A winning customer experience is necessary for a successful business. Today, companies have realized the power of building a great customer experience. 

A good CX is what defines long-lasting customer loyalty. It is what keeps the customers stuck with you. In turn, a good customer experience is what keeps operational costs lower. It ensures future growth in the long run. 

So, how do you build a good customer experience?

Customers, and not sellers, today have power. A plethora of options is available to them at their fingertips. They have all the necessary resources to educate themselves about a product. They can collect all the information they need to help them purchase. 

So, building a remarkable customer experience becomes crucial.

Below we will explore what customer experience is and how it is crucial for your business. We will also see how you can build up an excellent customer experience. This will be beneficial to your enterprise.

What is a good customer experience?

Your customers interact with you through various mediums. They can call your customer care line, have live chats, or interact on social media. Customer interactions are possible today across various channels. Thus, an omnichannel customer experience has become a necessity. 

Your customers interact with your brand in distinct ways. These interactions can be a delight or an absolute disaster. It all depends on how you intend the customer interactions to be. 

At times, you can build your brand to serve friendly customer service. For example, you can ask your team to respond promptly to your customers. Or, at other times, your team can be slow or unresponsive. As a result, the agents may miss out on engaging with your customers.

Each of these instances builds a different customer experience.

A 2020 Forbes Insights & Arms Treasure Data survey revealed some important facts. It reviewed 1000 customers all over the world and 200 executives. Here are some important findings:

· 74% of customers said they would buy a product based on customer experience alone.

· 77% of customers considered a company's customer experience as important as its product or service.

The survey showed that it is much better to build a good customer experience for your customers. It will boost sales and your business revenue.

So, a good customer experience has the following characteristics:

· It is positive. 

· The product or service meets what the customer needs and expects.

· It makes way for the much-needed customer satisfaction. 

· It creates memories in the customer’s mind.

How the customer's experience impacts the customer’s journey?

Customers buying products or services are set on an entire journey. And, if you want to create a great customer experience, you need to understand this entire journey. 

The consumer journey has seen a dramatic evolution in recent years. Being able to buy things online has changed the way consumers purchase products.

A customer journey represents the buying process a customer goes through. It consists of all the steps your customers take to purchase a product. 

So, the first thing you need to do is create a map for your customer's journey through the sales funnels. 

Think about your customers’ journey. If you don’t have a map, brainstorm to create one. It will highlight all those points where the customers can interact with you. 

Make a note of all such touch points. And get set to make all those touch points give a winning experience to your customer.

The customer journey reveals all the meaningful interactions between your brand and customers. It sets out every interaction they have with your brand. There are distinct phases a customer will pass through during this process. 

Let us look into these phases and how you can build a good customer experience in all these stages.

Customer experience and stages of a customer journey 

Your customer’s journey consists of various stages or phases. You will come across unique challenges through all these phases. It is your job to guide your customer through each phase. Your understanding of each phase is the key to business success. 

Awareness phase

This is the first phase. Here the customers start looking for ways to find information. They seek education about the problem at hand. They identify a problem or a need for which they need to buy a product. 

At this stage, customers are looking for insights. They may not prefer promotional material. So, you need to note that there is no need to push your product in this phase.

This is the phase where you build customer awareness so that they know about your product or service. Even before you make any sale, you should be able to build proper awareness about your product.

You can publish online ads, white papers, and e-books. These can offer educational content to nudge the customer towards your product.

Consideration phase

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This is the phase where the customers have collected enough information. They are in a place to consider a product. They will have data about more than one product. They will compare the offerings of one product with that of another. 

So, how do you build a good customer experience in this phase?

Start with engaging your audience online. Let your CX teams explain the features of your products and services. This way, the customers can get a better understanding of their benefits. 

Get set to publish unique blog content and success stories. You may even start nurturing your customers through email campaigns. You can even organize webinars or events. They will bring your customers together on your business platform.

The main aim here is to enhance the customer experience. It can be done by addressing any issues prospects have at this stage. Then, you can help them move to the next phase of the customer journey.

Decision phase

The next phase of the customer journey is the purchase or the decision phase. Here, the customer has reviewed various products. He has understood its pros and cons and is ready to buy the product.

In other words, they are ready to interact with your sales or support team.

The need is to execute a good sales process. You can provide successful case studies or introduce existing customers as a reference. This helps build a good customer experience inside and outside the sales process.

Some customers may have a direct entry at this stage if they have asked for demos or quotes. 

Here, you need to provide them with a business contact form. Simply put, it has to be any conversion point that leads to conversion.

Retention phase

As the name represents, this phase deals with retaining your customers. So, it happens after the sales process is over. 

Generally, your sales representatives will make the sales. They will go ahead with the customer onboarding. Then, they will wait for further sales opportunities. This could be either a product renewal or a cross-sell. 

So, how do you build a good customer experience at this stage? Here it is.

Let your teams continue to market your product and engage with your customers. 

Design and execute a customer loyalty program. Build a knowledge base FAQ to take care of your customer queries. Ensure that you frequently communicate your product advancements to the customers. 

Some organizations can also hold regular training sessions for their products. This way, you can offer additional promotions to your customers throughout their lifecycle. Indulge in a high dose of customer engagement at this stage. It should create value and education for customers.

