The key differentiator of a successful business is the superior Customer Experience (CX) it offers. As each customer gets more and more empowered, it comes as no surprise that organizations keep striving to improve CX to get ahead of the competition.
Here are 6 surefire techniques to incorporate into your CX strategy:
- Build a customer-centric culture
The most important aspect of customer experience is a customer-focused or customer-centric culture. Customer perspective has to be factored in the very vision of the organization and should serve as a guiding principle for all the employees.
For example, at Zappos, customer-focused culture is ingrained in the very core values of the organization. Zappos believes that it is important that customer service is more than just a role or a department. Right from the hiring process, the organization assesses the cultural alignment of the candidate. Post hiring, the onboarding program emphasizes customer experience in every aspect. Team Zappos believes in the mantra – ‘Always do what is right for the customer’ and is known for its excellent customer experience worldwide.
Read: How Sitecore puts customer experience at the heart of digital commerce
- Abide by KYC
Knowing your customers well is important in delivering superior CX. The deeper you understand your customers, the more you can empathize and provide better customer experience every time.
Groove, a customer service software organization, thrives on the value of knowing its customers. Alex Turnbull, Founder & CEO of the organization, believes that getting to know the pain points, challenges and needs of his customers is important to improve the customer experience. To achieve this, he schedules calls on a regular basis to interact with the customers, getting to know the likes and dislikes of customers regarding his product. This has not only improved the customer experience but has also increased the level of buyer personas.
Read: 3 Ways How Salesforce Can Create Value for Businesses by Improving Customer Experience
- Practice transparency
Being transparent about your organizational policies and procedures and maintaining a positive relationship go a long way in building trust and loyalty, which translates into better customer experience.
Buffer, one of the leading intuitive platform for social media management, is an excellent example. The organization constantly looks for unique ways to promote trust among its customers and helps drive the desired social media results. Demonstrating its commitment to being transparent, the organization took an unprecedented step and publically released its employee salary structure. Buffer also is never shy of explaining its pricing strategies, revenue figures, and diversity information publically.
Read: How can manufacturers improve customer experience with Digital Transformation?
- Create employee buy-in/employee loyalty
For better customer experience, invest in employee experience. The link between the two is undeniable. However, employee buy-in will not happen overnight. It has to be built slowly through proper planning, appreciation and training.
Starbucks fosters an ‘employees first’ approach. It encourages the staff, referred to as ‘partners’, to bond closely. During the global financial crisis, the company invested and organized various training programs to improve the understanding of the staff on how their task fits towards a common purpose. They are trained constantly to break down all barriers to build distinctive capabilities so that each member feels motivated and offers superior customer experience from behind the counter.
Read: How Can a Data-driven Culture Help in Customer Experience?
- Swear by social media support
Use social media to delight and communicate with your customers to increase and improve your customer engagement. A word of caution – use it to engage and not to bombard your customers!
LEGO, the famous Danish manufacturer of construction toys, successfully tamed the social beast to deliver superior CX. Believing that inherently people are social beings and love to share their experiences and interests with others, the organization encourages its customers to share their concepts and designs of Lego sets on the organization’s microsite. In this contest, customers are allowed to promote their project and gather supporters. Those projects generating more than 10,000 supporters are reviewed by a Board. The Board then selects unique designs to create new LEGO products. Through this initiative, the organization engages with fans worldwide and generates happy customers who take pride in their creations.
Read: How can Data Elevate Customer Experience?
- Do not neglect customer feedback
Listening to customers is a vital step in improving customer experience. The key here is to let your customers vocalize their compliments as well as their concerns honestly and openly. Customer feedback can not only address the wrongs or lacunas but can also highlight the positives and strengths.
Southwest Airlines uses feedback from customers in a positive way. Through its ‘Listening Center’ where a team of specially trained and dedicated members are involved in monitoring and responding to nearly thousands of tweets every day, the team constantly analyzes social media posts and tweets to find out if any customer is unhappy and is in need of help such as rebooking a missed flight or lost luggage tracking. The airline helps to offer real-time customer service and provides a faster response time than the other airlines. This strategy has helped Southwest Airlines earn lifetime loyal customers.
Customer experience is an area that requires to be nurtured constantly. For more ways on how to improve your customer experience, talk to our CX experts.
How to improve customer experience?
Knowing the importance of customer experience is the first and most crucial step of understanding what entails customer experience and then working on it. As far as statistics and research go, to improve customer experience in your company leads to higher customer retention, customer satisfaction and, thereby, higher revenues.
In fact, CX is an intrinsic element of CRM or Customer Relationship Module. And the reason for it being so crucial is that happy customers always return and promote your brand by the most trusted form of marketing – Word of mouth.
Improvement of CX starts small and simple and we have the perfect solutions for you to implement immediately.
