Customer Experience (CX) is a broader concept, compared to Customer Service. CX applies across marketing, sales, support, and also operations and is the overall perception of your customers based on the touchpoints throughout their journey. It includes each and every interaction customers have with your brand.
Every single interaction your brand has with a customer will either enhance CX or detract from it. All these touchpoints will leave the customer with an emotional feeling about your brand - either positive or negative. This may not even be a direct touchpoint, an advertisement about your company, for example, can also affect how your brand is perceived and this too can affect CX.
How are customer expectations changing?
Customer expectations in today's modern world have never been
higher. As a result an increasing amount of companies are developing a
dedicated CX strategy to ensure they stay ahead of the curve.
For many businesses, the perfect storm is being created - a
combination of increasing expectations combined with a decline in brand
loyalty, means that failure to provide a great CX could result in an
existential threat for your business if repeated over and over.
It
is widely recognised now that customer experience has overtaken price
and product as the key brand differentiator. Research by Brandwatch in
2020 report for example that within the personal electronics industry
that almost half of all respondents would expect a reply to their query
within just 3 hours.
Brandwatch surveyed 9,000 people across 9 countries to better
understand expectations across certain industries. Their findings
strongly indicates that a range of different industries tells a similar
story. For example:
- 18-34-year-olds are less likely to go into a physical store when something goes wrong than those aged 35+
- Women are more likely to contact brands via email when something goes wrong than men
- Those that said their first port of call was on social media (publicly or privately) when something went wrong were most likely to expect an answer within minutes
- Regardless of the way the consumer would ideally like to get in touch with a company when things go wrong, most said they wanted a response within 24 hours
There is an increasing need for speed in today's, often frenetic, world, so how can you, as a business, respond?
Thankfully there are some easy wins that will bring your CX up to speed for 2020 and beyond, many of which can be implemented with the help of an outsourcing partner, such as Lemon:
24/7 Support - Be there for your customers when they
need you. This is a simple fix that will plug a big hole in your
current CX strategy. Be available 24/7.
Respond Rapidly - Snooze, you lose - lose customer satisfaction, lose their loyalty and their business. Other more agile competitors will happily snap them up. Have the right resource available to respond to your customers quickly.
Omni-channel Communication - If customers prefer reaching out to you on Social Media and you're not there, or you are there but not responding instantly, that's a negative CX. Ensure you're utilising social media, email, web-chat, SMS as well as phone. Ignore one of these channels and you're potentially alienating your brand from a sizeable market share.
Speak to the Solutions Team at Lemon to see how we can help you to improve your CX and develop fanatical brand loyalty.
Author: Peter Rabbage