This will be helpful in the future for a higher customer lifecycle value. It will bring in repeat customers.

Advocacy phase

This is the last phase of your customer‘s purchase journey. They have purchased your product and are ready to express their views about it.

Customers may post reviews online. They can provide product ratings to share their experience with your product. This is all-important user-generated content. It can also include product questions and answers, pictures, and more. 

You can engage your post-purchase customers with ads for complementary products. This will help you increase the customer lifetime value of your buyers.

As part of your CX strategy, you must provide a good customer experience in the above 4 phases. Then, you can hope for a first-class customer journey. 

A good CX leads to happy customers. They will help you bring more buyers with word-of-mouth marketing or recommendations.

Let us see how this works and how do you build a good customer experience even after sales.

Case studies and success stories from peers help customers in their purchase decisions. You can ask them to volunteer for a case study. You can even send out a Net Promoter Score or NPS survey. This will help you know what your customers feel about the brand. 

These surveys and conversations give a voice to the customers. They can voice their opinions about your product and feel heard. It has the potential to build or improve the overall customer experience.

Strategy to build a good customer experience

Empower your employees

You need to start with your employees. Train them to provide an excellent customer experience. If your employees are empowered, they will know how to handle customer issues. As the end result, you will get happy customers. 

Let them use their discernment to take appropriate actions. Give them the freedom to solve customer issues immediately.

You can conduct an employee pulse survey. It helps you discover customer challenges in the employee experience. Your team can review those insights to see if any contact center protocols or the CRM tools need a change.

Value your employees

Your employees run the show. They strive together on the frontlines to interact with your customers. It is their expertise that will help meet customer expectations and perceptions.

Take care to nurture your company's relationship with your CX employees. Pay your employees fairly,evaluate performance reasonably, and treat them as individuals. They will report to their work with greater enthusiasm if they feel valued. They will be more than willing to help your customers.

A Haillo survey showed important insights. 71% of company executives mentioned that employee engagement was necessary for the company's success.

A survey by Gallup showed that 70% of the variance in team engagement was dependent on the manager.

This shows it is important to let your employees know they are valued.

As suggested above, you can conduct pulse surveys for employees. Collect customer experience data from them. Take their suggestions and feedback. This way, you can give them a chance to voice their concerns.

You can connect with your employees on a greater level by taking action on their feedback. 

Build remarkable customer experiences with enhanced technology

Digital innovations are on the rise. You need to pace up with them to provide better customer experiences. Businesses use Voice Recognition, Machine learning, and AI to carve breakthrough customer experiences.

Use CRM platforms that offer chatbots for 24/7 support or use NLP or natural language processing. Conversational IVR helps make conversations more personalized and human-like.

NLP can be used in customer service for data analysis on the back end. 

You may have large data volumes due to your customer interactions. This can be due to customer service tickets, phone call inquiries, or other interactions. NLP tools sort and arrange such data effectively. 

Such technologies allow you to get creative with your products. They also make customer interactions easier. You can explore the possibilities with AI and machine learning tools.

Personalization: The Magic Word

You understand the power of the personalization of products and services. Customers today look for personalized interactions. In fact, a 2021 Redpoint Global-Dynata survey showed how personalization impacts CX.

80% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that offer personalized offers and understand customer needs. 

You can make the customer journey smoother by offering Personalization. It helps to strengthen the brand and customer bond. 

You can plan to send out marketing emails to your customers. They can contain product recommendations based on your customer’s purchase history. 

You can personalize customer surveys. You can even offer dynamic content based on user preferences and adapt your website to that.

Implement VoC Programs

VoC or Voice of the Customer is feedback about customers’ experiences with you. It reflects their expectations about your products or services and what they received. 

VoCs help understands customer needs and expectations. This understanding can help greatly in initiating product improvement.

Your VoC program should be in line with the goals of your organization. When implemented correctly, it will help you gain deep insights. 

You can gather valuable customer feedback. It can help make any changes in the product experience you offer. You will get to know how to achieve your business outcomes. 

Creating memorable customer experiences with Consolto 

Customers will take their journey across various touch points in the digital world. 

They can get in touch with your brand across several channels. It can be your website, online marketplaces, or social media. It can also be mobile apps, search engines, or other channels. This can be across any device as well. 

Consolto offers a high-impact, one-on-one video conferencing solution for SMBs and freelancers. It offers the complete services of a VCRM. 

You get a fully-optimized video chat-based Customer Relationship Management platform. It helps you manage your business interactions. You can avail of real-time video communication without any exchange of contact details. 

There is no need for any credentials or downloads. You can use Consolto as a website widget or embed it as a direct link on your Personal Page. It is very easy to install Consolto’s with a single line of code. 

You can simplify the management of your business interactions with its extensive features. Find appointment scheduling, memo creation, and in-app payments and invoicing. Make communication easy with follow-up notifications, messaging, and client analytics.

Wrapping Up

Your customers are your prized possession. The experience you offer them during their customer journey has a powerful impact. It determines how they interact with you. 

If the customer interactions help them get what they want, it is a successful experience. 

The customer efforts and their emotional outcome also matter. It is what makes the customer "upset," "angry," or "delighted."

If you are looking to take your customer experience management up a notch, our team is ready to help. Contact the Consolto team today to schedule a demo.

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