The Holistic Experience: What Businesses Forget When It Comes to CX

What comes to mind when you think of customer experience (CX)? I’m going to wager it’s the initial interactions with the customer – everything that takes place through the marketing channels used to reach them, the brand’s website, and the purchase itself.

But a customer’s experience with a brand doesn’t end there. The journey continues: from delivery updates to product feedback and after-sales support. Inevitably, much of this customer experience will be driven by employees and enabled by an ecosystem of IT systems.

Factor those in and you get a full picture of CX. Even calling it “CX” doesn’t cut it: what we should be talking about is CX (customer experience), combined with EX (employee experience). What we should be talking about is a holistic experience.

Case in point: My experience with a cable TV provider

I recently needed to get a cable TV box and modem removed from my account. An error in my cable provider’s data caused the company to think I had more boxes than I actually did.

There wasn’t a way to resolve this online, and calling customer service often resulted in more headaches. I remembered enjoying my in-person experience at the store, so off I went to a local brick-and-mortar, where I explained the issue to the employee, who knew exactly what happened and how to resolve it. Hurrah! Well, not quite …

The problem was it was going to take them some time. As I watched their flurry of typing and eyes darting between monitors, I asked if their system was easy to work with. Tilting the monitors to show me, they explained that they had to access two different systems that had similar information. What these systems didn’t do was talk to each other well – which is what caused my issue in the first place. The employee had to enter redundant information into both systems until the “older one” was phased out. Definitely not “Hurrah!”

In this case, the customer (me) suffered because the employees didn’t have the tools they needed to be efficient. I was patient, as I work in the customer experience world, and try to empathize with employees – but not everyone has that time or empathy. It’s a subpar experience for everyone involved.

So how can brands create a better, holistic customer experience?

1. Empower your employees

The employees who interact with customers on the front lines can make or break the CX moments that matter. And there are many of these moments. SuperOffice reports that the number of customers using live chat, email, and phone support has climbed by more than 50% over the last 10 years.

Responsibility for maintaining these digital channels rests on the shoulders of companies’ IT teams, making them as much a part of CX as customer-facing employees. Outdated tech or policies can inhibit responsiveness and let customer queries slip through the cracks.

Research consistently shows us that employees who are engaged, have the right tools, and are well-supported in their roles are more likely to provide elevated service to their customers. Creating this level of positive CX can boost sales by 20% and customer loyalty rates by a staggering 233%, according to RingCentral.

So no matter how automated and innovative their marketing and customer acquisition strategies may be, brands need the processes and systems their employees use to match. Seamless systems reduce friction and employee frustration but also enable them to work more efficiently, driving better CX.

2. Map your touchpoints

Comparing the customer journey to the employee experience can clarify shared issues, uncovering crossover where employee issues negatively impact customers. Perhaps employees are struggling to use a new CRM system, for example, while customers are reporting incorrect data and inaccurate correspondence. With a holistic look at CX, brands can see relationships like these between otherwise isolated incidents and weak spots.

By mapping the CX touchpoints to the EX touchpoints – online and in-store – and mapping those to existing tech enablers, brands can find the gaps in the experience. This may include things like a disconnect between the warm, hyper-personalized CX at the point of purchase and the generic after-sales experience where employees use a completely different language.

A holistic approach shows brands how CX might be front-loaded in the customer journey and neglected later on. These discrepancies are vital to understand, since 75% of customers desire a consistent experience, regardless of how they engage with a brand. In fact, Marq’s brand consistency report revealed that 32% of respondents saw revenue increases surpassing 20% by maintaining consistent messaging. Employees are the ones delivering that messaging and experience, so brands need to look beyond those early, pre-purchase interactions and across employees’ roles in the customer journey.

By assessing the experience on the employee side, brands can also slash issue resolution times from days to minutes. Maybe an email was routed to two teams, leaving them to figure out who would resolve it. Mapping EX to CX can streamline and simplify how customer contact gets routed, assigned, and resolved. And, as in my earlier example, this holistic approach can eliminate instances of underlying technology forcing employees to work in multiple fragmented systems.

Holistic experience mapping doesn’t compel brands to fix everything on day one, but it does give them an informed, comprehensive perspective on the gaps in customer experience and their underlying causes.

3. Hone your analytics

As we come back to time and time again, the quality of your customer’s experience depends on the quality of your customer data and analytics.

Brands should be regularly evaluating CX to proactively address the key moments in their customer journey. They can then identify gaps that arise, tackle the most pressing issues, and create a strategy and roadmap for how and when to sort the rest.

A holistic CX strategy also helps continuously improve and introduce new ways to innovate the customer experience. Analytics can highlight the areas that will see the greatest returns while allowing customer data to be shared across touchpoints for a truly integrated omnichannel strategy. Joining data points and silos gives brands a clearer picture of the root causes of issues affecting the customer experience – whether deriving from a product, IT, or employee issue.

With this unified approach, the CX becomes a holistic, end-to-end journey – one that reflects all the ways customers interact with a brand and all those who play a part in it, not just the customers but the employees who serve them and the IT teams that facilitate it all.?

So, what comes to mind when you think of CX now?

Acxiom’s industry-leading data strategists and solutions draw on decades of experience to help brands optimize their use of data and technology. Speak to an expert about how we can help you deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Originally posted on Acxiom.com