Companies that have a good customer experience at the center of their strategy grew revenue 1.7 times faster and customer lifetime value 2.3 times more than other companies in the last year, according to the report: «The Business Impact Of Investing in Experience» , commissioned by Adobe to Forrester Consulting in 2021.
While traditional companies focus on achieving differentiation through speed of product delivery and new feature development, many are beginning to realize that an outstanding experience is what most engages customers and increases sales. critical business metrics.
In this article, we will explain what customer experience improvement is and how to optimize it to increase the loyalty of your customer base.
What is customer experience for?
Customer experience is the holistic relationship that your customers have with the different aspects of your company that relate to them, for example: customer service, marketing blog, contact with the sales team and customer strategy. success or customer success .
Why improve the customer experience?
Improving the customer experience is the art of finding a balance between what your customers want and what your company can offer.
Improving the customer experience takes into account each of the points of contact with them. Work so that these are efficient and beneficial for the client and so that your company does not enter the red. It means looking at the complexities of a need and seeing what levers can be pulled to make a difference, rather than using a blanket strategy to try to tackle everything at once.
The best way to optimize the customer experience is to first understand where prospects are coming from, and then where they want to go.
From there, you can build new goals on top of the current customer experience to understand what customers might want in the future.
Here are some activities you can do today to better manage your experience with your customers:
How to optimize the customer experience?
- Ask your customers how they feel.
- Create a map of your customers’ journey.
- Understand why they made the purchase.
- Perform user tests and record sessions.
- Don’t neglect the mobile experience.
- Emphasize consistency across all channels.
1. Ask your customers how they feel
It’s easy to make assumptions about customer preferences based on what you know about their interactions with your product. However, the best thing you can do is ask them directly how they feel and what they like (or don’t like) about your product.
SurveyMonkey is a great way to send surveys and conduct customer research . The results of these surveys don’t just benefit your customer success team: they’re useful to your engineering team when reporting bugs or product inadequacies, they’re great for helping your marketing team understand what drives customer behavior buyer, and they are even beneficial for the product team to know what is the most impactful (or not) for the average customer.
2. Create a map of your customer journey
Take stock of all the points where your customers come into contact with your product. Document every Instagram comment, support ticket, marketing email, or call to your sales team.
Next, compare these individual touchpoints to any previous data from your quantitative or qualitative surveys or data aggregation tools.
Use this information to map the purchase journey of one of your average customers. Once you understand each stop along the way and whether it positively or negatively affects their perception of your brand, you can start optimizing and improving their experience every step of the way.
3. Understand why they made the purchase
What is the problem your customers are trying to solve? When they pay for a product, everyone has something they hope to improve with their purchase.
When you know what that goal is for your specific customers, you can help them achieve it faster.
Some ways to obtain this information can be:
Talk to your customer service team about what frustrates or blocks customers.
Ask that team how they measure success and what helps customers the most.
Talk with your sales team about the moments that add the most value.
Check the results of your surveys. Qualitative responses are a great way to understand what matters to your customers.
Optimize every step of the customer experience so shoppers find value at every touch point.
4. Perform user tests and record sessions
Platforms like Full Story help companies understand how real customers behave when using products. So instead of assuming you know how customers handle your interface, take the time to ask and observe.
User testing and session recording are great ways to see them “in their environment” and confirm your hypotheses about how certain parts of your product impact the user journey.
For example, if no one navigates to a specific page, despite prompts and guides designed to get them there, it may be time to experiment with other ways to get there.
Likewise, this helps you see which elements of your product are performing well. Use the design elements that best fit the needs of your customers to move them forward in the purchase journey.
By understanding a user’s interactions with your product, you can redesign or emphasize what works best to drive business results.
5. Don’t neglect the mobile experience
Customer experience optimization is not limited to the web. It should be carried over to all the platforms your customers use. Therefore, you will have to create responsive sites and features that match what you have on the web.
For example, if customers can request a refund on the web, they should also be able to do so on mobile.
It might not seem like much, but it’s essential: 57% of customers wo n’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. Similarly, 50% of customers will stop visiting you, even if they like the company. So pay attention and optimize the mobile customer experience.
6. Emphasize consistency across channels
It’s not just about what you sell: your customer experience extends to your website, everything you do on social media, and customer service. Therefore, you must offer the same ease at all touchpoints to deliver the best possible customer experience.
Take note of these ways you can offer consistency across all your customer touchpoints:
Create processes that make it easy for your team members to understand the role they play in the customer experience.
Consider having tickets answered by people on your team who have skills and knowledge of the topics so that they are the ones to provide the response to the customer.
Spend time focusing on and optimizing the customer phone experience: Try to stay away from automation as much as possible and make it easy to talk to a human.
Entrust a team with specialized management of your social media platforms.
Focus on the small details of each experience to improve them, and try to be responsive across all touchpoints. That’s why many companies even decide to go with trusted answering service companies that can help with their client communication.
Improve the customer experience
It takes time, energy, and customer insight to achieve a wonderful customer experience.
Start by understanding the customer journey and demystifying any misconceptions your team may have about how your customers feel about your product.
Then send out surveys to confirm your assumptions or bring up different needs you may not have been aware of.
From there, take the time to understand the real behavior of your users: what are they doing with your product, why did they buy it, and what do they expect to do in the future? You can then start to improve their customer experience by making small changes to articulate the goals of the customer and the company across the board.
