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.