Customer experience is the type of environment a company creates to focus interaction and engagement with customers regarding a service or product. It also involves the way that customers perceive a service or product. It is not just the physical experience, but the emotional experience which brings about desired results. Company leaders must foster customer loyalty by identifying the needs of their customers and fulfilling those needs through the right channels to deliver the right products and services.
Customer journey mapping provides important touchstones in the process of customer experience. It identifies processes that are too channel-centric, or need to be retooled to meet new technologies. The goal is channel integration to ensure that the customer is helped in the way they want to be helped. The challenge is differentiating your organization from others by creating a way for customers to self-select how they want to interact with your company.
The challenge many CX executives face arises when there are too many channels linked together, the technological interface of the company is not displayed for the customer to receive the product or service in the way they need it, and the lack of monetary value placed on the experience.
Funding and quantitative education are most prominent among these challenges. The depth of the topic makes it difficult to engage productively. Executives tend to be internally focused, which can sometimes hinder transformational change. Many customers give CX lip service, wanting to create exceptional customer experiences, but not yet willing to invest in the effort.
The customer experience process is increasingly becoming driven by data. Analytics, digitization, scalability, AI, and social listening are emphasized, but the customer must be in the driver’s seat in order for it to be effective. Customer experience based on data with a measurable focus on retention and loyalty play an important role in the overall development of the brand.
CX is an emerging field, and company leaders are looking to continuously improve the customer experience to allow customers to manage their affairs from wherever they are, regardless of the time difference, device, or channel. The goal is to understand who your customers are, create an emotional connection with them, capture their feedback in real time, and measure the ROI.
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