CX Strategy - Go Big or Go Home

A warning to you business owners out there - clients today are less likely to stay loyal to you and your services because of three things:

  • There's more competition than ever before.
  • Customer expectations are drastically rising.
  • Information about competitors is accessible within a click of a button.

These make retaining clients a considerable challenge and the creation of a customer experience (CX) strategy a must.

A 2011 customer service impact report showed that up to 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience.

Customers today are quick in their decision to switch a supplier after having a bad experience, often posting about it on social media which can affect businesses.

Word quickly spreads online, and one dissatisfied customer could influence potential ones who read and take the negative reviews as fact (even if it isn't).

If you are worried about negative reviews or have been subject to them, don't worry! We've written a guide on how you can deal with them!

Not only that, current customers often have second thoughts after reading the bad experiences and decide to go elsewhere. Don't worry though, there's good news! A well designed CX strategy can help us use social media and new technology to our advantage.

Don't get left behind the pack - find out how you can adapt your service to meet your clients' ever-changing needs and have them coming back for more!

Customers Have The Power

The internet has allowed clients quick and easy access to information, giving them a voice and a choice. As a result, they know they have alternative options, and expect excellent service from companies. A good CX strategy should consistently provide an outstanding customer experience to make them happy.

It's no use only having a competent complaints department; each employee who speaks to a customer should be excellent (and you hopefully won't even need a complaints department). Customers posting negatively on social media is an indication that your strategy has failed, but what is that that they expect from a brand?

A survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive, showed that 73% of customers appreciate contact center agents’ friendliness, which is at the heart of the customer satisfaction strategy.

More than half (55%) of surveyed users demand easy access to information and support which makes businesses offer a multi-channel service, social media visibility, and high response rate.

Finally, 36% said a personalized experience with useful updates was a thing they cherished. Businesses need to understand and interact with individual customers in personalized ways, at scale.

In a nutshell, to be successful, the supplier must deliver timely, contextual, relevant and personalized information or knowledge to every customer across every engagement channel.

This isn't easy to do, but it is achievable.

Don't Sit Back - Take Risks

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The world evolves too fast for anyone who is unwilling to take risks and try new approaches. Below is a simple framework that serves as a guide into the creation of a new CX Strategy.

Face Your Flaws

We all think we know our business like the back of our hand, but some things are not always as we think they are.

To find out where your team is falling short, reach out to your customers, ask them what they are happy with and crucially what they are unhappy with. Use these conversations and the data collected from them to understand which business processes are working and which are not.

Focus on the processes that frustrate your customers the most and start to make improvements to those areas. Along with getting familiar with your clients’ sentiment, we’d suggest also looking at your staff’s.

Our experience has taught us there's a strong connection between employee motivation and customer retention with your brand, as the phrase “happy staff – happy customers,” suggests. So talking with your staff before you figure out the processes that need improvement is an excellent idea to put into practice.

Gain a Culture For Growth

What do we mean when we talk about culture?

For a start, our company’s values direct the decisions our employees make. It's crucial that every single person from top to bottom pulls in the same direction, guided by the same core values.

We want to make sure our customers have the best experience possible, and we do this by making sure client satisfaction is at the highest it can be. Our manager's role is to set an example, and coach every team member to apply this culture to their daily tasks.

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Metrics Make Your Life Easier

You can't improve what you don’t measure. To avoid getting bogged down with too much information, pick the most important metrics for your business to monitor and develop actions for change.

We've previously spoken about how to use metrics as improvement tactic indicators, as well as the most common downfalls companies have with them, so we won't go fully into it here. The critical take-out point is to use the metric's results as improvement tactic indicators.

Provide Support, Everywhere

Customers today contact you through multiple channels such as e-mail, chat, phone, or video-call, and expect the information they provide on one channel to be immediately available to staff working on the other channels.

As the number of touch points rises, companies face the challenge to deliver consistent service across them all. A failure to provide it often results in augmented AHT, low FCR rates, poor CSAT scores, and the business starts to suffer.

Omni-channel support has always been challenging to achieve, but recent technology is enabling companies to automate some of the processes and make consistent quality interactions possible.

QA Software is Your Right Hand Man

Manually adding calls and emails is inefficient, so when choosing software for your business, select one with API's that can be easily integrated with your servers or PBX.

In such cases, Cxceed software can help integrate QA into your business processes. Interactions made through multiple channels are gathered, neatly indexed and accessible to you, to evaluate and use for training.

The Wrap-Up

Customers today have more power than ever before. Their expectations are rising, and they are willing to chop and change suppliers until they find one which meets their demands.

Use this guide to create a CX Strategy which suits your business and watch your clients' happiness increase. Don't shy away from it. Be proactive, and give your customers what they want, when they want it.

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