Growing your business with CX

How can we make sure that your customer experience (CX) is hitting the mark?

We’ve taken a deep dive into the importance of CX and asked two of our experts, Lindsay Carapella (Insights Product Manager) and Danielle Grehan (General Manager), to tell us how companies can develop their business and drive long term success with incredible customer experience.

Why is CX important?

Customers are the true focus of business – sure, products, revenue, and industry are vital, but without customers a business cannot exist. A customer’s experience of your business, brand, or product is what drives their action and keeps them interested – and keeps your business running.

Experts describe CX as a key differentiator from one brand to another. Many brands or businesses may have similar products and services, but it’s their CX and customer service that will drive consumers to choose their brand and keep coming back. Reviews are much more likely to be about service and experience than the product itself, and it’s more often than not, the reason a person will become a repeat customer.

Probe CX expert Lindsay explains, “When your product or offering is a commodity, the level of customer experience is what is going to set you apart from your competitors.”

This doesn’t just include face-to-face communication, things such as personalised services, many channels of communication that suit customers’ needs, and intuitive user interfaces can all affect a customer’s experience and opinion of a brand. Even the smallest detail could make a major difference in a customer’s attitude.

What does good CX look like?

CX is inherently driven by consumer trends. It changes frequently with social expectations and technology, but these trends can also be directed by leaders in any industry.

“When we deal with organisations that have instantaneous self-service, we expect that from everyone. The bigger the organisation, I think the more these expectations are cemented.” Danielle says.

So, what are the things that today’s customers want to see?

Personalised and humanised interactions that value and empower the customer. Your customers want to feel like they’re the most important person to the business at that moment. Creating intuitive and humanised channels for communication between your business and customers is the best way to deliver good CX. Know your customers and provide the best outcomes for their needs and wants and you’ll be able to retain a strong and engaged consumer audience.

How can you develop your business’ CX?

Start small! There’s no need to have a full CX strategy right off the bat. The most important thing is to be able to analyse the way your business acts with a customer’s eye.

Shift your business’s focus and quality from being driven by compliance, profits, and products, and instead focus on what the customer sees and experiences. What is driving their current experiences? What are their complaints and pain points? Champion the voice of the customer through feedback surveys, conversations and help desks. Through these insights, you can gain an overall view of a customer’s journey through your business.

From there, implement a continuous program that improves and optimises your CX based on this feedback. Use customer insights as part of your improvement and action plans going forward and continually review your performance against incoming feedback. Identifying the root causes of these complaints and finding a solution will not only enhance their overall experience and interactions with your business but will directly impact your business’s success.

For a business to truly benefit, change generally needs to be organisation wide. However, by starting with one small but impactful change, you can gain the momentum needed to grow larger and more significant changes. As Danielle puts it, “Look at automating one element of a call, look at one piece of persistent customer feedback and solve it.” Directly acting on a customer’s experience like this is one of the best ways to show your audience that you value them.

“Put customers at the centre of every decision you make – give them a seat at the table”

Expert CX analysts will be able to continuously monitor, understand, and develop your customer facing services to better support and serve your audience. Using the insights collected, they can identify what internal processes impact customer experience and improve delivery for your company.

Danielle had this to say about her experience with improving CX, “Routinely when I meet up with industry peers, the people working in the insights teams and areas bemoan that they keep providing the same insights for the organisations, which no one converts into actions. Find a team of the organisational driver personality types who will take these pain points and find ways to solve them.”

One of the most valuable things your business can do for its customer (aside from listening) is to learn from your competitors and industry leaders – see where they succeed and where they lose customer interest. Using this strategy partnered with personalised insights will ensure that you create the perfect experience.

Leading your business to success with CX

It’s no doubt that customer experience is one of the best ways to grow your business. With a dedicated team of CX professionals, you can drive customer engagement and purchases higher than ever before. Investing time and money is just as important as investing in your product. Focus on creating an environment that supports your customers and they will want to come back again and again.