Customer experience - where the trend is going.
Our society is becoming more and more adventurous economically. To attract
consumers, to make them understand a product or service, and to engage them
with the company, a simple presentation is not enough today. Here the customer
experience comes into play.
Definition:
customer experience
Depending on the meaning of the word, the
experience can be translated as "experience" or
"experience". Both meanings play a role in the customer experience.
First, every meeting with a product or company is important to the customer
experience. It can be positive or negative. Ultimately, through reflection and
analysis, an overall experience for the customer emerges from all these
experiences. In summary, one could say:
Experience covers the whole imagination,
thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. In the short term, you might
say it's a mental process. Experience is the result of the analysis and
evaluation of experience (a long, intellectually accomplished process).
The customer experience is basically nothing more
than the totality of all customer impressions when dealing with the company.
Different terms refer to how important it is for a company to reach and engage
customers, both on an emotional level and on a realistic level.
In this context, the so-called touchpoints, that
is, the points of contact with which a customer can meet a company, are
important. Today, this happens through social media, e-mail, mobile or web,
phone, advertising, or personal direct contact with the store on various
channels. At these points, the customer experience should be positively
influenced by the company.
Implementation tips: This is how you enable a
positive customer experience
To differentiate themselves from the competition
and create a unique sales proposition, more and more companies are resorting to
so-called customer experience management. It develops strategies that help customers become
interested in the company and its products or services as well as their
qualities. The goal is to ultimately bind them to the company in the long run.
Linking
online and offline
A positive customer experience company should
create a connection between the online and offline worlds. It is important to
integrate the digital business model (e.g. online trading) into the traditional
business model (e.g. brick-and-mortar retail). In this way, the company reaches
out to customers who shop primarily in the real world, and target groups who
enjoy online shopping from the couch at home. This approach is called a universal strategy. A rather negative
example is a well-known Swedish clothing chain that runs countless stores but
has long failed to appear on the Internet. In contrast, a well-known Seattle
cafe uses it directly and allows customers to order and pay for their products
before they arrive at the store.
Positive
customer experience through emotional connection
A growing challenge for companies is that there
are more and more competitors whose products or services are rarely different
from their own offers in terms of quality. This means that products are
becoming more interchangeable. If digitization does not ensure a high level of
market transparency, it will not be so bad. If a word is entered into a search
engine, the user gets hundreds or even thousands of pages where relevant
products from different providers are listed. Also, products can be analyzed on
comparison portals and compared with similar offers.
So the way of choice should be to create an
emotional bond between the customer and the product for a company. Positive
customer experience makes a valuable contribution here. To do this, the company
needs to focus on the emotions of the customers. To know this, an analysis of
the customer's needs is needed first and second, the appropriate experience
option that enables the customer to bond emotionally with the product.
Customer
journey as the most important means of customer experience management
If you want to create a positive customer
experience with a lasting impact, you need to know where your customers need to
"capture" and shape the customer experience. This is where the
touchpoints mentioned above work, where customers encounter the company and its
products or services on their customer journey. So it is important for the
company to learn:
●
Exactly where the customer is,
●
Why he buys products,
●
Whether he gets all the necessary
information,
●
How many paths lead to the goal
through touchpoint.
These national and similar questions and related
answers are valuable because they make it possible to understand the customer's
journey and better understand the customer. Here it is helpful to create a
custom travel map to understand on the one hand, why a customer behaves and
how. On the other hand, it shows the potential vulnerabilities of touchpoints,
which you can then optimize.
Improve
the customer experience: Put the customer first
Customer Experience Management (CEM) provides the
consumer with the focus of his efforts and measures developed with the
customer's perspective in mind. The following questions are helpful:
●
What does the customer need?
●
Is it shaped by context?
●
Do you treat him one way or
another?
This is where DIM Persona Profiler and Empathy
Map work, both of which enable you to position yourself as a typical customer's
shoe and record his or her desires, needs, etc. In this way, basic customer
types can be identified, and then touchpoints can be. Designed accordingly.
Feedback serves as a way to gather information from employees and customers.
Include
the most important departments in customer experience management
For the arrangements provided by Customer
Experience Management to be successful, all the important departments of a
company must be involved in the development of these arrangements. This usually
includes marketing experts, sales, customer support, the IT department, and the
CEM team. This is because each participating department can provide valuable
data to help create customer travel and customer touchpoint maps and thus
further the design of a positive customer experience.
Create
positive moments of surprise
Unexpected actions during shopping can have a
positive or negative effect on the customer experience.
So be sure to minimize moments that could
negatively affect the customer experience (such as avoiding long
waiting/loading times). On the other hand, you should ensure pleasant surprise
effects for your customers. An example of this could be the promotion of gifts
at certain times, such as Christmas. With a small gesture, you can leave a good
impression on your customers so that they can ultimately perceive the customer
experience as positive. Also, customer loyalty is strong.
Personal
contact for your customers
This is especially important in both static and
online retail where your customers have the opportunity to contact an employee
for inquiries, complaints, compliments, or other concerns. It is recommended
that your customers have a direct contact person, as they always know directly
who they can address if they have any questions, etc. Also, a
"permanent" contact person already knows about the customer's
history, which means avoiding unnecessary repetition. This ensures more
customer satisfaction, which is ultimately positive in terms of customer
experience.