Today! two-thirds of companies rely on customer experience to differentiate themselves. In this blog post! we share a step-by-step guide to creating (or updating) a winning customer experience in your own organization.
The secret is out: delivering an excellent customer experience is key to winning and retaining customers. In fact! how customers perceive your brand is so important that more than two-thirds of companies now compete primarily based on customer experience! according to Gartner research .
To ensure your customers are delighted with your company! you need a robust customer experience program that covers all stages of their relationship with you. But to get the most out of your program! we must first understand why some customer experience initiatives fail.
Why customer experience programs fail
We know our customers value speed! convenience! consistency! and friendliness. We also know customers crave human connection—a difficult phone number library factor to quantify but essential for making them feel seen and heard. But knowing what your customers want is the easy part.
Most companies believe they deliver exceptional customer experiences. In reality! 92% of companies fail to deliver top-notch experiences. This disconnect occurs when companies fail to create robust customer experience programs that consider every possible customer interaction.
From chatbots to an old-fashioned phone call! every touchpoint is an opportunity to impress customers with high-caliber service. That’s why your customer experience program must consider every touchpoint.
This is especially important! as one-third of consumers stop doing business with brands after just one bad experience. So ask yourself: How many ways can customers engage with your company? And how can you make each and every touchpoint a winning experience?
3 steps to creating a great customer experience program
To ensure your customers are delighted at every stage of their journey with your company! you need a well-planned and executed customer south africa numbers experience program that covers all stages of the journey! from awareness to post-sale! including onboarding and renewals. Fortunately! with some time and effort! it’s more than possible to achieve this. Here are three steps to ensure success.
01. Design the customer lifecycle
First! you’ll need to audit and/or design and configure customer lifecycle journeys that map the typical process a customer or prospect goes through with your company. To do this:
- Define your target personas . Who are they? What challenges do your products or services help them solve? What are their goals and ambitions? We help you identify who you’re targeting in our blog post! “What Is a Buyer Persona and Why Is It Important ?”
- List all your company’s touchpoints . How do people first reach your brand? How do they make initial contact? From interacting with chatbots to commenting on your social media accounts or submitting forms directly on your website: know the touchpoints at each stage of their journey! understand their challenge! what they’re looking for! and how you can help them solve their problem with the least amount of friction possible.
- Match each touchpoint with the right tools . Once you know how your customers move through your business! you can ensure each touchpoint is matched with the right tools and resources to efficiently meet your customers’ needs at that point.
By now! you should have a reasonable representation of a typical customer’s experience with your company—and it’s certainly not linear! While it’s difficult building trust from the first touch to visualize accurately and there are certainly variations from the norm! capturing this information in a customer journey map can help standardize service delivery across teams and serve as a useful reference point when updating executive strategy.
02. Establish your deliverables
Your customer journey program defines why and where you will focus your efforts to improve the customer experience! and defining your outcomes takes care of the how.
- Content. An important part of improving the customer experience is producing useful and relevant content and making it easy for customers to find and access at the right stages of their journey.
- Self-service. The greater the ability for customers to self-service! the less pressure there will be on your team and the faster they’ll receive a solution. Make sure you have relevant guides and templates! as well as a comprehensive FAQ and knowledge base that addresses all stages of the customer journey.
- Customer service. Can you offer convenient customer service with excellent resolution rates and lightning-fast response times? Or! conversely! do customers get frustrated when inquiries are passed from one department to another while they listen to an insufferable call-waiting melody? Go for the former. Now that self-service frees up resources! empower your customer service team to provide effective and convenient support with the right tools.
- Personalized experiences. No one likes to feel like a number. Fortunately! technology makes it possible (and efficient) to deliver exceptional! personalized customer experience programs.
03. Build! implement! and improve your customer journey
No plan survives customer contact! and no theory is perfect in practice. Prepare to fail and plan for failure in advance. Whether they make unexpected requests or surprise you by interacting in novel ways! customers are also excellent at inadvertently helping you spot flaws in your customer experience program.
That’s why it needs to be built for continuous improvement. Once you’ve mapped out the initial journeys! monitor them and analyze the data to identify ways to optimize and update them (or replace them! if necessary). New journeys are also constantly being identified! so leave plenty of room for growth and change.
How Smartbound can help you create your customer experience program
All of this may be a lot to take on! but it’s the essential difference between delivering a great experience to your customers and ensuring an exceptional one. We offer customer experience enablement services ranging from developing customer lifecycle journeys to content production consulting that handles deliverables.
Contact our team to discuss your needs and get a personalized quote! or learn more about our service offerings and customer experience here.