What is a Customer Experience Strategy?
A Customer Experience (CX) Strategy is a plan for customer-oriented actions to improve customer experience and enforce customer-centricity in the whole business system.
CX strategy defines the approach for your brand to follow the path to accomplish desired organizational goals aligning with the demands of consumers. It encourages your brand to focus on practices that multiply the number of consumers you serve on a daily basis.
Brand actions at every customer touchpoints determine how a customer is going to perceive your products and services. The customer experience strategy improves customer interaction and relations with the brand. The uplifting of the brand image turns into an uncomplicated task if the brand assures the proper implementation of the customer experience strategy.
Why is Customer Experience Strategy Important?
A Salesforce report reveals that 88% of customers express that the experience a company delivers is as important as its product or services.
Organizing the CX endeavors impacts the corporate outcomes heavily because it influences the customer experience. Customer experience processes depict how the company caters to customers with the product and end-to-end experiences. And the entire customer-focused activities revolve around the strategic vision, addressing the flow of CX procedures. Enactment of the CX strategy is the go-to solution for keeping consumers happy and maintaining good brand health.
Below given are 3 advantages of implementing the CX strategy in your company -
1) Reduce Customer Churn Rate
Accenture report findings state that nearly 48% of consumers have left a business’s website and made a purchase elsewhere because the experience curation was poor.
Bad customer experience results in a massive loss for a company. Today customers are digitally-aware, and they very well understand the privileges they can enjoy by switching to competitors' products quickly. CX strategy is a qualified way to avoid failure while serving the customers.
The customer experience system confirms that every customer gains higher value out of company service. A brand implementing a CX strategy can witness an increase in Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
2) Build Customer-centric Environment
Georges Essama, Head of Customer Relations at CAMTEL, says in Clootrack's 102 CX Expert report, “Brands need to work on engaging their workforce and leaders in adopting a common customer-centric culture. They need to get all the necessary tools and systems to get a unified understanding of their customers. And, they must absolutely define, execute and evaluate a clear CX strategy under the supervision of corporate authorities (C level or Board).”
With an explicit customer experience strategy, brands can apply a customer-centric culture in different departments under the authority of top executives to make the CX implementation procedure smoother. Extracting the best out of the organization as one entity becomes easy for the customers as their desires get fulfilled with the apt experience and product.
3) Monitor CX Activities and Investments
Conducting CX activities without a predetermined plan leaves CX efforts impaired. The customer experience strategy acts as a framework for all CX activities carried on in an organization. It streamlines customer experience actions facilitating staff members to work with clarity and speeding up the delivery of the solution to jump to the next assignment swiftly.
Forrester survey indicates customers are 2.4x more likely to stay when companies solve customer problems more quickly.
CX strategy ensures quick and consistent solution delivery helping your brand provide a superior customer experience. Moreover, it monitors and guarantees the investments made by your company in CX operations fetches expected output.
4 Essential Components of Customer Experience Strategy
A well-designed customer experience strategy requires pillars to support the CX plans for adequate execution. CX strategy built with the following components provides long-term calculated benefits to your brand -
1) Customer Feedback
In this digital world, customers share their opinions voluntarily and speak about their feelings and thoughts regarding products and services on various online channels. Customer feedback act as an input for constructing a CX strategy. A firm can specify the course of its customer experience proceedings with retaining the focus on customer requirements.
Pinpointing the relevant customer feedback aid in creating a precise CX action plan that further smoothens the operation flow. A brand gains an in-depth knowledge of customer expectations and can prioritize the project to serve customers with their primary interests.
2) Team Performance
High-quality team performance is a must to guarantee the success of the CX strategy. It satisfies customer wants and brings the strategy into effect. The customer experience strategy aims at supplying faultless solutions to consumers. Efficient team performance is crucial as it produces quick and effective deliverables during unexpected customer crises.
The arrangement of teamwork on customer-related ambitions secures the authenticity of business objectives. Tracking and managing the team's conduct boosts the operations on the CX plan for yielding qualitative consequences that enhance the customer-brand relationship.
3) Customer Journey Map
Plotting a sensible customer journey map for your visitors is a must to include while planning for the CX techniques to be followed in your organization. A customer journey map eases dealing with customers at every touchpoint and allows your brand to facilitate customers with the most satisfactory experience. Buyers enjoy trouble-free transitioning throughout the interaction.
Crafting an appropriate customer journey helps your brand achieve a positive brand association. Brands can record the customer response at different customer points of contact and work accordingly to nurture them with unbeatable brand offers. Executing a customer experience strategy becomes a less demanding job with customer journey mapping.
4) Customer Service Strategy
Hubspot Research reveals that 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service.
Best products or services are not the only reason customers keep a long-term connection with a brand. Customer service addresses the customer experiences and decides the number of customers willing to move forward with your offerings.
A genuine customer service strategy aligns with the objectives of CX strategy and functions as a crucial element characterizing the same. Building a customer service strategy that centers the consumer issue solving delivers a more fulfilling experience to the audience who opt for the brand service.
Process to Build a Reliable CX Strategy for a Business
Assembling a dedicated customer experience strategy obtains swift customer success and continuously upgrades the CX standards with the frequently changing wants of consumers. Keeping up with the buyers' trends transforms into a regular manageable chore.
