The Voxco Guide to Customer Experience

Businesses, organizations both public and private across verticals and geographies are investing in Customer Experience (CX) with a laser like focus. Why is that? How could listening to the Voice of the Customer have such a big impact?

The answer is simple: Competition. Virtually every market is saturated with offerings vying for their slice of the pie. Customer Experience takes into account the emotional aspect of a customer’s relationship with a brand, and a positive one can be a huge differentiator between your offerings versus the competition. The Apple, Amazon, and Uber’s customer experience are held in high regard and give their customers more to praise than just their primary product or service. 

To craft a holistic CX for your brand, you need to take several aspects into account – mapping customer journeys, identifying the right CX metrics for your needs and even employee experience.

We’ve compiled a guide to help you create the best CX possible. Here’s what you need to keep in mind:

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Watch the video below to learn how Voxco can help you can enhance your overall customer experience.

Why should you focus on Customer Experience

Ensuring your customers have a positive experience with your brand has multiple benefits, not all of which are immediately apparent. 

  • Helps turns new and regular buyers into loyal ones
    A positive customer experience tends to leave a lasting impression in a buyer’s mind. They’ll definitely be thinking about repurchasing your product or service, or from your store.
  • Creates advocates for your brand
    Your products can often speak for themselves, but with customers speaking on your behalf, they’ll fly off the shelves too, so to speak. A hassle free and positive CX is a selling point by itself.
  • Customer Experience and satisfaction is a huge differentiator in a saturated market
    Most verticals have product parity within their offerings. Customers these days seek more from their purchase than just the product, and a positive customer journey is a selling point by itself.
  • Personalized services and products get more traction
    Personalization is important! 56% of respondents surveyed feel more loyal to brands who “get me” and show a deep understanding of their priorities and preferences. (Source, see footnote 1)

Customer Journey

In essence, these are every interaction potential customers have with your brand at different touchpoints. These could be online, offline, before or after the sale and even the sales process itself. It’s not a niche concept – For example, the apple customer experience relies heavily on ensuring a positive customer journey throughout.

Why should you track Customer journeys?

If you want your brand to constantly reside in your customer’s mind, then tracking customer journeys effectively can help you do that, even before they’ve decided to make a purchase.

• Focus resources • Create new customer bases • Streamline your online and offline customer experience

Stages of a Customer Journey

Customer journey 02

1.

Customer Need (Customer identifies a need)

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2.

Brand Awareness & Engagement (Customer hears about your brand through online, TV and radio advertisements, through word of mouth, or by researching and interacting with your online presence)

Customer journey 04

3.

Evaluation of your offerings (Customers go through your portfolio and evaluate them as per their requirements)

Customer journey 05

4.

Purchase (After consideration, customers decide to make the transaction)

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5.

Post purchase Experience (Customer experience with your post-sale touchpoints: Customer service, software updates etc.)

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6.

Customer Retention and Advocacy (Identifying customer satisfaction with your brand, and whether they are promoters or detractors)

1 in 3 people come to a brand through a recommendation and customers referred by loyal customers have a 37% retention rate (Source, Footnote 2). A positive customer journey is key in creating a loyal customer base.

Defining your Customer Experience Survey strategy

What metrics should you keep track of?

There’s a whole host of customer experience surveys available for researchers to conduct, based on your vertical, type of business or target audience. The key is to conduct the right customer experience surveys at the right touchpoint. There are a few CX metrics which have proved their effectiveness in gauging customer intent and can be a valuable source for insights into issues faced during the customer journey.

