Customer experience, or CX, is a crucial element of the buyer journey that helps businesses improve their overall standing with the public by incorporating strategies that focus on each step a potential client can make towards becoming your customer. Making adjustments in the flow of usual user activities can help you fine-tune your strategy to achieve the results you have always wanted.
If you have been considering updating your customer experience strategy to incorporate new methods, we have prepared the perfect guidelines to create a CX strategy that converts.
Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility, and Awareness
While people nowadays have no trouble shifting among currencies when shopping online, you have to keep in mind the four A’s of enhancing customer experience: acceptability, affordability, accessibility, and awareness.
This is why incorporating an exchange rate API can provide you with geolocation-specific information about the current prices in numerous currencies. Correct real-time pricing can show your audience that you are transparent and serious about doing business.
Customer Persona
Creating different buyer personas is a common practice in marketing if you aim to target different market segments. Customer personas are built based on collected data from varying user pools to represent hypothetical client groups.
Particular user types all have inclinations, attitudes, and behavior patterns that make it easier to predict the outlooks and objectives of their respective user groups. Customer persona typing can help enhance the customer experience by creating a better, more accurate overview of the segmented demographic and what it represents.
Customer Journey Mapping
Mapping the customer journey is an indispensable part of service design that lines out the customer experience. Journey mapping helps point out the fundamental customer interactions along each touchpoint while keeping the feelings and motivations of clients in perspective.
The time frame, communication channels, and initial actions can help map out the customer journey following different buying personas. Factors like mental models, interaction flow, and touchpoint variations intertwine to simulate buyer journey scenarios. User flows that reflect the experience, considerations, and other patterns help paint a reliable picture of the customer journey.
Customer Support
Customer support has always been and will always remain an indispensable part of creating a positive customer experience. Incorporating customer support into your strategy to create an optimal customer experience is one of the best ways to acquire new and retain existing clients.
Whether it is a Frequently Asked Questions section, a chatbot, or real-time interaction with an employee, customers highly value companies that provide easy and fast support solutions.
The Importance of Feedback
Whether it is your company website, an online forum, different social media platforms, or third-party platforms, you have to stress the importance of feedback in creating an optimal customer experience strategy. Following client impressions and feedback can help guard the reputation of your business as well as gain insight into the thoughts of your audience.
Omnichannel Matters
It is common practice for businesses to extend their online presence and expand their reach to every corner of the web. Different buyer personas have personal preferences regarding means of communication, so it is imperative to enable all communication channels possible.
While it is unlikely that someone will send a fax message, keeping your phone and mail contact information on display is what everybody does, even though most people would probably prefer to send you an instant chat message.
Enabling omnichannel communication increases the chances of user interaction and thus contributes significantly to creating a successful customer experience strategy.
Measuring and What Your CX Metrics Entail
It is virtually impossible to manage anything we do not measure, and creating a great customer experience strategy is no different. Your analytics insights can supply varied valuable data about your company, its audience, how they interact, and what can be improved.
Most analytics platforms provide specific data points that make it easier to segment the client personas and map out the customer journey. Use your metrics to your advantage and continually update your customer experience strategy.
Leverage AI and Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence has found its purpose in many aspects of our lives, and there is no reason why a great customer experience strategy should not involve machine learning.
AI and ML can contribute to UX by automatically doing all the calculations that would not be feasible to do by hand. Taking incoming data about your business and audience behaviors can help create a real-time overview of the direction your company is taking and make timely adjustments.
Conclusion
The 21st century brought numerous changes to standard business practices, and customer experience is increasingly valued. Make sure you follow the best guidelines when creating a customer experience strategy for your business.
Ingrid Maldine is a business writer, editor and management consultant with extensive experience writing and consulting for both start-ups and long established companies. She has ten years management and leadership experience gained at BSkyB in London and Viva Travel Guides in Quito, Ecuador, giving her a depth of insight into innovation in international business. With an MBA from the University of Hull and many years of experience running her own business consultancy, Ingrid’s background allows her to connect with a diverse range of clients, including cutting edge technology and web-based start-ups but also multinationals in need of assistance. Ingrid has played a defining role in shaping organizational strategy for a wide range of different organizations, including for-profit, NGOs and charities. Ingrid has also served on the Board of Directors for the South American Explorers Club in Quito, Ecuador.
