What Does Customer Experience Mean to Today’s Customer? An Updated Guide to Building Better CX in 2024
Prashanth Kancherla
Jul 7, 2023 | 13 mins read
Your customer is facing an issue with their bank account and needs assistance. They call the customer service hotline, and within a few seconds, they’re greeted by a friendly and knowledgeable agent. Thanks to the integrated systems, your staff already has the customer’s account details on hand, so they address the customer by their name.
The agent listens patiently to the customer’s concern and provides clear, step-by-step guidance to resolve the issue efficiently. Before ending the call, the agent double-checks if they have any other queries and offers additional support resources.
The result? Impressed by the seamless, personalized, and consultative approach, the customer decides to partner with your business, confident that you will help provide them with the best customer experience. This seamless, personalized, and hassle-free interaction is a prime example of an exceptional customer experience.
In this article, we discuss more about exceptional customer experience, why it is important, and how you can offer it to your customers. Read along!
In this article, we will explore:
- 1. Why Customer Experience Matters?
- 2. What is Customer Experience?
- 3. Customer Experience Versus Customer Service
- 4. Stages of Customer Experience Lifecycle
- 5. How to Strategize for Customer Experience in 2024?
- 6. How to Improve Agent Experience (AX) to Generate Better CX Results?
- 7. How Ozonetel Can Help Deliver Seamless & Unified CX
- 8. Case Studies
Why Customer Experience Matters?
Customer experience helps you create personalized, seamless, and memorable interactions at every touchpoint, forging emotional connections with customers and inspiring loyalty and advocacy. Why does this matter? As Peter Kriss from Harvard Business Review aptly states, “Customers who have had the best experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had the poorest past experiences.”
Moreover, customer experience directly impacts key metrics such as customer acquisition, retention, and lifetime value. 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a superior experience, and 64% are more likely to recommend a brand if they have a great experience, resulting in increased referral business and higher return on investment.
Imagine a luxury hotel chain that offers a personalized mobile app, allowing guests to customize their stay, from room preferences to activity recommendations based on their interests. Such a tailored experience not only enhances guest satisfaction but also fosters loyalty, encouraging repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth.
Wait, that’s not it! Apart from delighting customers, customer experience is also about mitigating the risks associated with negative experiences. 32% of customers would stop doing business with a brand after one bad experience. Conversely, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for great customer service.
When customers feel like a brand understands and invests in them, they’re more likely to continue engaging, increasing customer lifetime value and driving down marketing costs – vital for a profitable business model. Recognizing this, 25% of organizations are set to integrate their customer experience approach with marketing and sales into a single function by 2023.
This unified strategy can streamline brand interactions and experiences while enabling personalized communication and curated content, meeting the growing consumer demand for tailored and frictionless interactions.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience covers every interaction and touchpoint a customer has with a brand, shaping their overall perception and sentiment. It’s not just about the product or service itself; it’s about the entire journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement.
A good customer experience strategy serves as a comprehensive blueprint that outlines how a company will deliver a valuable, differentiated experience across all touchpoints. It considers competitive insights, consumer research, and internal strategic goals and involves all departments—from marketing and sales to operations and customer support.
But what differentiates a good customer experience from a bad one? A good CX strategy leaves the customer feeling joyful and satisfied, whereas an average CX makes your customer go to a competitor. Examples of positive customer experiences include:
- A well-targeted marketing campaigns
- Easy-to-purchase e-commerce sites
- Simpler purchasing processes
- Self-service customer service alternatives
- Ability to contact corporate representatives at any time, from any location, and on any device.
Customer Experience Versus Customer Service
Customer experience are interactions customers have with your business and the enduring impression you leave throughout the buyer’s journey, from discovery to post-purchase. Customer service, on the other hand, consists of assisting clients in solving difficulties, demonstrating how to utilize products, and answering questions.
Let’s understand this better with a tabular representation:
| Aspect | Customer Experience | Customer Service |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The overall perception and impression a customer has of a brand based on all interactions and touchpoints throughout the customer journey. | The support and assistance provided to customers before, during, and after a purchase. |
| Scope | Encompasses the entire customer journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase advocacy. | Focuses primarily on addressing customer inquiries, issues, and complaints related to a specific product or service. |
| Touchpoints | Multiple touchpoints across various channels, including marketing, sales, product usage, and support. | Primarily focused on direct interactions with customers, such as phone calls, emails, chat, and in-person support. |
| Time Frame | Continuous and ongoing throughout the customer’s lifetime with the brand. | Typically revolves around specific interactions or transactions. |
| Objective | To create a seamless, positive, and memorable experience that fosters customer loyalty and advocacy. | To resolve customer issues, answer queries, and provide assistance to ensure customer satisfaction. |
| Responsibility | Shared across various departments and functions, including marketing, sales, product development, and customer service. | Primarily the responsibility of the customer service department or team. |
| Metrics | Customer satisfaction, loyalty, advocacy, and overall brand perception. | Response times, customer satisfaction scores, and resolution rates for specific interactions. |
| Impact | Shapes the overall brand image and reputation, influencing customer loyalty and long-term business growth. | Directly impacts customer satisfaction and retention for specific products or services. |
That being said, memorable customer experiences and excellent customer service are closely linked—you can’t have one without the other. Customer service has a major impact on how your customers perceive your brand. You may have checked off all of the other boxes on the CX checklist, but if consumers can’t get the help they need when and how they need it, they may leave permanently.
