Importance of customer experience in 2021

23 February 2021

What is customer experience?

Customer experience, also known as CX, is the result of every interaction a customer has with you business or brand, from seeing your advertising, to navigating on the website to talking with your customer service.

Looking at the behavioural aspect, people judge and remember their experience primarily by how they felt during their purchase, the most intense moments and the more recent one. 

For organizations, this means customers will remember their whole experience based on only two moments, the best (or worst) part of the experience, and the end. What we gain from being aware of the true pain points of our customers will create a stronger relationship that enables loyalty and lifetime value. 

Whether your organization uses a subscription model or direct e-commerce, repeat customers are the ultimate goal. Of course this depends on what type of business you are in, but generally for a company acquiring new customers is of higher costs than retaining your current customers. Therefore, the importance of understanding and continuously working on the customer experience becomes a key factor to enhance the holistic experience with your business or brand. 

So how can we work strategically with our customer journey? 

Here are 5 tips on how to get going, 

  • Create a clear customer-focused vision in your organization by setting statements that act as guiding principles for your customer experience strategy.
  • Bring your customer principles to life by learning more about who your customers are and their behaviors. 
  • Map out reasons, opinions, motivations, and dig deeper into the pain points of your customers. This will help you understand the “why” behind the behavior or experiences, meaning  your customers emotional connection to your business or brand throughout the consumer decision journey.
  • Capture customer feedback in real time by using live chat tools and send automated follow up emails. By doing so, you will be able to find stronger patterns in the customer experience and also faster find challenges or problems that several customers are experiencing.
  • Make sure to measure the right KPI:s throughout the customer journey as well as ROI from delivering great customer experience. 

Why CX is becoming important in 2021

Since the coronavirus pandemic many industries have faced the difficulty of losing customers, market shares, and as an effect of that revenue loss. This being one of the largest behavioural changes in modern history, many industries did not have any option other than reinventing themselves to focus on digital transformation. 

The changes to the marketplace have been expected. However, the sudden arrival of the pandemic challenges many organizations to shift focus from their day to day business and navigate through a different market with new customer needs, not to mention competition breathing down their necks. 

Common challenges that we see businesses face during a crisis or when the business begins to stagnate, is that the organization gets stuck in day-to-day activities and change drives further and further away from their previous path. Meanwhile, humans continue to evolve and change their behavior, needs and pain points.

That is why it is important to understand the value of owning the customer relationship whilst also understanding the business opportunities companies can have. Furthermore, it is also important to analyze user behaviour in order to always improve the understanding of your customer needs and continue to meet their expectations.

 

Let us know how we could help you on the journey on becoming truly data driven at hello@sthlmstratlab.se