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Customer experience is the key to driving customer satisfaction and loyalty, so it’s no surprise that CX is a top priority for businesses today. There are many factors that can influence customer experience and many companies develop comprehensive CX management programs. By implementing customer journey mapping software and conversation analytics, you’ll gain valuable insights into your customers’ experiences at every touchpoint throughout the customer journey, along with an understanding of the factors that influence customer behavior.
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How AI Improves Customer Experience
Learn how learnings uncovered through artificial intelligence inform your customer experience strategy
Customer experience is influenced by every interaction your customers have with your brand. And that means there are many opportunities to provide an exceptional customer experience — or a poor one. It only takes one negative interaction to sour a customer’s entire experience with your brand. Coupled with the fact that today’s savvy consumers expect a seamless omnichannel customer experience, there’s a lot of pressure to get every detail right.
There are many ways to improve CX, so it’s not uncommon for companies to get lost in the weeds and overlook obvious and proven strategies that can make a positive impact. To learn about the tactics many companies overlook when it comes to improving CX, we reached out to a panel of customer experience professionals and business leaders and asked them to answer this question:
“What's the most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience?”
Keep reading to learn what our panel had to say about the tactics you might be overlooking in your efforts to improve CX.
Louis Watton
Louis is a Marketing Executive at Shiply.
“One often overlooked tactic for improving customer experience that may seem obvious is…”
Simply asking the customer what they think about your product/service. There is so much data at our disposal around the customer experience that it can seem like the best option is to simply follow the numbers, and in many cases, this is the right way to do it! However, as much as we want to think like a customer, we are too involved in the product to truly be able to be objective. It can be hugely beneficial to run some sessions with the general public on your service and get pure, unbiased opinions on what you are doing right and wrong.
Tomasz Niezgoda
Tomasz Niezgoda is the Marketing Executive & Partner at Surfer.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is…”
Building a community. When customers feel like they are part of a community, they are more likely to be engaged and loyal. Furthermore, a community can provide valuable feedback that can help businesses improve their products and services. Building a community requires time and effort, but it is well worth it in the long run.
There are many ways to build a community, but one of the most effective is through social media. Facebook is a great platform for building a community because it allows businesses to connect with customers from all over the world. Creating a Facebook group or page devoted to your business is a great way to start building a community.
Katy Smith
Katy Smith is the product manager at Airgram.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is…”
Reacting to customer feedback. Good customer experience starts with knowing what your customers think about the existing features or your existing business processes. Customer feedback is everything if you want to keep your business going. Going to the trouble of collecting feedback from your customers is one thing but making sure that you react and change your business processes to gel with the concerns raised by the customers is the real deal.
Many businesses make the mistake of treating customer feedback as a formality. Collecting customer data shouldn't be a simple formality in order to give the illusion that you are listening to customers. Customer feedback should help you pivot and position your business in a better way.
Patrick Casey
Patrick Casey is the Director of Growth Marketing at Felix Health.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is…”
Prioritizing customer awareness. Unavailable information is often the main cause of dissatisfaction among customers. Though it's easy to overlook, stating that a product is out of stock or that the system encountered an error tend not to be sufficient explanations on their own. If there is a discrepancy between what you know and what your customer knows, you need to do something about it. In other words, when your business encounters an issue which prevents your customers from performing their intended action, it's your responsibility to explain exactly what is stopping them.
For example, if you're suffering from supply chain issues, describe the situation and explain what you're doing about it. Or, if you're certain that a product will be available three weeks from now, make that information available on the product page. You could even send email notifications to consenting customers as soon as a product returns.
Discovery is an essential element of the purchasing process, and this extra step shows that you value what customers know just as much as what customers buy. CX doesn't have to be illusive or difficult; as long as you are transparent when things deviate from the standard, it creates a more consistent customer experience.
Maria Shriver
Maria Shriver is the Co-founder and CEO of MOSH.
“Being familiar with a brand reduces the time customers need to get to know you…”
And in a marketplace crowded with so many novelty brands popping up overnight, consumers crave the familiarity of a known experience.
Brand storytelling is an ongoing narrative that holds your customers' attention and provides them with a deeper understanding of your business. Crafting your brand story using your company's inception, mission, values, products, and CSR initiatives weaves a compelling narrative for your audience. It also paints a complete picture that helps them remember who you are and gets them to care about your brand.
Carrying this narrative throughout your marketing and advertising campaigns and across your social media channels creates a consistent and seamless experience. This helps customers feel confident about what to expect when interacting with you. Familiarity breeds trust. And in unfamiliar times like these, people turn to the brands they trust when making their purchasing decisions.
Elizabeth Harr
Elizabeth Harr is a partner at Hinge.
