%20(1).jpg?width=300&name=wp9131686%20(1)%20(1).jpg)
Customer experience
Everything about the customer experience area of an organization.
Introducción
Within a company, different functional areas coexist that allow its proper functioning: management, finance, administration, production/operations, quality, marketing, human resources, project management, processes, logistics, among others. To achieve organizational goals, it is crucial that all of them are aligned with your business purpose and strategy.
Next, we will delve into the Customer Experience area: what it is, what its main functions are, its biggest challenges, etc.
What will you find on this page?
What is the customer experience area?
In the current business scenario, it is essential that most companies seek and know how to differentiate themselves from competitors, to ensure and guarantee their future. One of the strategic priorities to achieve these goals would be to generate lasting relationships with their customers, that is, loyalty.
As a consequence of this trend of customer loyalty, in recent years new roles and functions have emerged within the business environment, which were configuring a specific area called "Customer Experience" (or customer experience, in Spanish).
The Customer Experience is dedicated to establishing a good relationship between the consumer and the brand, trying to provide high levels of satisfaction to customers, so that they become loyal consumers and defenders of the brand. It’s really about putting the customer at the center of a business strategy, listening to it and jointly creating a memorable experience, so that they buy from us, choose us again, want to continue with us and recommend us.
Sometimes, situations arise where the products or services offered are perceived as a simple commodity, basic and undifferentiated. This is where the development of a Customer Experience department constitutes a strategic proposal. Sometimes, the strategy will be to discover which are all the points of contact with the customer to manage and optimize them. At other times, you will see the sale as a customer support and manage it from that point of view. The basic thing is not to deviate from the objective: to differentiate oneself from the competition.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Related concepts
Throughout all this time we have collected a number of concepts associated with the customer experience area that will be of great help when understanding it in its entirety.
Types of Customer Experience
Depending on whether it is to empower a company, offering its products and services through a physical store or through digital platforms, we will see that some differential specificities arise:
Retail - Retail and direct to the public
We refer to the process of sale that occurs in physical stores, where you are in direct contact and face to face with the public. There the sales experience will take into account variables of three types: environmental, social and design.
In the group of environmental variables, non-visible elements such as temperature, lighting, music or smell inside the store are included. As for the second variable, it is important to bear in mind that space can lend itself to social exchange. To promote this facet link, diminishes the mercantilist perception, thus humanizing the stores. The last factor, from visible elements, can be separated to functional aspects such as wide corridors, and to aesthetic ones, which will depend exclusively on the target audience.
We can also add to the shopping experience, two moments that usually remain in the memory of the consumer: the pre and post visit. That memory can have a positive or negative impact on the decision on where to buy on future occasions
Retail
We refer to the process of sale that occurs in physical stores, where you are in direct contact and face to face with the public. There the sales experience will take into account variables of three types: environmental, social and design.
In the group of environmental variables, non-visible elements such as temperature, lighting, music or smell inside the store are included. As for the second variable, it is important to bear in mind that space can lend itself to social exchange. To promote this facet link, diminishes the mercantilist perception, thus humanizing the stores. The last factor, from visible elements, can be separated to functional aspects such as wide corridors, and to aesthetic ones, which will depend exclusively on the target audience.
We can also add to the shopping experience, two moments that usually remain in the memory of the consumer: the pre and post visit. That memory may have a positive or negative impact on the decision on where to shop on future occasions.
online purchase
Currently, in most cases, the customer’s first contact with the brand occurs in online environments, regardless of whether the purchase is effected by e-commerce or in-store. It is therefore very important how this first interaction takes place, to which we must pay increasing attention.
There are a number of critical points that we must take into account regarding the relationship and creation of customer experiences (current and potential) in the online environment. They are:
Search: everything related to SEO positioning in internet search engines.
Branding: uniform exposure of the brand to have some notoriety.
Usability: Ease of access to brand content and products. Simplicity regarding the design and technologies used to develop virtual platforms.
Segmentation: how and where we should launch networks to capture the attention of a certain target of customers, showing content fully adapted and created according to the interests of consumers.
