Creating an Effective Customer Experience Strategy

Creating an Effective Customer Experience Strategy: I recently acted as a judge for the Gulf Customer Experience Awards 2019. It was a great experience and inspiring to see so many different types and sizes of businesses taking customer experience to a whole new level. So, what is the customer experience and why is it so important?

A customer’s entire interaction with a business, from the initial contact stage right through to the end of the sales/support process and how they reflect on the product or service they received, constitutes what we describe as the customer experience. It is not simply customer service, though customer service is a part of it. A customer’s experience is the entire journey of the business relationship from their viewpoint, and it’s crucial to create an amazing one if we want customers to become loyal to us. The best way to begin is by creating an effective customer experience strategy. Here are a few tips to consider.

Have a clear customer experience vision

Your entire organization must first understand your vision of the type of customer experience you can offer. This is best achieved by having clear and powerful guiding principles that define your vision at every stage of the business process. When these are embedded in your organization’s culture as well as training and development, they will drive employee behavior.

Get to know your customers on an emotional level

To provide a great customer experience as well as a unique service, you must know the needs of your customers better than anyone else. Listen to them and empathize with their concerns and pain points: if you cannot imagine the challenges they face, how can you mitigate them? You must make it personal. Not only will this vastly improve the quality of the solutions or products you offer, but it will also build an emotional connection with customers, and a true partnership can be born.

Gather and analyze feedback

So, now you have a great connection with your customers accompanied by a clear vision for how you want their experience to be, it’s time to find out their thoughts. Find out how they feel about how they’re being treated, and what could be done better… Ask them in person, through surveys, over email or through frequent calls. Analyze their responses for all you need to know.

Listening to the details of different methods to enhance customer experience, such as at the Gulf Customer Experience Awards, is a fantastic way to gain insight and inspiration from other businesses and industries and benchmark your organization’s efforts against others.