“Businesses too often overlook the most effective way to delight customers and stand out in a crowded marketplace…”
Educating their customers or clients. Research shows customer loyalty continuing to plummet as services and products become increasingly commoditized. Continually educating customers or clients in thought-provoking ways is a powerful method to enhance their experience while avoiding commoditization. It demonstrates expertise and continued relevance to clients’ evolving challenges and priorities, as well as exceeds the expected level of service.
Businesses that educate, through articles, webinars, podcasts, proprietary research, workshops, and other formats, make it hard for customers to leave, especially when the competition is all–or only–about the hard sell.
Jon Torres
Jon Torres is a Digital Marketing Consultant and the founder of JonTorres.com.
“Failing to personalize the why; automating the how…”
You might be one of those who ask how this technique is really important. Try personalizing the content you deliver while automating its delivery, for example. It seems that this is only possible for customers who have purchased, logged in, and received support from you in the past. However, we have done this with people who are visiting our websites for the first time.
Consider the chatbot. Whenever a customer clicks on the chat button, we present them with help topics relevant to the pages they just browsed, starting with the current page. Since then, fewer people leave a chat prematurely, and more of those we help take the next positive step.
Jeff Mains
Jeff Mains is a 5x Entrepreneur and CEO of Champion Leadership Group LLC.
“Shoppers nowadays have an abundance of options when it comes to…”
Buying, with a wide variety of media, websites, and channels competing for their attention. eCommerce enterprises are now facing the most challenging hurdle of all: providing a seamless experience and coping with the diminishing attention spans of their customers. With that said, below are two of the most overlooked tactics for improving customer experience.
Fill in the support gaps.
The key to successful online retailing is providing customers memorable experiences and closing the support service gap. Nobody likes walking into a business and getting the impression that they are being neglected. Consumers do not anticipate being put on hold for more than 10 minutes to get an answer to their question. Because of this, it is essential to have a crew ready around the clock to respond to and address any customer questions. This is the tried-and-true method for turning casual visitors into paying customers. This is when the assistance of a live chat service might come in handy.
Color psychology is a great tool to have at your disposal.
A website's color scheme can make or break its success rate, particularly when considering the website's overall concept. Customers' thoughts are profoundly affected by factors such as color and design, which influences their choices of the products they will buy. Suppose you choose an acceptable color scheme in web design or choose the perfect hues according to the character and theme of your business. In that case, you may enhance your website's customer experience and conversion rates.
Mike Albrecht
Mike Albrecht is the Marketing Specialist at Fresha.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is…”
Empowering your employees. Even though it may seem counterintuitive, firms that succeed at customer experience begin with their workers. The empowered staff has a direct impact on customer satisfaction. Say you’ve been on the phone with a customer support representative for 10 minutes, and you've asked for a discount. They want to help, but they need to get approval from their management first. You're already worn out and want the debate to be over. Wouldn't it be more convenient if your issue could be resolved right away by an agent who could apply their judgment and authorize the discount (or take other necessary action)?
Get to the bottom of what's preventing your staff from providing an exceptional client experience. If you discover any recurring issues with the staff experience through a pulse survey, you can utilize this information to improve your contact center procedures and customer relationship management software.
Also, take into account the corporate culture. Does everyone in the company understand the company's core beliefs, and are they all working toward the same goal? Is there anything you can do to improve your company's customer-centricity?
Tomáš Novák
Tomáš manages the customer success team at Marketing Miner.
“The most overlooked tactic to improve the customer experience is…”
Live chat. People are often busy and do not have time to search for contact information on the web, especially considering they probably won’t find an email address, just a contact form. Live chat is the fastest and most convenient way to connect with customers. I think that it should be a matter of course for everyone who wants to improve customer experience today.
A common mistake I see in connection with live chats is that it only looks like live chat, but when a person writes there, they get an automatic reply that says something like, ‘We will reply to you in 3 days via email.’ This is not a good example of a live chat integration. I expect a response on the live chat within a few minutes.
Live chat can then also be used for upselling or to ask for reviews.
Michael Humphreys
Michael Humphreys is the Founder & CEO of Z Grills Australia.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is simple…”
Invest in your employees. When employees feel valued and supported, they are more likely to go above and beyond for customers. They’re also more likely to stick around, which reduces turnover and provides stability for your business.
Of course, there are many other important factors in creating a positive customer experience, but investing in your employees is the foundation upon which everything else is built. So if you’re looking to take your customer experience to the next level, start by investing in the people who make it happen.
Gergo Vari
Gergo Vari is the CEO and founder at Lensa.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer service is…”
Building contextual-based support. You need to make sure your agents have all of a customer's information from all channels and interactions, meaning you need to have a good CRM system in place. This will help your agents provide contextualized support, which is when they're able to see all of a customer's information and history with your company. When your agents have this information, they can provide better support because they can see the full picture of what's going on.