Multichannel interaction: the challenge that the relationship be transparent, uniform and absolutely satisfactory, before a customer who has many ways of communication and interaction with the company, should be addressed by studying each particular pathway and the appropriate feedback in each case.
Conversion: obtaining customer information that allows us to perform future marketing actions with it.
Feedback: the importance of return and valuation, arising based on the opinions and ratings of customers who settle on online sites.
Tools for the collection of data
A series of tools have been developed around the Customer Experience to understand the customer experience, innovate and design memorable moments. Some of the most widespread tools are:
Customer Journey Map
The customer journey map is a methodology that allows to track the different points of contact with the brand in question, thus tracing the movements of our consumer on a journey through the different channels available (online, television, newspapers and magazines, etc. Knowing the different routes they take and the points of contact, will allow us to propose a strategy to reach them
Service Blueprint
The Service Blueprint (cyanotype or service plane) is the detailed plan of the experience in a specific customer journey, alluding to the metaphor of the blue plane of base for the construction of buildings. It helps to deepen the analysis of points of contact, mapping the elements that affect the purchasing process both in the visible and invisible layer, about processes, policies, systems, people, and behind-the-scenes activities that the customer does not see.
Management indicators for the Customer Experience
One of the main challenges for Customer Experience management is to measure the experience and focus on improving it, as an essential step to increase brand loyalty and retention.
Measuring the relationship that customers have with the company is essential to improve the exchange. Establishing a way to measure this relationship will help us to be able to act and make decisions about it. Below we will develop the main metrics to manage the Customer Experience:
Net Promoter Score o Net Promoter System (NPS)
NPS is undoubtedly the most popular and used indicator when measuring and managing the Customer Experience in organizations. In 2006, Frederick Reichheld established in his book "The Ultimate Question" (the decisive question), a key question that determines a customer’s loyalty to a brand: "Based on your experience, would you recommend this brand (product or service) to a friend or family member?"
This question denotes a greater degree of emotional attachment, by the personal involvement that puts into play who makes a recommendation, responding through a scale of 0 to 10. The responses are grouped as follows:
- 10 and 9.- Promoters. Customers with this score will be considered as "promoters" since they have the degree of linkage and loyalty with the company that leads them to be a brand broadcaster. The challenge will be to maintain them.
- 8 and 7.- Neutral. This grade considers customers as "neutral", meaning that their behavior does not imply a link with the company to be taken into account. The challenge will be to abandon neutrality and become promoters.
- 6 to 0.- Detractors. In this range, customers will be considered as of a behavior that decreases loyalty and engagement with the organization over time. The challenge will be to find the flaws that led us not to be recommended and to reverse them, in addition to getting us chosen again to pass on the previous bad experience.
The NPS is then calculated as the difference between the percentage of Promoters and Detractors. As a result you get a value that goes in scale of -100, if all customers were detractors, to 100, if all customers were promoters.
Being so simply posed, this metric has become one of the most chosen in the field of Customer Experience, and quickly adopted by organizations, whether small SMEs or large corporations.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
The Customer Effort Score, or CES, is a metric that emerged in 2010 and proposes a new measurement system. It is based on the idea that companies should not focus on surprising the customer, but on reducing the effort it takes them to meet their needs. This led to the Customer Effort (Customer Effort) index, which was based on answering the question "how easy has it been to get what you needed from this company?". It is believed that the less effort, the more satisfaction will produce the consumer and therefore loyalty to the company/ brand, will grow.
This model can be applied in any process involving customer interaction with the brand, and helps businesses identify problems. For example, we may encounter a problem with an online form (such as the one with personal data to make a purchase) that leads some customers to give up. It will then identify any confusion or doubts and simplify the form or provide clearer instructions.
Benchmarks of costumer experience
It is necessary to obtain comparative information on the effectiveness of the customer experience area based on rankings and comparative studies that evaluate all companies under the same criteria.
In some 10 countries in America and Spain, a study measuring the Customer Experience of at least 200 companies is carried out, with the idea of providing comparative elements to know the best practices at international level. They provide an indicator, which is the BCX or Best Customer Experience.
