Understanding Customer Experience : A Quick Guide

What does customer experience mean?” Ask any business owner and they’d tell you they know the answer. But do they, really? Not unless they’re highly successful.

Understanding customer experience is what drives the world’s largest, most successful businesses. Customer experience is not theoretical. It doesn’t happen by chance. In fact, 44.5 percent of global organizations believe it to be the most significant competitive differentiator for their business.

Over the course of the next few minutes, you’ll learn about these aspects of great customer experience:

- The definition of customer experience

- The importance of customer experience management

- How to create a positive customer service experience

- The best ways to enhance your understanding of customer experience

Understanding Customer Experience: The Definition Of CX

Customer experience (CX) is the customers’ response to their interactions with a business. It covers all direct and indirect contact they have with a business.

Direct contact typically includes customer initiated interactions. It covers the interactions a customer has with a business in the act of buying and using a product or service. The feedback, both positive and negative, too, is an example of direct contact.

Indirect contact includes unplanned interactions between a customer and a business. Coming across a product’s ad or review on YouTube or Instagram is a good example.

According to research, 76 percent of executives from around the world believe that improving customer experience is a critical priority.

Benefits of understanding Customer Experience:

Understanding the customers’ impression of your brand and services helps you identify the customer’s preferences and areas for improvement. Effective customer experience management (CXM)—knowing how to create a positive customer service experience—has these big rewards:

- It helps enhance customer service and satisfaction

- It helps build customer loyalty

- It increases word-of-mouth promotion

- It leads to more positive reviews and higher recommendations for your brand

- It can reduce complaints, returns and churn

- It supports customer retention and increases the chances that a buying customer returns to your brand

The importance of great customer experience management is not lost on the world’s leaders. According to research, almost 90 percent of global organizations employ a chief experience officer (CXO) or equivalent.

Ways of better understanding excellent customer experience:

The importance of understanding customers can be gauged by the fact that 87 percent of the world’s business leaders consider customer experience as their growth engine. You can improve your understanding of your target customer in these ways:

- Prioritize listening to your customers across all platforms

- Collect and analyze customer feedback and then act on it

Sounds simple, right? Here are the best tools you can use to make the actual process of understanding customer service experience as simple as it sounds:

1. Customer surveys

Customized customer surveys are a great tool to understand and maximize customer experience. These can help you get an in-depth understanding of the following metrics:

2. Customer Effort Score (CES)

CES is a metric that helps you determine the effort that the customers put into the act of interacting with your company. A CES survey uses a ratings scale to tell you how easy or difficult the experience was.

Here are some examples of CES survey questions:

- How easy did you find the process of connecting to our customer service?

- How easy was placing your order?

- How easy was getting answers to your queries?

CES surveys are best utilized at key milestones in the customer’s journey. For instance, after they’ve signed up or completed a transaction. They’re also effective at the end of the customer’s interaction with your customer service team.

3. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a single question customer survey. It inquires about the likeliness of the customers recommending a product/service to their friend/colleague. Customers can express their opinion by selecting a rating between 0-10.

The main goal of a NPS survey is to identify your company’s promoters and detractors. Your company’s NPS score allows you to keep track of your promoters and detractors. NPS survey helps you to devise ways to minimize the number of detractors. In addition, it gives you the opportunity to target the promoters to expand your brand’s reach.

4. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

A CSAT survey acts as a measure of a customer’s satisfaction with your product/service. CSAT surveys typically include a 5-7 point scale. The corresponding values range from “unsatisfied” to “highly satisfied”. You can also include a list of custom Yes/No questions to gauge the customer’s level of satisfaction.

CSAT surveys focus on a customer’s response to particular touchpoints. They’re great for understanding the customer experience relative to different parts of their journey. The best way of understanding customer service experience is to use an AI-powered survey tool that captures real time customer feedback, monitors the data and helps with its presentation.

5. Website heatmap

A website heatmap is an user analytics Tool online that helps visualize customer data to maximize customer experience and enhance customer service. It depicts your website’s elements in varying intensities of colors.

High intensity corresponds to areas/elements that are the most popular with your customers. Low intensity points out your website’s least popular areas/elements.

Heatmaps are great for identifying your customers’ likes and dislikes, as well as any errors that may be hurting customer experience and sales.

FAQs

What are the top reasons for poor customer experience?

Answer: Here are 5 top reasons for poor customer experience:

- Long waiting time

- Poor customer service

- Unresolved queries/complaints

- Lack of personalization and human touch

- Unprofessional/rude employees.

How does customer experience differ from customer service?

Answer: Customer experience is a wider concept of which customer service is part of. Customer experience covers the customers’ overall response and opinion of your company. This includes how they feel about your customer service.

While improving your customer service can help maximize customer experience, there are plenty of other factors that can lead to poor customer experience even if your customer service is top-notch.

Is understanding and managing user experience expensive?

Answer: Not at all. Considering the immense importance of understanding customers, the benefits far exceed the costs.

Ready for better understanding customer experience, creating satisfying customer journeys and greater sales than ever before? You can book a free demo and get started right away.