7 Ways to create a great customer experience strategy
Companies tend to spend a massive chunk of their money on retention and customer services to ensure fail-proof ways of keeping their customers happy and satisfied.
Recently, researchers in the service marketing industry have considered customer satisfaction from what and how they experienced the service encounter, resulting in customer experience management.
Understanding and delivering Total Client Expertise (TCE) to sustain Lasting Customer Loyalty (LCL) is progressively necessary given the pressures of commoditization, economical process and market saturation in developed countries.
As per the Walker study, “By 2021, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
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What is the customer experience strategy?
Customer experience (CX) strategy refers to tracking the holistic perception of the customers and their experience with your brand. It is a totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioural consumer responses during all stages of the consumption process, including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages.
Features of having a great customer experience strategy:
- Reduced customer churn rate – According to Harvard Business School, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%. In addition, businesses focused on providing excellent communications by solving customer problems tend to reduce their customer churn rates.
- Better word of mouth marketing – Great customer support will lead to a great customer experience, leading to more people talking about your business online and everywhere else. Increased word of mouth is a traditional but very effective form of marketing that you can successfully attain by having a great customer experience strategy.
- Better word of mouth marketing – Great customer support will lead to a great customer experience, leading to more people talking about your business online and everywhere else. Increased word of mouth is a traditional but very effective form of marketing that you can successfully attain by having a great customer experience strategy.
- Improved crisis management – Handling an angry customer who is also loyal calls for a crisis and is the only way out of this.
- Customer lifetime value excellent customer support is e (CLTV)- Reducing customer churn rates and ensuring customer satisfaction should be the main focus of businesses. This acts as the bedrock of increased loyal relationships with the customers. The longer you can have a steady hold of your customers, the more they tend to provide you with customer lifetime value (CLTV).
How can you create an excellent customer service strategy for your business?
Explore your audience – Discover the needs and expectations of your customer segment. Try to find out who your customers are and what makes your customers happy. This will aid you in defining a plan to move forward and suggest relevant changes to your current customer experience strategy. 71% of companies that exceed their revenue and lead goals use buyer personas.
Define your business objectives – It is vital to identify what goal is to be achieved with the strategy. For example, do you wish to target new customers? Do you want to enter a new market venture? Do you want to create awareness of a new product? Answering these questions will be the very first step in the actual process of shaping a groundbreaking strategy for your business.
Research your competitors – Analyse market trends and graphs. Keep a close eye on what your competitors are bringing to the plate. This will keep you up to date. Researching your competitors’ current CX practices may also prevent your business from being left out.
To stand out from your competitors, you need to know what they are doing and come up with a CX strategy or a tactic that isn’t in the market yet. You can also identify gaps between your competitors and their customers and fill those gaps for your CX strategy.
Make your foreground strong – In customer service, your foreground is your employees who are customer experts. The team you develop to handle your business’s customer service should be top-notch as they connect directly with your customers. Train the employees in listening, empathy, sympathy, and a keen eye on details.
Dive into AI for enhanced customer service – Invespro says, “Chatbots can save up to 30% in customer support costs and can help businesses by speeding up response time and answering up to 80% FAQs”.
Chatbots are an effective technological invention that is a good replacement of humans who can not be as fast, can not be as accurate, can not be available 24*7 and many other things that the chatbot has to offer for better customer support.
Chatbots are a great way to get your customer support for basic queries. Still, with its limitations, complex questions are usually transferred to human agents who are adept in handling difficult customer queries.
Pay attention to customer feedback and measure CX metrics – According to the tips as mentioned above, you can get an excellent customer service strategy intact, but it doesn’t mean it will fulfil your customer satisfaction goals. To ensure that you need to keep your ears wide open for any feedback or an open window for change.
Including feedback from customers should be a vital part of your CX strategy as they provide you with honest opinions about their experience with your business. They can also be treated as the best resources for improving customer experience strategy.
You can also use customer experience metrics to track the customer insights and what are their opinions about you. The important customer experience CX metrics include Customer satisfaction score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer effort score (CES)
Forrester entails, “Companies are increasingly using customer analytics techniques like customer satisfaction analysis, customer engagement analysis, and customer journey analytics to understand and enhance the client experience.”
Keep investing in upgraded tools and systems – Once you have identified the needs and demands of your customers and laid out the plan to incorporate them in your customer experience strategy you need to deploy the right tools and systems to increase customer experience.
Among a wide range of options of tools in front of your brand, you should choose up-to-date tools with current technological advancements and help you respond timely, monitor customer behavior, and take proactive actions. They should also be able to help you to handle customer complaints faster and provide effective solutions.
Useful tools that will help you in your business growth and brand building: