Hello my name is Brian Lewis and today I want to talk about CX or customer experience. Now you may have heard of the acronym CX and wondered, is it just yet another marketing trend acronym that people like to throw around? I want to talk about why CX is important and actually make sure that there’s an understanding of
what it is.
Why Does Customer Experience Matter?
There was a survey that was conducted by Salesforce and it showed that 80% of customers say that the experience that a company provides is as important as its products and services. So you know the digital marketing world has actually matured over the last 15-20 years. There used to be much more of a focus on what we call UI or user interface, which is how an individual web page worked and the interactivity on that web page. And then we turned to more of a UX focus which is user experience, which is instead of how a visitor interacts on one web page, how does a visitor feel about that total web experience.
And so lately we’ve matured it to a newest level, graduated to a customer experience focus and that’s really a customer-centric approach and it’s based on how a customer feels about the experience interacting with a company’s brand throughout their entire journey just not on that website and a large part of that’s going to be a reflection of the interactions on the website but also other digital and non-digital touch points.
There’s actually a lot at stake you know. Without an understanding of the experience that your customers have throughout all those touch points, you’re likely going to under deliver for prospects, which in the long term has the potential to really make or break a brand.
How to Improve Customer Experience (CX)
So, what should we do? Well, first you want to be sure you have a clear understanding of your brand promise, your mission, your values, your competencies, your communication style. And then create customer journey maps, which are going to determine what your visitors are thinking, doing, and feeling throughout the key stages of that research engagement continuum.
You’re going to get inside their minds and really experience it from their perspective. You want to look at that customer journey, which could include maybe visits to the website, emails, chat, phone, product service fulfillment, follow-up and look in that journey and where can you make improvements.
And some of the information you can use to help you make that determination would be quantitative research, in terms of your analytics. You go into your analytics and look for places on your website that may be causing friction for your visitors and also qualitative research in terms of surveys and user testing. You really want to get into the quantitative is great because it’s going to tell you what’s happening. The qualitative is just as useful because it’s going to tell you the why behind it.
When done well, a a customer experience initiative can really help uncover opportunities to deliver exceptional and memorable experiences for your visitors, strengthen your brand, increase your customer loyalty, all resulting in delivering long-term value for your business.
