Why we care about CX
As we start to build a relationship with a prospective or new client, we initially get to know as much about them and their brand as possible. We discuss their brand, brand strategy, audience types, competitors, and lots more – this is usually to kick off a branding project, or website design. Often in our industry, other agencies will then start working on that project and focus on it, which we do, but not as immediately as one would think.
As we get an understanding of a business, the area we pay most attention is customers’ current experience of the brand. How the business currently interacts with its customers, whether that’s through email campaigns, social media, print deliveries, cold calls, moving them through a sales journey, and so on, drives so much of what we do in a single project and helps us position the project perfectly for seeing the greatest level of success.
So, naturally, customer experience is something we love talking about as it is enlightening and opens so many new opportunities for businesses to take. But, for those who don’t know us, we’re often asked what “customer experience” actually is and why we focus so heavily on it. So, here’s a little overview.
The trend
In the current market place, customer experience (CX) has taken the limelight. It’s a universal trait which applies to any industry and most importantly, can affect the future of a business.
In fact, in most markets, customer experience can make a significant difference in trust, loyalty and purchase. Its importance has grown to the point that businesses now design their branding, website, emails, social media and complete marketing outputs around this. While hailed as a differentiating factor that businesses should focus on, there are three major questions that businesses should find answers to:
- What is Customer Experience?
- What is Customer Experience Management?
- Why is it Important?
Once you find the answers to all these questions, you’ll hold a major key to success in your sales strategy. To make things easier, we’re taking the time to answer them for you.
What is Customer Experience (CX)?
To make it easy to understand, customer experience relates to the level of satisfaction that one gets throughout their buying experience with a business. Additionally, this experience also translates into other benefits such as customer loyalty, recommendations, positive reviews and increased brand visibility in a saturated marketplace.
All these factors can be affected by the kind of customer experience one has. So it’s a given that you need to make sure you’re offering your customers the best experience possible. In a saturated marketplace, customers can be picky and demand the best from you.
What is Customer Experience Management (CEM)?
Now that you understand what customer experience is and how it impacts your business, you need to start focusing on customer experience management (CEM). This relates to the following three major factors:
- Knowing your customer – Understanding your customers to know their likes, dislikes and buying habits.
- Devising an optimal customer experience strategy – Devising a strategy to make improvements in the different customer journey touch-points and buying experience in accordance with customer habits.
- Measuring customer satisfaction – Measuring the impact of these meaningful changes to see the difference they can make in customer satisfaction, experience and more.
With the help of these three core areas, businesses can design interactions which help to align customer perceptions and expectations in order to create meaningful, long term experiences. Other factors include making use of personalisation, customer journey maps and even improving convenience and reachability of the business for customers.
Why is it important?
Customer experience and customer experience management are growing practices which businesses are embracing actively. Data shows that in the future, about 50% of businesses will invest in innovations that improve customer interaction. Additionally, the benefits of improved customer experience make this area worth investing in.
You can easily enjoy the following:
- Boost in revenue
- Repeat customers
- Brand loyalty
- Brand visibility
This means that you’ll soon see a rise in businesses that devise their web design and brand strategy based on customer experience. In this manner, you can give your business a serious leg up over the competition in the marketplace.