Stages of Customer Experience Lifecycle
Building lasting customer relationships isn’t a one-off interaction. It’s a journey! From initial awareness to post-purchase advocacy, understanding the different stages of the customer experience lifecycle offers a roadmap to creating memorable interactions.
Also, by understanding this framework, you’ll discover how to strategically engage customers throughout their journey, fostering loyalty and advocacy along the way. So, let’s get into it right away!
Awareness
In the awareness stage, potential customers learn about a brand, product, or service for the first time. This initial touchpoint sets the foundation for their perception, making it crucial to create a positive first impression.
For this, companies should implement strategic marketing campaigns across multiple channels, such as social media platforms, search engines, and content marketing, to increase brand visibility. For instance, a new skincare brand could leverage influencer marketing on Instagram to showcase its products and build awareness among its target audience of beauty enthusiasts.
Research
Once aware, customers actively seek out information to evaluate whether a product or service is in alignment with their needs and preferences. This research stage is vital for making informed decisions, so businesses must provide comprehensive and easily accessible details.
An intuitive website with in-depth product specifications, customer reviews, and comparison tools can effectively address concerns. Consider a consumer researching laptops for their upcoming college semester – a user-friendly brand website with detailed tech specs, performance benchmarks, and student discounts could sway their decision.
Purchase
The purchase stage is where the customer completes the transaction and acquires the product or service. A seamless and positive experience here significantly impacts satisfaction and repeat business likelihood. Companies should streamline checkout processes, offer diverse payment methods, and ensure clear communication about shipping timelines.
Also, readily available customer support can address last-minute queries. For example, an e-commerce retailer with a hassle-free return policy, multiple payment gateways, and responsive customer service could provide a superior purchase experience.
Post-Purchase Engagement
Interactions after a purchase, known as the post-purchase stage, are crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction and building long-term relationships. Businesses should follow up, provide support resources, and offer continued engagement opportunities like newsletters or user communities.
For example, an appliance manufacturer could offer comprehensive setup guides, maintenance tips, and an online community for customers to share their experiences, fostering positive post-purchase engagement.
Retention
The goal after a purchase is to keep customers coming back. This means providing ongoing support, quickly solving any problems they have, and offering extra value through loyalty programs or special deals. By making customers feel valued and cared for, businesses can build lasting relationships and encourage repeat business.
Advocacy
The ultimate goal is the advocacy stage, where satisfied customers become brand ambassadors and actively refer the products or services to others. Customer advocacy is a powerful marketing tool, as word-of-mouth recommendations from trusted sources significantly influence purchasing decisions.
Therefore, companies should encourage reviews, incentivize referrals, and create opportunities for customers to share positive experiences on social media. Additionally, showing customer appreciation can further enhance loyalty and advocacy. A popular subscription service could offer rewards or discounts for referrals, making it easy for satisfied customers to advocate for the brand.
How to Strategize for Customer Experience in 2024?
By now, we are sure that you understand the importance of implementing a robust customer experience strategy in your organization. But with dynamic customer needs and availability of innovative technologies, you need to keep evolving your CX strategy, too! To help you out, here are 5 proven strategies that will help you deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Focus on the Customer
You must have heard the saying – happy employees lead to happy customers. When every function and employee is aligned toward delivering great experiences, that’s when the magic happens. It starts at the top, with leadership embodying a customer-first mindset that permeates through the entire organization. Encourage proactiveness, empower employees to go the extra mile, and make customer focus a core value that drives every decision and action.
Implement Omnichannel Strategies
Customers today expect seamless experiences across multiple touchpoints – be it your website, mobile app, social media, or brick-and-mortar stores. Take inspiration from brands like Disney that have nailed the omnichannel experience. From the moment a customer is exposed to their branding to the actual visit to their parks, every interaction reinforces the Disney magic. Map out your customer journey, ensure consistent messaging across channels, and leverage technologies like chatbots and virtual assistants to provide a unified experience.
Leverage Customer Data
You’ve got a goldmine of insights sitting right there, just waiting to be tapped into. So, implement robust data collection and analysis processes while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations, of course. Use advanced analytics tools to uncover patterns and preferences, then use these insights to inform your CX strategies, product development, and marketing efforts. Start small by implementing changes like optimizing your website’s call-to-action placement or enabling social login for your mobile app. Track the impact of these changes and iterate accordingly.
