In the past, when it came to customer relations, the golden rule of businesses was that “the customer’s always right”. Small businesses kept a close relationship with their customers and were constantly informed about their needs and preferences.
Today, things got a bit more complicated. The multiplicity of sales channels, the digitalisation of commerce, market globalisation and the great variety and number of customer profiles call for companies to step up their game if they want to build up loyalty with their products or services. But, the idea is still the same: Customer/User satisfaction comes first and last. And that logic must be applied to the whole process.
1. Beyond Customer Service
Customer Experience comprehends every strategy for analysing and making the shopping or acquisition experience as positive as possible, generating an emotional connection between users and services or products. This includes paying attention to every possible interaction of a potential buyer with the brand, from the moment they discover the product until the moment they buy it. And, if they are satisfied with what they got, we still have to mind their interactions as promoters.
A lot of people mistake Customer Experience (CE) with Customer Service (CS). These are two terms that are very closely related — but they are not the same. Customer Service is one of the blocks that make up the Customer Experience. CS is in charge of providing efficient and quick answers to clients’ calls for help regarding a product or a service. That answer will determine whether the impact on customers will be positive or negative, making it a much more reactive action than CE, which is much more proactive and encompasses other blocks.
2. Keys to Making the Most of Your Customer Experience
-Strategy: A good Customer Experience isn’t something you achieve by winging it. It’s important to establish patterns and tools to achieve maximum satisfaction, orienting channels towards that goal, carrying out a research of both the market and the customer profile and having a deep understanding of the product or service we’re offering.
-Empathy: A good Customer Experience team must have great empathy in order to place themselves in the shoes of consumers and understanding, not only what they are asking from the brand, but also the best way to relate to them and making it easy for them to find contact points. It’s crucial to stay one step ahead in the psychology of consumers and lay the ground for them to express their interests and wishes.
-Big Data: Analytics and databases are becoming increasingly broad and refined, and they are the best allies we have for the design of our Customer Experience. Thanks to data, companies can access their customers’ expectations and can stay ahead of trends or put in the effort on things that need improvement.
-Customer Journey: It encompasses all the interactions that a consumer may have along the process of buying or subscribing. Designing a pleasant and attractive journey, where nothing is left to chance, will make it easier for customers to find satisfaction. In order to achieve this, we must first develop a correct definition of the steps that customers take in their search for a product.
-Customer Centricity: This idea has been gaining weight in companies that look to place customers at the centre of their actions. It’s not only about the importance of satisfaction in the process — it even counts on customers themselves to help us design a product or service. A cooperation that incorporates, right from the start, the person who’s going to receive the service.
3. Continuous Measures. Improving with Experience.
One of the keys to a good Customer Experience is the ability to learn from our mistakes and improve our product and processes based on our customers’ interests and needs. This exponential learning will help us improve because it relies on indicators put forward by customers. Also, in an ever changing market and in the face of multiple customer profiles, it allows us to better adapt to their expectations and even stay ahead of their needs.
Experts in Customer Experience usually measure satisfaction based on two main indicators:
-Net Promoter Score (NPS): This system focuses on user loyalty and their capacity to become a brand promoter. It measures how willing the client is to recommend the brand to others.
-Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): This indicator shows specific client satisfaction. The client is asked questions at the end of their purchase or at the end of the service experience as a user.
Besides these indicators that are usually taken from digital platforms interactions, it’s possible to incorporate improvements and detect problems in customer satisfaction through surveys, interviews and other qualitative and quantitative research techniques.
Customer Experience encompasses a series of strategies that improve our knowledge about customers and help us offer a greater degree of satisfaction for their experience, adapting to change and anticipating trends.
Article written in collaboration with Anna Ripoll, Founder of Intuitiva and Director of the Master’s in Customer Experience and Innovation