The BCX consists of 3 dimensions, based on the three areas through which companies can generate an emotional bond with their customers:
- Experience with the product. To what extent the products or services of the company generate value to the customer experience by meeting their real needs.
- Experience with interactions. Whether interactions with the company are easy and enjoyable.
- Experience with the brand. If there is a feeling of emotional connection with the brand.
Evolution of the customer experience area.
The challenge of the customer experience, as we know it today, had its beginnings decades ago: its first steps aspired to make the brand and its value survive thanks to the concrete experience of each person. In 1972, Al Ries and Jack Trout began coining the term "positioning" to name a process that consists of three steps: analyze the entire offer of a product or service, determine what the consumer values, and taking into account the latter, differ from the competition.
Another pioneering moment occurred in the mid-1980s, when American companies adopted the TQM (Total Quality Management) system, in addition to other customer-centric initiatives. The concept of customer satisfaction began to circulate and many market research agencies began to study it.
Already in the mid-1990s, market research firms began to be interested in quality management and the consequent need to know customer satisfaction. Around that time, Bradley Gale published "Managing Customer Value", a book that spread the idea that ensuring customer satisfaction is not enough, but that the way to demonstrate value should be improved. The concept of "customer value", customer value, indicates other aspects of the experience that drove the value perceived by the customer before, during and after the purchase. It went beyond quality management and took into account price, communication, among others.
It was probably in 2011 that Customer Experience Management (CXM) was established as a discipline when the Association of Customer Experience Professionals was founded. The CXPA was established as a forum of experts from different disciplines, which has reinforced its legitimacy.
In the last 20 years the relationship of brands with their consumer audience has taken a radical turn. The directionality of the actions went from the brand to the customer through a bombardment of commercials on TV, mails, calls, flyers, among others. The purpose set by the brands was to be seen as they planned. But, currently the vector is reversed and it is consumers who socially build the perception of brands. This through their experiences with the brand, told in person on social networks and other channels (forums, opinion sites, etc.). That is why the key is to know the interests that consumers have, and based on it, provide emblematic experiences. For the management of valuable information, different software has been created that help to process the opinions that need to be taken into account for strategic decision making.
Today, a large number of companies operate in mature, hypercompetitive markets, in which the products and services offered are almost identical (at least externally), the main difference being prices, and that is where competition lies. Customers are now more and better informed about what they consume, demanding and looking for personalized products. The paradigm fit is in front of us: the customer no longer seeks only to cover their basic needs, but to make more sophisticated their purchasing and consumption processes, taking it to a higher level: the emotions and experiences that that product will make you live.
The why of process management
As we’ve developed so far, a better experience will make people prefer us more than any other company, who are willing to pay a higher price and even who do not care to travel more distance just to get our product or service having other alternatives closer. The recommendation of a consumer multiplies the customers of a company and, therefore, its profitability.
The primary objective is to understand what opportunities exist to improve the process, taking into account the use of the above methodologies. From the integration of databases (thanks to CRM platforms that contain all the information of our customers), to the training of our customer support staff to be able to relate to them by the latest communication channels. From this objective we must strive because the customer experience is always the same, where we know who each customer is regardless if you call us, write us or visit us, and only then will achieve higher rates of loyalty.
Information is knowledge, and knowing who each customer is and what they intend to receive from us is information that we must obtain and use with responsibility and desire to improve, for our economic good and to achieve higher rates of customer satisfaction.
The strategy of putting customers at the center and stop thinking only about the goods or services that are produced, requires a great effort: create conditions for them to choose and prefer us. For this to happen you need to have a well-defined area within the company: a space, a team, objectives, and others. In the long or medium term this will help us to give that differential value that is sought.
Customer experience is not an expense, customer experience reinforces your brand.
The customer experience area in organizations
What are the functions of the Customer Experience?
- Recognize what are all moments of customer interaction with the company.
- Understand what the customer expects in each of the interactions, what they expect in each moment.
- Know what moments or attributes you value most. Detect emotional factors of customer needs.
- Thoroughly investigate how the client perceives that we are performing at all times.
- Know what the customer expects to receive and design a value proposal according to it. Build improvements in productivity and customer experience.