Track CX Metrics
Customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores, churn rates – these are all critical indicators of how well you’re performing. But don’t make the mistake of overwhelming your customers with lengthy surveys. Keep it crisp, incentivize participation, and let them know you’ve heard them by closing the feedback loop. After all, what’s the point of gathering feedback if you’re not going to act on it?
Use Predictive Strategies
Leverage predictive data and analytics to anticipate customer needs before they become issues. Reach out with personalized offers or targeted support to prevent churn. In fact, go the extra mile and take preemptive measures to prevent an issue from even arising. Not only will this delight your customers, but it’ll also drive business growth by retaining existing customers and identifying new opportunities.
How to Improve Agent Experience (AX) to Generate Better CX Results?
You’ve invested heavily in optimizing your customer experience strategy, but there’s one key factor that can make or break it all – your agents. Imagine this: a customer reaches out with a complex query, but your agent struggles to provide a satisfactory answer, leaving the customer frustrated and undermining their confidence in your brand.
According to reports, more than one-third of respondents indicated the most frustrating aspect of support is the agent’s inability to answer questions. So, how do you tackle this problem? Improving agent experience not only helps them communicate better with clients but also streamlines the process. A few ways to do this are:
Agent Assist
Agent assist tools powered by advanced technologies are designed to provide real-time guidance and support to agents during customer interactions. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), these tools can suggest relevant responses, surface key information from knowledge bases, and even automate repetitive tasks.
The benefits of agent assist tools include improved response accuracy, consistency, and efficiency, leading to higher customer satisfaction and shorter resolution times. You can adopt agent assist by integrating AI-powered virtual assistants or chatbots into their contact center software, ensuring seamless access for agents during live conversations.
Real-time Monitoring
Real-time monitoring involves supervisors or quality assurance teams actively observing and analyzing agent-customer interactions as they happen. This strategy allows for immediate intervention, coaching, or assistance when agents face challenging situations or knowledge gaps.
You can implement real-time monitoring by leveraging call recording and screen-sharing technologies, coupled with quality contact management tools that enable supervisors to listen in, provide feedback, and even join conversations when necessary.
Gamification
Gamification involves incorporating game-like elements, such as points, badges, leaderboards, and rewards, into the agent experience. This strategy taps into the natural human desire for achievement, competition, and recognition, making training and performance tracking more engaging and motivating.
How can you adopt this? By integrating gamification platforms or modules into their learning management systems, performance dashboards, and contact center software.
Access to Advanced Tools
Providing agents with advanced tools and technologies can significantly enhance their productivity, efficiency, and ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Moreover, it results in faster resolution times, personalized service, and optimized operational efficiency.
This may include integrating contact center software with customer relationship management (CRM) systems providing unified customer data and interaction histories. Additionally, tools like intelligent routing, automated quality management, and workforce optimization can streamline workflows and improve resource allocation.
Customized Training
Customized training programs are tailored to address the specific needs, knowledge gaps, and skill levels of individual agents or agent groups. This personalized strategy ensures that training is relevant, effective, and focused on areas that require improvement.
Companies can adopt customized training by conducting regular assessments, leveraging learning management systems, and offering a combination of instructor-led sessions, e-learning modules, and on-the-job coaching.
Performance Recognition
Performance recognition programs acknowledge and reward agents who consistently deliver outstanding customer experiences and meet or exceed performance targets. This strategy not only boosts morale and job satisfaction but also reinforces the desired behaviors and practices that contribute to superior customer service.
To adopt this, you can start by implementing reward and incentive programs, organizing recognition events, and fostering a culture of appreciation for agent achievements.
How Ozonetel Can Help Deliver Seamless & Unified CX
Ozonetel’s CX Platform is designed to help businesses achieve this by combining the capabilities of a contact center, communication APIs, customer engagement, and workforce management into a comprehensive solution. The AI-powered system has handled over 2 billion conversations on its platform, allowing 3,000+ enterprises to streamline, manage, and analyze interactions along their customer communication and engagement journey.
Key features of Ozonetel’s CX Platform that can help deliver a seamless and unified customer experience include:
- Customer Journey Mapping: Ozonetel’s AI-enabled, no-code Customer Journey builder allows businesses to design and prioritize customer journeys based on their specific needs. By leveraging drag-and-drop functionality, AI, and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, businesses can create omnichannel journeys that seamlessly integrate voice and digital channels.
- Analytics & Insights: Ozonetel provides businesses with valuable insights into the voice of the customer, customer complaints, and potential business losses. By analyzing data at a granular level or as a whole, businesses can create a knowledge base and contextualized data to drive informed decision-making. These insights help businesses identify areas for improvement, resolve operational issues, and reduce customer churn, resulting in enhanced customer experiences and higher productivity.
