Customer experience (CX) is cognitive, sensory, and behavioral responses of consumers while engaging with your business, from initial discovery through purchase and beyond. It includes the clients’ interaction with your company’s website, your actual product or service, the support team, sales and post-purchase experience. CX impacts overall perception of the service/product and can affect every aspect of your business from reputation to retention.
Customer Experience influences the following actions of your clients:
- Making a purchase from your company or not
- Coming back to your service or not
- Recommending it to their friends and relatives or not
- Writing a review or not
- Posting about your service on their social networks or not
While positive CX attracts new and retains existing customers, negative experiences usually drive your clients away, sending them directly to competitors.
According to the statistics gathered by Customer Thermometer, 89% of consumers have switched to doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. Additionally, people are more likely to share a negative experience than a positive one: 95% of customers tell others about a bad experience while just 83% share good experiences.
Begin planning the customer experience for your business
When planning the customer experience for your business, start by creating a map of the customer journey’s main touchpoints. Keep in mind needs, pains and expectations through the customers’ perspective.
A touchpoint is a way a customer can interact with your business, regardless of being offline or online. The clients’ response during every touchpoint form the customer experience assessment. Here are some potential touchpoints for any business:
- Searches for your business or types of services
- New posts about main discounts in social networks
- Free shipping
- Long feedback form
- A queue while trying to contact the support team
- Easy to open packages
- Messages with no answer
- Difficulty of getting in touch with a specialist directly
To understand what the customers feel while interacting with your business try to answer the following questions:
- Can your customers easily find your business?
- Do the customers know what to do/where to go once they reach your business?
- Is it clear what the customer should do if they need to ask for help?
- Is the communication with your team smooth and positive from your customers’ perspective?
- Is finding the right service or product a trouble-free process?
- How fast are the requests handled?
- Is it easy to find specific, relevant contacts at your company?
- What ideas and emotions are sent through the social networks?
- Are your company’s ads personalised enough?
Consumers’ expectations are changing rapidly and if you want to continue the growth of your business, adapting your products and services is an inevitable step. In our next article we will tell about main expectations and ways to meet them with Pigeon.