the style of interiors, faster transactions and modern menu renovations. The change in sales as a result were notable.

Key takeaway: A great marketing campaign might reach the right people, but if the customer experience with your company is lagging, it will be all for not. Be willing to give your customers more input when necessary.

2. Netflix

Since entering into the movie game, Netflix has been pretty good at giving the customer what they really want – even if the customer doesn’t yet know what they want. Before the age of streaming, Netflix delivered great customer experiences by delivering DVDs straight to people’s homes, moving people away from having to drive to a video store. Their real customer experience talents, though, shined through when the world of entertainment shifted to streaming-focused.

What they did: Netflix changed expectations when it comes to personalization, leading to one of the most powerful, positive customer experience examples available. Using artificial intelligence, they were able to build a unique user experience that recommends the right movies or shows to the right people. Netflix understood early on in the streaming game that people want their experience with a product or service to be different than that of their peers. The result is an interface that caters to each individual customer’s every entertainment whim.

Key takeaway: Focusing on real time personalization is usually the right move. Furthermore, using advanced technology such as AI and machine learning to power personalization efforts makes a big difference.

3. Starbucks

There’s always a lot of buzz about Starbucks, but the funny thing is, the buzz isn’t hardly ever about their product. It’s safe to say that many people do enjoy their coffee, but what drives the Starbucks brand is without question the customer experience it delivers.

What they did: The first thing worth mentioning here is ‘consistency’. It goes without saying that customers expect the Starbucks drink they order to be just as good from one location to the next. Starbucks goes beyond this, though, by building physical atmospheres that offer the same style, look and feel to them wherever the customer may go.

Besides the great uniformity in experiences from store to store, Starbucks focuses on delivering customer experiences by mastering the delivery of senses to their customers. It’s hard to deny the memorable qualities of the sights, smells and sounds of a coffee shop. With Starbucks, no sense feels underwhelmed during a visit to one of their many locations.

Key takeaway: Customer experience isn’t a one-time thing. Remember that each interaction with a customer adds to or detracts from that customer’s perception of your company.

Final thoughts

It’s a lot easier to remember our bad customer experiences than it is to remember the good ones. Fortunately, as things become digitized at an increasing rate, strategies develop to help companies give their customers great experiences. Use the above tips and strategies to maximize your own processes.