- No-code Chatbots: Ozonetel’s no-code chatbot builder provides a comprehensive platform for businesses to seamlessly create and deploy interactive, intelligent chatbots. By utilizing a range of functionalities and nodes within the designer, businesses can enhance customer engagement, automate tasks, and deliver timely assistance, ultimately driving business growth in the digital age.
- AI and NLP: Ozonetel’s conversational intelligence capabilities, including real-time automatic speech recognition (ASR), sentiment analysis, keyword tracking, and automated call quality audits, enable businesses to gain deeper insights into customer interactions. These insights can be used to improve agent training, leading to better customer experiences.
- Omnichannel Engagement : Ozonetel’s platform allows businesses to manage omnichannel communications (voice, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and various digital channels) from a single screen. This unified approach ensures that customers can seamlessly engage with businesses across multiple touchpoints, providing a consistent and cohesive experience.
Case Studies
We have talked a lot in theory about how CX impacts businesses and drives customer loyalty. But are you wondering if it really holds any value in the real world? If yes, then really, as in this section, you’ll see how businesses across various industries implemented CX initiatives and the tangible benefits they achieved.
AirBnB
Airbnb provides a personalized experience by recognizing two distinct customer types: hosts looking to rent out their places and guests seeking accommodation. Their homepage allows seamless navigation for both audiences, offering relevant options tailored to their needs.
Moreover, consistent branding and design across their mobile app and web browser make this marriage between user experience and customer experience even more seamless. By understanding that their customers do not exist within a binary, AirBnB has created a simple search experience for multiple important use cases on the same platform.
Adidas
Adidas has been fine-tuning its digital customer experience by committing itself to better customer experiences. As they recognized customers were shopping online more, Adidas poured resources into a simple and tailored-to-fit customer experience. They personalized messaging and content based on data insights and user engagement.
The company also started listening to client input, which led them to a desire for more sustainable products. Adidas responded by making shoes from ocean trash and selling over 1 million pairs in a single year. Adidas has shifted its growth trajectory by investing in customer experience, establishing itself as a sustainability and customer-centric leader.
Tesla
Tesla revolutionized the car-buying experience with their direct-to-consumer sales model. Customers can customize, arrange financing, and schedule delivery online, eliminating hassles like negotiating with salespeople. This streamlined, customer-centric approach results in a simple, stress-free experience.
Also, Tesla can repair cars remotely, delivering fast, effortless service. Their satisfied customers enjoy a great driving experience and unique industry perks, thanks to Tesla’s focus on customer experience.
Netflix
Netflix’s personalized content recommendations are driven by AI algorithms that identify each user’s preferences. When browsing, users see customized categories like ‘Continue Watching’ and ‘Because You Watched XYZ,’ offering content based on their viewing history. Cutting-edge machine learning determines interests and even displays percentage matches.
This dedication to personalization keeps customers happy, loyal, and binge-watching. By allowing customers to choose their journey, Netflix builds better relationships through tailored experiences.
Deltin
Deltin Royale, Asia’s largest offshore casino, leveraged digital and GenAI solutions to develop a hyper-personalized video featuring brand ambassador Tamannaah Bhatia, extending exclusive invites for the ‘Deltin Star Weekend’ event.
This approach successfully reactivated 16% of their dormant customers and achieved a 5X improvement in open rates (video views). Due to wider reach and hyper-personalized engagement, they secured 100% bookings and a 3X increase in revenue. By utilizing innovative technologies, Deltin Royale created a remarkable customer experience that drove impressive results.
BigBasket
BigBasket serves approximately 15 million orders per month, highlighting its success in the e-grocery space. With a presence in 400 cities and ₹13,000 crore revenue, it maintains an industry-leading 85% customer retention rate. BigBasket leverages advanced technology to ensure crucial information is readily available online or in-app and empowers customers to connect with agents quickly.
Technologies like route optimization, intelligent planning, and advanced analytics provide agents with tools for efficient, reliable service. By deploying chatbots, improving product information, and streamlining interactions, BigBasket enhances user experience while decreasing the need for customer service interventions.
Conclusion
To truly thrive in customer experience, businesses must embrace a comprehensive shift that includes all aspects of their operations. This process starts with reengineering the customer experience, optimizing touchpoints, and using data-driven insights to anticipate and solve consumer demands. It also includes leveraging upcoming technologies such as AI and hyper-personalization to provide individualized experiences that are intuitive and enjoyable.
To seamlessly adapt to this shift, you can start by investing in software such as Ozontel’s CX Hub. It is a comprehensive, AI-powered platform that revolutionizes customer experience management. But what truly sets Ozonetel apart is its rapid deployment, with cloud contact centers operational within 24 hours, and its unmatched personalized onboarding, training, and 24/7 live support. Start your 21-day free trial now!