NPS®

NPS® (Net Promoter Score®) surveys are one of the most popular customer experience surveys used by companies globally. An NPS® survey typically asks respondents 2 simple questions:

  • – How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or a colleague? The respondent gets to choose their answer from a scale of 0-10.
  • – Why did you give us that score? This is usually accompanied with a dialog box for the respondent to write their feedback in.
  • NPS® can be integrated anywhere: be it inside an email, on social media, or tablets carried around by serving staff at restaurants. You can click here to read more about NPS® surveys, and how they can help you turn negative feedback around.
CSAT

CSAT or Customer Satisfaction surveys are extremely effective for measuring a customer’s satisfaction with a single interaction. Customer satisfaction is more important than ever, and CSAT surveys help you gauge how satisfied a respondent is with a particular interaction with your business. Respondents are typically asked how satisfied they are with a product, service, transaction or interaction. They can choose their response from Extremely Satisfied – Extremely unsatisfied.

CES

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a popular CX metric which usually consists of a statement or questions, and asks customers to choose from 5-7 options. These questions generally ask customers how much effort they had to exert to effectively use your product or service. Ease of use plays a big part in overall customer experience, which is why CES surveys can deliver actionable insights for ensuring a positive customer journey.

Customer Experience Leaders

Apple Amazon Netflix

What makes them stand out?

Customers are important for every business, and most, if not all, strive to achieve a positive relationship with their target audience. A few companies however, go above and beyond when it comes to catering to their customers. They somehow make products and services which customers didn’t even know they needed, and now can’t do without.

These are a few organizations which can be considered leaders in the realm of Customer Experience

Jobs 02

Apple

Starting from a company primarily known for providing affordable home computing devices, Apple’s rise to becoming the most valuable company in the world is nothing short of extraordinary. Although their portfolio has greatly diversified over the years, one aspect has remained consistent – The Apple customer experience.

Their offerings have gained a reputation for being easy to use, their customer service is excellent across the world. All of this has combined to breed customer loyalty which other tech companies simply do not have.

Let’s take the iPad for example. At launch, it couldn’t come close to the capability afforded by a laptop, but was priced at a premium. Steve Jobs himself stated that any portable device without a keyboard was destined to fail. It turns out, Apple listened to their customers. The iPad had just the right amount of power to be productive. It’s touchscreen was vibrant and responsive to ensure a smooth typing experience. The iPad built a ferociously loyal customer base for itself and is now a suite of products, instead of an experiment.

Amazon

They’re not called earth’s most customer centric company for no reason! Amazon has become into a tech behemoth by carefully creating a customer journey which would ensure that customers are satisfied at each touchpoint with their company. Key to their success are leadership principles by Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos : 

  • • Customer focus
  • • Ownership
  • • Think Big
  • • Leaders are right, a lot
  • • Learn and be curious
  • • Hire and develop the best

Amazon started out as a company shipping books, but their customer focus has made them a major player in multiple verticals. You can read more on Amazon’s leadership principles here, and see why their positive customer experience has made so many customers as advocates for their brand.

Customer centric cycle Jeff Bezos 09 01
Amazon's success is built on their customer centricity

Netflix 

Another company who’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. Netflix’ unique focus on Customer, Employee and Product Experience has helped it become the leader in the OTT (over the top) streaming content market.

A few factors which helped Netflix Achieve excellence in Customer Experience:

    • – Customer Obsession
    • – Personalization
    • – Data above all

A positive Employee Experience plays a pivotal role in providing a positive CX, and Netflix has worked smart to ensure that their employees have a working environment that inculcates creativity. A few tenets that make up their workplace culture:

    • – Avoiding unnecessary rules and regulations
    • – Open sharing of information across teams
    • – Encouraging employees with independent decision making
    • – Fostering a culture of honesty and truthfulness
  • Product Experience the netflix way
    A positive product experience goes a long way in ensuring that your CX is on point, and Netflix has nailed their PX like no other streaming platform.

Here’s a few key factors that show why their Product and User experience remains excellent:

– R&D

– Experimentation

– Hiring big names for big impact

Netflix CX PX and EX 01 01 01
Netflix built their feedback loop on the back of excellence in product, employee and customer experience

Footnote 1: Source: Adobe CMO blog, 15 Mind-Blowing Stats About Loyalty

Footnote 2: Source: Slideshare presentation Dec 11, 2009, Brand Advocacy and Social Media – 2009 GMA Conference

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

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