Improving CX - Three Crucial Steps for an Excellent Customer Experience in 2014
CX (Customer Experience) is evolving.
Quickly.
Whereas companies used to embody a large sales role in gaining customers and revenue, CX expectations are shifting to include additional product education, value propositions and personalized engagement.
Today's evolving consumer does not fit into traditional marketing funnel models, but instead follows a more customer-obsessed system where company interaction and touch points are integral to successful sales conversions.
To maximize customer experience in your industry, employ these three vital steps for new age CX:
With multiple B2C and B2B industries experiencing a substantial shift in CX expectations, how companies differentiate themselves by offering additional value will likely determine their CX improvement capabilities.
An excellent example of differentiation comes from Delta Airlines, who has transformed its mobile traveling app.
Passengers now immediately receive a cancellation notification, are able to view next available flights, can review flight details, and can quickly conform newly booked flights.
Quickly.
Whereas companies used to embody a large sales role in gaining customers and revenue, CX expectations are shifting to include additional product education, value propositions and personalized engagement.
Today's evolving consumer does not fit into traditional marketing funnel models, but instead follows a more customer-obsessed system where company interaction and touch points are integral to successful sales conversions.
To maximize customer experience in your industry, employ these three vital steps for new age CX:
- Customer Journey Mapping: This is the framework companies use to improve CX.
By mapping out your customers' life cycle by stage, you can better understand where and how individuals interact with your business.
Expanding touch point knowledge supports customer journey mapping that is not necessarily always linear.
Some consumers jump phases while others tend to follow the more traditional path to conversion.
As marketers, our job "is to understand the different moments of impact a customer could have when engaging with your brand and products, and then set those customers up to succeed through education, communication and discovery" (Source: BigDoor, Inc.
). - Persona Development: Besides customer journey mapping, thorough persona development acts as the representation of different kinds of customers your company typically gains.
By creating customer category personas, companies are able to illustrate persona goals and identify influential touch points for each persona type. - CEI (Customer Experience Index): The CEI, or Customer Experience Index, is defined by Forrester Research, Inc.
as, "an annual benchmark of the quality of the customer experience delivered by large U.
S.
companies in 14 industries.
" Their 2014 CEI (also known as CXi) data was collected in an October 2013 online survey of 7,538 U.
S.
online consumers aged 18 to 88 years of age.
These CEI results showed companies' paths to CX maturity correlated with their ability to:
- Fix unsatisfactory customer experiences
- Raise the CX standard, making quality customer experiences the norm
- Utilize more sophisticated CX methodologies
- Differentiate themselves as a brand by restructuring consumer problems and their company ecosystem
With multiple B2C and B2B industries experiencing a substantial shift in CX expectations, how companies differentiate themselves by offering additional value will likely determine their CX improvement capabilities.
An excellent example of differentiation comes from Delta Airlines, who has transformed its mobile traveling app.
Passengers now immediately receive a cancellation notification, are able to view next available flights, can review flight details, and can quickly conform newly booked flights.
Source...