Linda G Thompson
Linda G Thompson is the Co-Founder of Notta.ai.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is…”
Empowering customer service staff to make instant decisions. Complex approval processes kill good customer service. In many instances, your frontline customer service employees know what needs to be done in order to improve the customer experience. Overlooking their experience and expertise when looking at your customer experience leads to hurdles and choke points in the customer journey. This ultimately results in less engaged customers and higher customer turnover.
Customers don't really like being thrown from one customer service representative to the other. The most efficient customer service systems have few approval steps. Empowering your customer service to make the calls on the spot makes your customer service faster and more efficient. While having an approval process creates a sense of collaboration and teamwork, it also results in unnecessary delays and lots of back and forth.
Caitlyn Parish
Caitlyn Parish is a Chief Digital Officer at Cicinia.
“We all think that customer experience is about giving all our services to the customer, and…”
While all these are generally acceptable and true, there's also one tactic to improve customer experience that we hardly notice: It's creating self-service options for customers.
Most customers nowadays want to be more proactive, which means that they want to generate solutions on their own instead of always having to ask someone else for it. This is why websites
that have a series of walk-through videos, self learning guides, and other support content are likely to generate more traffic than brands and websites that rely on automated bots and general FAQs. With self-service portals, customers find it easier to find answers to problems that have already been experienced by other consumers in the past. This way, they are more able to resolve future problems on their own as well.
Mike Chappell
Mike Chappell is the Founder of Formspal.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is to…”
Identify the points of friction in customer journeys. Who hasn't struggled to find what they were looking for on a website or mobile app? These friction points ruin all of your hard work by producing aggravation and creating a negative perception of your brand—especially if your competition alleviates that frustration by providing a faster path to their solution. Identify and eliminate the points in your entire content strategy where your customers are becoming snagged in your brand's customer experience.
Deepasha Kakkar
Deepasha Kakkar is the CEO & Founder of Crackitt.
“I suggest developing a seamless customer experience involving…”
Marketing operations, the content management lifecycle, and data management procedures. Manual or compartmentalized processes and systems generate an abundance of internal complications that, in turn, have a negative impact on your consumers.
If you are experiencing this, you are aware that it results in fragmented data collection and analysis, gaps in content and other deliverables, go-to-market delays, and disconnected customer experiences as they move between systems and internal teams. A single experience platform consolidates data and ensures compliance, enabling your business to provide a uniform customer experience.
Teo Vanyo
Teo Vanyo is the CEO of Stealth Agents.
“The most underutilized strategy for enhancing the overall experience of a client is to…”
Focus first on the requirements of that customer. It’s simple for companies to generate content and messages that are oriented around their own products; nevertheless, it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and start considering your company from their point of view.
When a customer visits your website, do you attempt to alleviate any of the problems they may be experiencing? Do you have a clear awareness of their problems as well as a strategy for how to solve them? Have you taken into account the responses that your rivals are giving to these questions? To ensure that you are mapping out customer journeys that create business results, it’s critical to ensure that you are addressing the needs of your consumers.
Vaibhav Kakkar
Vaibhav Kakkar is the CEO and Founder of Digital Web Solutions.
“The most ignored approach for increasing customer experience is to…”
Focus on value, not volume. When it comes to choosing a brand, the vast majority of customers prioritize the quality of their experiences over cost considerations. And the more our lives revolve on digital experiences, the more important it is for us to cultivate real-life relationships.
Focus on providing customers with material that creates emotional connections through value as you work to define the experience that you provide for your customers. To accomplish this, you need to focus on producing high-quality content rather than producing more of it.
One of the most important aspects of producing outstanding content is demonstrating genuine empathy for your audience. Through the content you provide, demonstrate to your consumers that your company is attentive to their requirements. Additionally, search for chances to reuse material as a means of elevating your existing content strategy and driving positive return on investment.
Chris Gadek
Chris Gadek is the Vice President of Growth at AdQuick.
“When a business is scaling rapidly, marketers sometimes fail to create a…”
Personalized experience for consumers living outside that company's country of origin. More people than ever worldwide have been shopping online as a result of the pandemic. And a global marketplace means customers will differ in their language, currency, and product expectations. Such diversity among consumers requires eCommerce businesses to personalize the customer experience by serving up ads and content customized to resonate with users in a specific region.
Julia Spence
Julia Spence is the Business Development Manager at LivaFortis.
“This may sound overly simplistic but really, the best advice for improving customer experience is to…”
Really listen to your customers. If they have a complaint, don't be defensive about your product or service. Do they have a valid point? Why are they frustrated? Is it more about the feeling that they got when they interacted with your product/service/company? That could be an opportunity as well.
