Developing Customer Experience (CX) Part II

Developing Customer Experience (CX) Part II

In last month’s article I covered the subject of customer experience (CX). In particular, its importance to the development of your business and how you might improve certain touchpoints your prospect or customers will engage with before they decide to do business with you.

Touchpoints can include any or all of this list.

If your prospects or clients engage with any of your offers from the above, do they currently find it an exceptional experience? By that I mean is it an easy-to-understand, interesting, motivational process that promotes your personality? If not, read on.

First impression stage

Think of the first impression a prospect or customer experiences when they engage with your brand. They will have a need or a problem that they are now actively conducting research on. They are actively seeking out solutions to try and solve that problem or need. It is vital you make sure you are using magnetic, key words when they are researching.?Put simply, keywords or key phrases, are what people are searching for in search engines.?As a business, they’re crucial because you want to appear in search engines when people search for the keywords or phrases that are relevant to your products or services.?By researching and selecting the most appropriate target keywords,?you create an opportunity to rank well in search engines for that specific topic. High rankings in search engines drive traffic to your website, and in turn, maximise your opportunity to promote your products/ services online.??My advice here is to engage a good digital expert (web / social media) to help you with this part of the exercise.??It will pay off at the end of the day or should I say, the start of the day!

Evaluation & Consideration Stage

The next step in the customer journey is the consideration stage. The research stage may not be complete as yet as the prospect has narrowed down their options and are still searching for more information or comparisons. During this stage they are comparing your product or service to other solutions they have come across in the market. This is where they are engaging with your content, reviewing your customer testimonials and learning more about the details of your product or service to see if it’s what they’ve been looking for.???This is the stage where you must stand out and be the desired choice or at least considered in the mix. You must ensure that they have all of the information they need to move to the next stage in their customer journey.

The make you mind up stage

The third step in the customer journey is the decision stage where your prospective customer is ready to select from their options and book an appointment, submit their contact information or actually commit to buy. Instructions here need to clear and obvious and as simple as possible. In some cases offering an option to chat with someone for guidance first, before they commit, might make a lot of sense and be very helpful.

Immediate after purchase experience

The next step is what happens immediately after the product or service has been purchased. This experience is vitally important. If a customer doesn’t have a convincing, reassuring experience here it will have an impact on a number of critical issues e.g.?

·??????their inclination perhaps, to change their mind and not proceed with you?

·??????their willingness to be loyal to you in the future?

·??????their willingness to buy again from you in the future or

·??????their willingness to give you referrals

After sales experience?

The final step in the customer experience journey is your after sales service. I have worked with companies recently where we have produced “thank you for doing business with us” videos and audio clips – these being sent a few days after the customer has bought.??They are always well received and I recommend this idea to you.??Everyone likes being thanked and appreciated and its sets you out as a class act and as someone who is not taking them for granted.

Worth thinking about?

Exceptional customer experience?builds a solid foundation of loyalty and definitely improves customer retention. People today are looking for high-quality products and services at an optimal price.?Customers will be willing to pay more?for the same products and services if they feel companies are providing extra value through interactions.?Customer experience excellence is certainly defined a bit differently now, compared to the past. Some aspects of the new definition are obvious:?heightened empathy and benevolence, smoother digitalisation, stronger security and safety, greater inclusion and diversity and above all else…simplicity.?A big list but one that cements relationships.??

As Richard Branson said: