How can you design a CX experience that delights your customers?

Designing a stellar customer experience starts from mapping the customer journey and delineating all possible scenarios where the journey would break. Once the scenarios are mapped out, companies can decide on optimal and sub-optimal levels and prioritize reduction in pain points as per business focus and needs. Customer experience improvement is a continuous iterative process and a CX based environment needs to be in the DNA of any organization.

What is a meaningful customer experience for one person may be the baseline expectation for another. Understanding what matters to your customers and how they want and expect to be treated is crucial to optimizing the process for them. With these insights, go through the customer journey and look for friction and pain points. What feels difficult or unnecessary? What would be frustrating to you if you were in their position? As you go through the journey, look at the care provided. Do more mature and tentured customers get treated the same as brand new ones?

Don't assume "delight" is the correct emotion to trigger. I want a luxury hotel to delight me, but don't expect it from my dentist. Measure customer emotions and identify which emotions correlate with disproportionately profitable customer behavior.

It's so important to know and understand your customers. It's critical to do this work if you want to design an experience that delights customers. While it's important to understand who they are, what they need and want, and how they behave, it's equally important to understand what problems they are trying to solve or jobs they are trying to do. Knowing this ensures that you build products for customers (not find customers for your products). That's the foundation for delighting them. Everything else you do on top of that needs to be executed well - but also against the knowledge of what problems they are trying to solve. Why do they need your brand, your products? If you can't help them, they don't need you.

Also equally important to understand that the customers’ expectations change with experience. This can be used to brick wall your customers if proactively you are able to continuously raise the bar internally. Competition will then have to play the catch up story.

One of the biggest challenges in CX is to multiply strategies across all levels of the organization. We've been successful in being close to administrative and frontline teams, and personalizing communication to large teams, engaging more and improving results.

In the dynamic world of customer experience, a well-crafted vision isn't just a statement—it's the North Star that guides every decision and action in your organization. This vision should be steadfast, providing a consistent framework for your evolving strategy. With agility at its core, your strategy is fueled by ongoing customer insights, adapting to real-time needs. Together, vision and strategy form a dynamic duo: one offering constant direction, the other providing tactical adaptability. By integrating customer feedback, your approach becomes a living commitment, elevating the customer experience from transactional to transformational.

I believe that the strategic vision of a company needs to be aligned with the pains of my customers, the desire of my customer’s customer and the evolution that both are going through, especially in technology and generational behavior. My strategy at the same time that it needs to be centered and with my client in the center, I need to think two steps ahead of what he may not be able to see. What makes me become more competitive as a company and the whole ecosystem makes my business grow, thrive together.

Your CX vision must align with your customer's job that need to get done so they can achieve their future state. If you don't do this, you're not going to achieve market fit nor compelling experience.

How powerful is a CX vision and strategy? A 'feel good' tied in with goals and performance metrics tied to a business strategy that is clear, purposeful and adaptable, gives direction to deliver continuous positive customer outcomes. Listen to your customers and keep listening and adapting to keep you in alignment and keep partnerships flourishing well into the future.

You should aim to meet your customers' expectations. Aiming to exceed them sets you up for failure, most times. Most brands can barely meet expectations, much less exceed them. Do the work. Understand customer expectations. And design an experience that meets those expectations. Customers will be delighted if you can meet their expectations! Sure, it's great to go the extra mile, and it's OK to do that. But that's not in the cards for most brands today.

In the customer experience landscape, agility is paramount. While foundational agreements offer stability, the key to delivering value and quality is nimble responsiveness to evolving customer expectations, influenced by technology and culture. Organizations must transition from merely reactive to proactive, predictive, and adaptively engaging customers. This strategic agility—enabled by data analytics, customer feedback, and both qualitative and quantitative insights—elevates the customer experience. Not only are expectations met, but the customer relationship transforms from being transactional to genuinely relational.

In sports and entertainment, crafting an exceptional CX hinges on delivering unparalleled value and quality. Beyond merely meeting expectations, our approach revolves around understanding our customers intimately. We proactively inquire about their attendance plans, going the extra mile to ask who they bring to the event/game. This attention to detail enables us to orchestrate personalized surprises, such as matching t-shirts for the customer and prospect or a signed autographed ball for the prospect's son. By anticipating our customer's needs and preferences, we transcend conventional service, leaving an indelible mark that resonates with joy and exceeds their expectations, fostering lasting loyalty.

It's not as much of a glamorous point as some of the others but I believe that value & quality are grounded in consistency of service of product, of message and of experience. If a customers interaction is a bit of a lottery depending on which team or colleague they get in touch with, or depending on the particular service offer they need, or even depending on the day of the week then it will be difficult for them to perceive any level of value or quality. Is everyone in the business on the same page? Do all colleagues have access to the tools they need to provide value and quality? Consider the feedback from operational teams, they are best placed to tell you what gets in the way of consistency.

Customer journey mapping is a very effective way to define how a business wants to deliver value along the entire customer lifecycle, from awareness to advocacy and loyalty.

An objective and evidence-based approach is effective for engaging and nuturing customer. Data-driven decision-making provides a reliable method for customer engagement. Analyzing customer data and preferences allows businesses to create personalized and targeted communications. It also helps identify trends and pain points, enabling informed decisions on content, offers, rewards, and incentives. It enables continuous evaluation and optimization. Monitoring conversion rates, satisfaction scores, and referrals helps assess strategy effectiveness. It promotes accountability and transparency, building trust with customers who value systematic and objective considerations.

Anticipating customer needs extends beyond the sale, becoming the cornerstone of a sustained and enriched relationship in the sports and entertainment domain. Our commitment lies in post-purchase engagement, where we employ proactive measures to discern evolving preferences and desires. By actively communicating and understanding their experiences, we refine our offerings, ensuring a continuous enhancement of value. Whether through tailored event updates, exclusive offers, or personalized interactions, our goal is to surpass expectations consistently. This ongoing dialogue solidifies customer loyalty and transforms each interaction into an opportunity to surprise and delight them constantly.

A customer-centric evidence-driven approach offers a strategic edge. It goes beyond routine communication, shaping customer journeys based on empirical insights. Organizations optimize interaction channels and timing, ensuring personalized experiences aligned with each customer's unique needs. While automation streamlines the process, it's the personalized layer that transforms each interaction into a memorable experience. This data-informed strategy propels businesses from transactional to emotionally intelligent relationships, uncovering uncharted avenues of loyalty and satisfaction.

There are many different ways to engage strangers, leads, customers, churned customers at different stages (From awareness to acquisition to retention to monetization) at different touchpoints and channels. So treat your full-funnel as the entire end-to-end experience - and design the buyer's journey and customer journey.

One effective way to keep your customers engaged is through gamification. Through this process, you can offer advantages such as benefits, discounts, and even cashback at different stages while capturing data and building a strong relationship with your consumer. This allows them to feel comfortable interacting through their preferred channel, providing valuable information that can be used to create even more relevant benefits in the future. This approach strengthens and extends the relationship with your customers.

Innovations in customer experience arise from two key moments. First, the pain points discerned throughout the customer journey. These touchpoints, laden with challenges, offer insights into areas demanding enhancement, fostering seamless interactions. By pinpointing and addressing these, companies amplify user satisfaction. Secondly, the visionary perspectives of founders play a seminal role. Founders, with their unique industry insights and entrepreneurial spirit, envision transformative ideas, setting new benchmarks. Merging the deep understanding of customer challenges with founders' vision creates a powerful synergy. This combination paves the way for impactful, pioneering solutions in customer experience.

In the ever-changing world of CX, fostering innovation is essential. It's not just about customer and market insights; it's also about encouraging your entire team to share ideas. By involving everyone, you discover fresh ways to delight customers and keep improving. This ensures innovation becomes part of your company's culture, not just something external. It helps you stay competitive in a rapidly changing market by combining internal creativity with external feedback.

Real CX journey includes BX (Buyer experience) which is the stage before becoming customers. The moment when strangers interact with a touchpoint from your brand, it has to be create positive emotions that lead them to the next step. The next step has to create positive emotion that leads them to subsequent steps.

Work closely across functions to understand where the pain points, breaks and failures are from your customer’s perspective. Then dig deep into those to identify opportunities to learn and improve. Follow those journeys upstream to prevent those kinds of failures from happening. This approach to learning from the customers perspective and using failure as an opportunity to improve the process for all customers not just one customer allows your CX program to continuously improve and evolve.

Do not conform; you cannot innovate and challenge the status quo by swimming with the current. True innovation is derived from a thorough understanding, as well as client insight and, in many cases, their participation. Avoid too sophisticated solutions, since many businesses rush out of the gate and begin creating without thoroughly understanding the current or future need. If you really want to innovate, make sure you are able to predict the customer's need trajectory with a high degree of certainty.

When we truly understand what our customers want and like, our main goal is to create special experiences that fit their journey and our organisational culture. These experiences help our teams predict or anticipate and communicate with customers in a personalised manner during every single interaction. Leaders have got to be intentional about consistently inspiring their teams to be enthusiastic and consistently respond easily. We can also add unexpected surprises along the customer journey, like personalized notes, small gifts, or special event celebrations in advance. As humans, we love surprises and companies that exceed our expectations to make us feel special.

Many large brands are trying (unsuccessfully) to grapple with customers who publicly express their views, emotions, and knowledge about the brand’s customer experience. Things like leadership, products, services, online reviews, and brand conversations are all open to public scrutiny. Regrettably, too many businesses don’t know what to do with this wealth of customer feedback. Additionally, these conversations aren’t often shared with the customer service agents who interact with customers daily. Many care agents are left to respond reactively to inbound customer calls, emails, or online messages while in the dark about wider customer sentiment. Ensure your company takes a 360 view with customer experience by including the frontline.

Keep it simple. Ask your customers and target personas what they need, which is ever-changing. Don’t assume anything. If you ask, they will tell you. You can get more sophisticated later with journey mapping and design tools. Happy to talk more about Doing CX Right??

A small startup I once knew provided a SaaS tool to help businesses manage their inventory. Initially, they focused solely on the features they offered. But they noticed a pattern – clients would sign up, use the tool for a few months, and then move on. Intrigued, the team started conducting exit interviews and discovered that many clients weren't fully utilizing the tool's potential. The features were there, but clients weren’t realizing their value. So, the startup pivoted. Instead of just selling the tool, they began offering monthly workshops and personalized training sessions. They developed an interactive community forum and started publishing use-case guides, showcasing how different businesses effectively utilized their tool.

Think big picture. Consider customers' expectations that may be beyond your control. In a broader social and economic sense, customers bring their experiences from other companies when they become your customer. Customers may assume: - they'll get free, 2-day shipping, because that's what's standard. They won't expect to pay or wait, if your fulfillment takes time. Be clear and repetitive about what happens after their purchase. - they'll have to fight with customer support to solve their problem. They won't expect a human eager to hear and help them. Proactively advertise how and where your team is available. - the product works like another company's. From the first impression, educate the customer to know how you're different.