-
To achieve those goals on the outside, we need to get something on the inside first: that the people in our company can work together to improve the customer experience. This also requires the motivation of a leader to take it forward.
How is the Customer Experience area formed?
The size of the organization will determine what and how many will make up the Customer Experience team, depending on the goods the company offers, as it could focus on the digital experience, the person-to-person experience or a combination. In the usual practice, it is not an area that works on its own, but constantly interacts with other collaborators and departments, working together and well communicated, make the improvement of the customer experience a reality. As in all distributions, the role of a leader who can guide the strategy and delegate implementation is essential to guarantee the objectives of the area.
The following positions are proposed as suggestions, defined by roles or responsibilities of area members, although not all companies may have to perform the same tasks.
- CX coordinator (head of area).
- "Voice of Customer Program Manager", is the one who relieves and/or analyzes data from surveys and mappings.
- Customer Experience internal communications operator.
- Digital strategy analyst (people who focus on the digital experience and know how to manage it on all channels).
- UX designers
Main problems of the area
- Settling too much in the general direction
Within the different projects of Costumer Experience there are a number of mistakes that are repeated. One of them is to leave the control of strategic design in the hands of the top managers (such as the CEO) instead of a specialized team. The strategic direction that CX activities can take results in managers wanting to interfere with priorities that are not the ones raised. It is necessary that professionals in the area have the necessary strength to not give in, to mark the course and sustain it based on a plan, data and projections.
- Perceive or treat the area as a "Customer Service" department
Customer Experience is not about leaving the customer happy, but about understanding what keeps them happy and what are the ways to choose us again and again. The customer experience involves customer service, but also all the journey that this makes with the company. We must work at all levels: people, processes, policies, procedures, technology, among other aspects, so that a company goes from having a product-centered approach, where the performance of its areas is usually measured individually, to become one with a customer-centric culture, where everyone is clear about the impact of their role on the consumer experience.
- The cultural component underlying every company
The great obstacle that often goes unnoticed, is usually the cultural factor of the organization, being the variable that will have the most impact on the success or failure of actions deployed from the Customer Experience area. The underlying values, the prejudices, how the client and the organization is conceived, the priorities that are historically handled in the company, have an impact on the management of the business.
The transformations that the Customer Experience requires, involve in part that the employees of the company synchronize their mindset and their behaviors with the objectives that pursue the strategies of the area. Employee engagement is essential. Many studies concluded that if workers are engaged, this has a positive impact on the quality of a CX.
Current challenges
- Focus on staff selection and development
It is impossible to want happy customers having employees who do not feel happy or at ease in the company they work for. If they feel inadequate or uncomfortable in the work environment, with whom will they show that frustration? This challenge is promoted from the incorporation of the member of the organization, taking into account its soft skills, to constant in-company training. Getting employees to feel every interaction with the customer as key, having decision-making capacity to help create better experiences and recognizing when they manage to do so, will benefit the Customer Experience strategy. Employees will be sought to be "internal customers", the first of the company, who should recommend from the full conviction, to choose it. If they do not feel proud and happy to belong to the company, if they do not feel confident to recommend the product or service that it offers, the company has a serious problem to remedy. In simple words, the employee must be involved in the brand.
- Switch from typical Customer Service to Customer Experience
A CX strategy must be proactive and planned, not reactive. There are many organizations that focused only on the after-sales follow-up process and their first steps were successful, but as the market, competition and customers evolved, it was no longer enough just to do so, but the need to anticipate the customer-trade interaction process in a programmed/designed and professional manner is imperative.
Delve deeper into the relationship between customer experience and business
What do we do at Drew?
We believe that clear processes, supported by the right technology, create an environment where people work happier, and thus make your company more productive.Conclusion
Being the main objective of commercial organizations to earn money, the customer experience is a strategy that should aim to maximize the benefit of the relationship for the customer and therefore for the company. Therefore, it is of the highest priority to have a specialized and professional area that implements the relevant tools for the study, research and measurement of the impact that the brand generates in its target audience. Constantly revisiting and redesigning the forms of interaction with the client taking into account their specific needs, is a complex task that must be ready to assume if you want to rise to the occasion, within a highly competitive and changing market.