Follow this step-by-step process to build a reliable CX strategy for your business -
1) Understand your Target Audience
Salesforce survey indicates that 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations.
The purpose of a CX strategy is to deliver best-in-class services to customers. Understanding the potential buyers is necessary to initiate the implementation of the strategy. A company needs to work on learning about its target audience first to identify customer concerns.
Figure out the suitable channels to connect with your customers and gather customer feedback. Using the collected data, perform segmentation and build user personas to understand your audience better. With a strong buyer persona, your brand can deliver the relevant solution to the target audience.
2) Align CX Vision with Business Objectives
A brand can never reach set goals if the customer experience vision of your brand does not match the interest of the business objectives. CX vision reflects the brand perspective on customer values.
To construct a great CX strategy that backs a combination of CX vision and brand ideals, decide on customer satisfaction approaches. Look for methods that boost customer relations with your brand and test those with a small set of customers to confirm the furnishing of a satisfying experience.
For example, if you are rolling out a separate section for customer self-service on your website. Before releasing the support section, test if it is valid for your consumers. Identify what kind of issues customers can solve without customer support and provide relevant information to aid them.
3) Decide Metrics to Measure CX Quality
CX strategies, ideas, and processes are all ineffective if their deployment and outcomes are not measured. To set up a steadfast CX strategy, use customer experience metrics to track CX impact and convey the quality of CX work carried on in your organization. CX metrics estimate the effect of customer experience proceedings and drive continuous improvements.
A firm can decide to measure its CX drives with metrics such as customer retention rate, Customer Effort Score (CES), churn rate, and many more. Although the metrics can alter with the continuous change in business needs, a brand must always pick agile metrics to standardize the CX outputs.
4) Use Latest Technology for Better CX
Going big in absence of technology is nearly impossible as there is a spike in the number of digitally-aware customers who prefer online solutions.
Latest technologies like AI and ML have enabled brands to comprehend customer needs in a precise manner by analyzing customer reviews. Leaders need to find out how they can ensure the successful implementation of a CX analytics solution.
CX strategy built on the latest technology gets unexpected outcomes as a business can notice exponential growth in its customer base. The automation allows serving a large number of consumers with personalization. The customer-serving technical tools handle proactive communication with the buyers, making them feel heard and happy.
5) Keep Working On Customer Feedback
A firm cannot expect to go on with a single strategy for decades, as blindly following one plan or process will result in business failure or stagnation. If a company grows from every aspect, changes are inevitable. A brand should follow an agile methodology to hold on to the latest market inclinations.
With every new release, provoke the users to provide a candid review of the product features and the nature of services. Follow genuine feedback and quickly start the establishing processes. Acting on customer feedback is a success statement because customers are attracted more to the offers they demand. Continuous work on consumer reviews keeps strengthening the customer experience strategy and as the final outcome, generates high returns.
3 Best Examples of CX Strategy
Here are examples of 3 companies that implemented customer experience strategy and acquired positive results -
1) Dell
Customers have had a few unpleasant experiences with Dell. The lack of response from Dell had created enough issues to teach the company to listen to its customer.
Jeff Jarvis, a frustrated user, wrote a blog post headlined "Dell lies. Dell sucks" criticizing Dell for poor customer support. The complaint spread like a fire, and many disappointed customers commented on their problems, damaging the brand's reputation. Dell solved the issue and focused on improving customer support subsequently.
Dell designed the CX strategy to listen to customers through different modes, which included feedback surveys, social media, customer advisory panels, and many such and acted on the reviews to achieve customer satisfaction.
2)Slack
Slack is one of the most successful B2B communication platforms, with total revenue of $273.4 million in the First Quarter of Fiscal 2022. It has over 169,000 paid customers and a 122% net dollar retention rate. The reason for its remarkable success is that Slack is a customer-centric company.
Slack continually work on real-time feedback and improve customer experience by supporting its customers. The company concentrates on NPS to ensure its customers get a satisfactory experience.
Slack follows the strategy in which it understands the customers and makes an authentic bond with them to solve their problems. The customer-focused attitude has brought the experience they serve to the next level.
3) Toyota
In the 2020 U.S. Automotive Brand Loyalty Study, Toyota ranked second with a loyalty rate of 60.3%.
Toyota follows Kaizen, a Japanese philosophy that means continuous improvement to improve efficiency in the Toyota production system. With the belief of making persistent enhancements, the company collects customer reviews and provides customer satisfaction by solving customer issues.
Toyota has quality offices around the world to keep a check on its performance and perform better with customer-first philosophy. The brand also analyzes 100% of the reports from customers in the markets to maintain the quality of its products.
To Summarize
Customer experience strategy is the foundation of all CX actions put in place to serve the best customer experience. From monitoring the CX activities to building a customer-centric environment, the CX strategy brings many benefits that bring in more customers and retain the old ones. Apart from that, all the CX strategy components work towards improving the customer experience.
CX strategy is your roadmap to solve customer problems quickly and cater to their necessities. It binds each and every brand's resources together to lead the organizational growth and bring expected returns. A business must build a meticulous customer experience strategy to elevate internal and external progress, promoting a customer-first mindset and CX goals.