6 Questions To Evaluate Your Customer Experience Strategy | CX Strategy
What’s Your Customer Experience Strategy? Ask Yourself These Six Questions
In today’s unprecedented climate, digital transformation and customer experience (CX) have become two popular topics. As we enter a new era of online shopping, remote working, social distancing and lockdowns, customer expectations continue to change and evolve.
In 2022, consumers will be empowered like never before as businesses race to meet growing demands to drive customer loyalty and increase revenue. A report by Forrester found that organisations that prioritised customer experience transformation reported:
- Improved customer experience (72%)
- Digital acceleration (70%)
- Increased revenue (68%)
- Improved market differentiation (67%)
Businesses that have staggered to meet customer expectations have either invested in technology without a clear customer experience strategy or have resisted change altogether- resulting in poor customer outcomes.
The hard truth is: if there’s a disconnect between what you believe your customer experience is and what your customers actually experience, your CX efforts are going to waste. A clear plan is crucial to a successful customer experience – here are 6 questions to help you evaluate your CX strategy.
1. Who Are Your Customers, And What Are Their Expectations?
This may seem like an obvious one, but it’s one you want to get absolutely right. If you don’t know who your customers are and what problems they want to solve, you’ll never connect, empathise, and solve those needs.
Take a look at the different types of customers that interact with your customer service team and understand their common enquiries, questions and problems.
Segmenting customers based on specific characteristics is another excellent way to serve each customer profile accordingly for an enhanced customer experience.
2. What Interactions Do Your Customers Value Most And Why?
Can you identify which touchpoints your customers prefer to interact with? Are they more likely to call or email? Or do they utilise online self-service, live chats and FAQs?
It’s essential to know your customers’ preferred method of communication so you can optimise these contact channels for better experiences.
On top of this, you should know what your customers value and what drives their behaviour. For instance, if customers frequently call your contact centre, they may value human interaction. Conversely, if customers search your website, they may want to find their answer quickly without waiting to talk to someone. This information is beneficial in determining your future CX strategy.
3. Can You Map Your Customer Journey And Identify Customer Needs At Each Stage?
The customer journey is a visual representation of a customer’s experience with a brand. It’s an excellent practice for getting into the minds of your customers and understanding their perspectives.
Mapping out your customer journey can help define customer needs, problems and interactions throughout their lifecycle. This can highlight common pain points and help prevent any obstacles ahead of time for a seamless experience.
Creating a customer experience map is also beneficial for getting a holistic view of your customer touchpoints to ensure they are connected and aligned with your brand.
4. Are Customers Able To Find Everything They Need In One Place?
With omnichannel communication on the rise in 2022, how customers choose to interact and engage with brands is evolving. Customers expect their experience to be consistent across all customer touchpoints, including voice, email, SMS, webchat, and social media channels.
If you’re considering new communication channels to enhance your customer experience, it’s crucial to implement them to achieve customer needs without necessarily relying on other channels. This means that where possible, customers can get everything they need from their chosen method of interaction and enjoy a consistent experience.
You may need to introduce new resources or systems to make engaging with your business what you want it to be. You’ll also need to assess the engagement experience of the systems you offer, such as your livechat, IVR, callbacks, voicemail, contact forms, chatbots, and the resulting workflows that are derived from these systems. Does engagement feel clunky or silky? It’s not just about giving a timely response, it’s more about offering an every-eventuality-considered kind of style. Your strategy needs to define the style you’re trying to achieve. Quite possibly, you’re not allocating enough resources to the customer experience journey you’re hoping to deliver.
5. Can Customers Provide Feedback Easily?
The most valuable information to guide your decision making will come straight from the customers themselves. This is why collecting customer feedback is central to any CX strategy.
Customer feedback can either be qualitative (i.e. feedback form or open text questionnaire) or quantitative (i.e. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS)).
The key to sourcing customer feedback is to ensure it’s easily accessible and simple to complete. Remember, the easier you make it for customers, the more likely they are to provide feedback.
6. How Do You Collect, Measure And Implement Customer Feedback?
You might be collecting, measuring and implementing customer feedback – but does your data paint the whole picture?
How you collect and measure customer data determines what insights you utilise in your CX strategy. To ensure you’re gathering the correct data to guide your customer experience innovation, it’s essential to understand what you’re measuring and whether you measure at the right time during the customer journey.
With an overwhelming selection of customer metrics available, it’s challenging to know which metrics are integral for CX success. Take a look at our blog that breaks down the best-performing customer metrics for an evolving market.
Bridge The Gap In Your Customer Experience Strategy
How did you go on your customer experience evaluation? These questions are a great starting point for assessing your CX strategy and identifying areas of improvement for future innovation.
Like customer expectations, your CX strategy will continue to evolve over time. It requires constant attention, evaluation and nurturing to improve satisfaction, advocacy, and loyalty.
Want to learn how to build a successful CX strategy? At Great Outcomes, we provide businesses with the expertise and systems to transform their CX for a competitive advantage.
Contact us today to review your CX management and identify opportunities to drive business growth.