After years of calling on healthcare professionals as well as running a 24-hour call center for a psychiatric hospital, I found that sometimes people just need to vent. It might not have anything to do with your product/service/company at all, but when we listen to people, we validate them. We make them feel seen and heard. We make them feel like they matter.
Listening is also a way of learning where we should be focusing our efforts for the company's future. We can't always give customers everything they want, but when we listen to their feedback we can gain valuable insights into trend predictions that can help us know where best to develop or align our products and services for the future.
Marc Bishop
Marc Bishop is the Director of Business Growth at iDigiMagnet.
“Personalization may be able to assist you improve your client experience…”
Providing a personalized customer experience is essential for making clients feel important to your brand. Your organization can send the right material to the right person at the right time thanks to personalization. AI-driven automatic personalization is a digital transformation route that leads to quick wins. No matter where you are right now, the most essential thing is to get started.
Jas Banwait Gill
Jas is a part of the growth team at SnackMagic.
“Though you may be encouraging customers to offer up their feedback through…”
Feedback forms, surveys, polls, and interactive quizzes, are you actually using their insights to improve their experience with your brand? Customers today expect a personalized experience. Applying their actual feedback makes their customer journey just that—personal. It also helps you adapt each touchpoint based on what they tell you, making their journey smoother and strengthening the bond they have with your business.
Ouriel Lemmel
Ouriel Lemmel is the CEO and founder of WinIt.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is to…”
Create a brand specific experience. You don't need a huge budget for this; it simply needs to be unique to your brand. If your company can create an experience that feels specific to your brand, it will become harder for your competitors to copy you.
Even sending a thank-you email can go a long way to offering your customer a personalized brand experience. When you create an experience that aligns with your brand, prospective customers will think of this whenever they see your brand, and they will be more likely to remain loyal.
Daniel Tejada
Daniel Tejada is the Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer at Straight Up Growth.
“While omnichannel marketing sounds like the latest industry buzzword…”
It's fast becoming the way brands large and small are tailoring a personalized experience to suit each customer's individual needs and preferences as they move from channel to channel as well as device to device. It's like runners in a relay race, passing the torch from hand to hand toward the finish line and beyond.
For instance, let's say your target customer is on their smartphone checking out some camping gear. A couple of hours later, they're watching how-to videos on YouTube, and up pops an ad featuring the same 6-person tent they were looking at earlier. And the following day, they receive an email with an offer of a 15% discount and free shipping for that same tent.
Understanding how people interact with your brand both online and offline enables you to create a meandering customer experience that seamlessly connects together.
Cody Candee
Cody Candee is the Founder and CEO of Bounce.
“Customer experience improvement tactics don’t begin at implementation but at the planning stage…”
Oftentimes, business owners overlook the process of mapping the customer journey beforehand to understand their patrons' experience. Developing a strategy to improve the customer experience relies on understanding their journey from onboarding, to support, to conversion and follow-up.
Taking the time to create detailed customer journey maps that provide a visual depiction of staff interactions, store usability, and website and other digital experiences, and then cross-referencing that with business KPIs, allows for a clearer understanding of the customer experience. By engaging in this overlooked tactic, a business can more readily understand their strengths and also address their weaknesses.
David Bitton
David Bitton is the Co-Founder and CMO at DoorLoop.
“The most overlooked tactic for improving customer experience is to…”
Take care of your employees and guarantee that they are happy with their jobs. Employees are the face of your company; their conduct will have an immediate impact on the customer experience and will directly reflect your brand.
Employee dissatisfaction may cause employees to be unnecessarily harsh to customers. Or, it may prompt them to completely disregard customers' concerns in favor of the simplest answer they can discover to appease the customer for a short time rather than finding a focused approach that will resolve their issue in the long term. This adds nothing to the customer experience, and it doesn’t make customers feel valued.
An employee that is satisfied with their job, on the other hand, will be eager to go the extra mile. They will act professionally and ensure that customers are always taken seriously and listened to. Additionally, they will delve deeply into each issue to uncover specific solutions that will work. Even when a solution is not reached or a concern is not entirely addressed, the customer will feel valued, knowing that your employees did everything possible to assist them.
Improve the employee experience at your company and nurture their devotion to ensure that they treat customers and their jobs with the necessary degree of care and passion.
Calloway Cook
Calloway Cook is the President of Illuminate Labs.
“Answering all customer questions on-page…”
If a customer has to reach out to ask a question about your product or service, you're less likely to convert them. Taking that additional step is annoying to the customer, and they rightly feel like the information should have already been on the page.
At Illuminate Labs, we're obsessive over optimizing on-page content to answer prospective customer questions. It's why we receive under 1 non-spam customer inquiry per day on average even though we get well over 100,000 pageviews per month.
I recommend that online businesses use customer emails to optimize on-page content and improve customer experience over time. If you're getting regular questions about a certain topic, answers to those questions should be published to your website.
