HOW TO IMPROVE CX IN 8 WAYS
1. Illustrate the customer journey
A customer journey map outlines every action your customers go through when interacting with your company. Engagements that extend beyond just purchasing the product:
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Social media management​
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Online advertising
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Customer services cases
When building your map, consider a range of perspectives from your internal stakeholders​. It is essential to account for both the pre and post-sale aspects of the customer experience.
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By mapping out the interactions into one spectrum, it is easier for employees across your organisation to visualise the overall customer experience and needs.
2. Equip and uplift your employees
If employees think they don't have the tools necessary to do their job efficiently or feel under-appreciated, it can affect their ability to perform
To uplift your employees when current customer experiences aren't up to par, you can:
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Identify common employee pain points through employee feedback tools​
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Review current systematic process (from contact centre protocol to CRM software)
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Amend processes to foster a more positive customer experience
It's also possible for customer experience to dampen from employees not meeting the expectations that the company culture promises.​
3. Audit the customer experience from multiple internal perspectives
You mustn't focus on only one department when conducting a customer experience audit. To gain a complete picture of CX, you will need to consider the unique perspective of each one of your internal departments.
Marketing:
Your Marketing team is solely focused on customer acquisition, thus working blind​. They will have the best insight into brand awareness and user expectations. Surveying your marketing team will help you understand how people find your business and what you can do to better shape your reputation leading up to sale.
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Sales:​
They have the insights into early stages of the customer relationship​. Team members have information on the daily challenges that customers encounter daily. Suggestions on how customers expect your product or service to address these roadblocks. Your sales team can help you understand what your product offer led to that missed opportunity for the leads that don't convert to customers.
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Customer Service:
It's important to know that what you're communicating in your sales and marketing processes aligns with your customers' actual experiences​. Your customer service and success team can provide insight into this reality, as they are typically the first line of communication for feedback and product frustration.​​ Welcome their respective on what is causing the most problems for your customers.
4. Dedicate a clear focus to the initiative
It's vital demonstrate a clear focus on your new initiatives to your entire company. Dedicate someone to the execution of your customer experience plans. It will be their job to:
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Communicate changes​
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Facilitate operations
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Organise research analysis
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Perform any necessary actions
The Economist Intelligence Unit revealed in new research that companies prioritising customer experience more often demonstrate higher revenue growth.​ Investing early in your customer experience strategy can end up paying off for your business down the road.
You may see more senior leadership hesitation rooted in their traditional approach. Rally these employees to get on board as it will demonstrate a consistent show of support for change at higher levels of your company.
Three detrimental roadblocks:
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Inconsistent interactions between the company and your customers​
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Stating information that could be potentially helpful to customers or employees
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Lack of support from employees
5. Personalise interactions with customers
'Personalise' can take on many different meanings. Personalising experiences for your customer can help form a bond between the brand and the buyer. Personalisation doesn't have to be a discount; it can take on many forms:
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Thank you letter or emails to customers after purchase​
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Customer follow-up surveys
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A dynamic website offers based on user preferences
6. Distribute customer experience data to your entire team
It is necessary that everyone has access to your findings. Keeping your employees in the loop regarding the conclusions you have found from your research will help your team optimise daily internal processes:
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Customer routing​
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Workflow automation
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Client tagging
Distributing customer insights across your entire company can also help:​
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​Address customer needs faster​: Having data regarding where your customers are likely to face obstacles will help your team prevent user frustration and smooth over any confusing pain points in the customer's journey​
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Improve product/service quality:​ By having leaders and contributors from your success team, meet with your product team, you can review top support ticket categories to identify the most common issues related to usability​
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Increase upsell opportunities:​ Your sales team will have an easier time identifying upselling opportunities​. They can pinpoint specific opportunities on the customer's timeline. Reach out with re-engagement initiatives which can increase overall revenue over time.
7. Learn from churn when it happens​
If you can generate a 5% increase in customer retention, you can increase your company's profits by 25% to 95%. Use in-App analytics to analyse areas of the customer experience where there is low engagement. Low engagement typically suggests a higher risk of customer churn. Create an engagement correlation that can help you identify which customers are most likely to churn
Use App analytics to determine what engagement percentage will result in the highest likelihood of churn. Set up a monitoring system to alert your customer success team if a customer approaches that value.
This is an opportunity to proactively reach out to solve a problem before it's too late. Find out why they decide to move on. Provide multiple channels for customers to leave feedback and take their opinions seriously. It would help if you wanted to hear about the instances where your company came back short.
8. Consider customer experience with UX/UI design​
Before a potential customer makes it to a customer support rep, they will research before formally reaching out for help. Your company website must be easy to navigate and clear in its offerings. 88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience. Have you engineers or marketing team optimise your digital domain. Begin their customer journey on a positive note.
