In today’s digital-savvy world, customer experience (CX) is everything. If it’s good, it minimizes friction, maximizes efficiency, and adds a human element. However, if it’s bad, it drives customers away, faster than you think. Here’s everything you need to know about customer experience.
What is Customer Experience?
It’s the impression your customers have when they interact with your brand. CX is shaped by customers’ expectations and behaviors that hugely reflect their previous experiences. Throughout all aspects of their buying journey, customers get a subjective response that encompasses customer care, advertising, navigation, reliability, etc.
Why does it Matter?
Delivering a great customer experience should be a paramount priority of all businesses. Why? Because it impacts your business sales. The better the CX, the more repeat customers and positive reviews you get. The additional benefits of a great CX include:
- Reduced customer complaints and returns
- Increased customer loyalty and satisfaction
- Word-of-mouth marketing
- High traffic and low bounce rates
- More product recommendations
What Makes a CX Bad?
Just think about the last time you were annoyed as a customer. What was the reason? A poor customer experience comes in different shapes and sizes. Below, we’ve mentioned a number of commonly reported issues responsible for a bad customer experience.
- Long waiting time
- Rude employees
- Poor navigation
- No human touch
- Unnecessary automation
- Unresolved queries or questions
How to Create a Great Customer Experience?
As the competition is heating up, one thing is evident: a good CX can help your business become successful. But success is not given – it’s earned. Here are afew tips to create an effective CX:
- Capture Customer Feedback in Real-Time
To deliver a WOW customer experience, you need to capture customer feedback in real-time. It will provide insight into customers’ behaviors, preferences, and expectations. In addition to that, customer feedback tells you where customers are getting stuck during their buying journey. Use live chat platforms to have real-time conversations with your customers. Also, you can make outbound sale calls to gain more insightful feedback.
2. Create an Omnichannel Experience
9 out of 10 consumers suggest that they would like to have an omnichannel experience between communication methods. Developing an omnichannel experience helps businesses provide crucial insights into customer interactions. This kind of experience includes multiple channels for sales, marketing, and customer support.
3. Focus on Website Usability
Another way to ensure a great customer experience is by creating a user-friendly website and delivering a seamless user experience. We recommend that you test your website speed, readability, and usability to get a better idea of the end user’s perspective. Identify the points where customers struggle. Make sure it’s easy for customers to find information and complete tasks without any hassle.
4. Take Social Proof Seriously
87% of customers prefer reading online reviews when they are looking for local businesses. Social proof shows the number of current customers, subscribers, and reviewers, suggesting that how much others enjoy your products or services. This helps your potential customers feel more comfortable when it comes to making buying decisions about your brand. Whether it’s in the form of customer reviews, testimonials, star ratings, or case studies, make sure you take social proof seriously.
5. Deliver a Streamlined Mobile Experience
When you’re online, you need to be accessible via all smart devices. This simply means that customers should be able to find your brand anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Make sure the experience mobile users are having is nearly identical to those using standard desktops. In short, your website should be a comprehensive, responsive, and well-designed mobile app. Make sure you are able to accomplish the same tasks using either a mobile phone or a traditional desktop.
6. Consider User Onboarding
For some brands, it is important to teach customers how to use their website or app. Since not everyone is tech-savvy, businesses provide onboarding to new customers who aren’t familiar with your website/app and teach them how to use your products/services. You can have a representative working with the users to ensure they understand the value of their purchase. That way, customers won’t have to go through a time-taking learning process.
7. Don’t Forget to Use Customer Analytics
How to make sure that your investments and efforts are working and paying off? The answer is customer analytics. Most business managers believe that customer analytics improves sales and provides a great customer experience. By using artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, you can easily collect customer analytics and then measure detailed behavioral, demographic, and other metrics in real-time.
Concluding Thoughts on Customer Experience
Today, customer expectations are higher than ever, which makes the customer experience more important than ever. With an improved customer experience comes great opportunities that will directly impact your top and bottom line. So, make sure your business has the right CX strategy in place.