Guest Post: What is Customer Experience (CX), and How to Improve It?

This week, we feature an article by FrontLogix, a CX outsourcing company that provides customer engagement solutions at a lower cost. They explain what customer experience is, how a BPO can help you achieve CX excellence, and provide seven suggestions for where to focus your CX efforts.

Customer Experience (CX) = customer’s overall perception of a brand.

CX is the sum of all customer experiences acquired at each stage of their customer journey – beginning with identifying a need and ending with choosing a service or product to meet it.

The advancement of digital technologies has had a significant impact on customer expectations. Over the last decade, technology pioneers offering novel services and disruptive solutions have significantly raised the bar for customer expectations. Products are no longer the primary differentiator for today’s customers – the experience a brand provides is. The latest research shows that the perceived quality of the experience is the most critical factor in influencing whether a customer makes a purchase. 

As a result, businesses are no longer competing against other businesses that offer similar products or services. They also compete with brands that provide exceptional customer experience. 

Today’s customers are no longer buying a product or service. They are buying an experience. 

Ensuring a positive experience with the business at every stage of the customer journey can drive long-term customer satisfaction, retention, brand loyalty, and advocacy.   

And the payoff for great experiences is substantial. According to a PWC study, there is a direct relationship between customer experience and increased revenue. They discovered that customer satisfaction could be quantified, as 86% of buyers claimed they would pay more for valuable experiences, with a price premium of up to 16% on items and services. 

Given the significant benefits of improved CX, why aren’t more companies putting CX at the top of their priority list?

The answer can be found in one (or all) of the following reasons: 

It is costly They lack the necessary expertise They lack the necessary technology They are focusing on their core competencies 

 These are all fair arguments for putting CX on the back burner. Still, each has one easy and common solution: partner with a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company to manage all your customer interactions and communications. 

Outsourcing to a BPO partner can improve both your bottom line and your CX at the same time. BPOs provide workforce flexibility, cost savings through labor arbitrage, and access to technology otherwise not accessible in-house. Another reason to outsource is that BPO providers often have substantial knowledge and experience in the fields in which they deliver services. They can give higher quality and efficiency than your company could accomplish internally. 

How to improve CXRedesigning customer journeys around CX 

The customer journey is more than just a sum of individual touchpoints. You won’t reap the full rewards of your development efforts if you concentrate on improving individual interactions. Make sure you treat the customer experience as a journey spanning several touchpoints and use all available channels. 

Start by mapping out the journey for each type of customer. Remember that customers will navigate your website for different reasons ‒ some will browse your products, while others will want to learn more about what you do or download your assets. Also, different customers prefer different methods of communication. Level up your CX by offering various contact methods, such as live chat, email, and in-person customer service. 

Assessing real CX sentiment by listening and collecting feedback

The second step is to conduct visitor testing on your digital channels and solicit feedback on your customer service. Customer suggestions, ideas, and complaints will help you identify areas for improvement and create better experiences. Surveys like the NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction), and CES (Customer Effort Score) can help you gauge customer satisfaction with your brand. These surveys will demonstrate whether you provide poor, good, or excellent customer service. You must first understand how well you serve your customers to improve your CX. 

Personalized omnichannel experience

Customers want brands to understand them and provide personalized solutions to their problems. Thanks to the rapid expansion of available communications channels, your customers are now everywhere. However, simply being present on all channels is not enough. To deliver a genuinely exceptional CX, all of these channels should be integrated and share customer data, allowing marketers to personalize each message, product suggestion, and experience based on each customer’s unique profile. 

Here’s where omnichannel personalization comes in. 

Omnichannel personalization integrates marketing, sales, and communication channels into a single customer database. So, when customers interact with a brand on one platform and then choose to continue on another, they can pick up where they left off.  

With omnichannel personalization, customers may browse for an item on an app and finalize the purchase on a desktop computer. And after completing the purchase on the app, they won’t receive the same product suggestion when browsing on the website. Subsequently, if a buyer abandons an item in their shopping cart on one platform, they will see an advertisement for the same item on another.  

An omnichannel strategy also offers many communication channels, which boosts customer service efficiency. The customer service agent can instantly refer to a customer’s prior purchases and interactions with customer services – reducing customer effort across interactions. 

The omnichannel approach also offers additional flexibility. As a result of the back-end integration of channels, customers can seamlessly switch in the middle of an interaction. 

Customers want friction-free communication and personalized solutions, which is exactly what the omnichannel experience offers.  

Implementing self-service and AI

While some customers will turn to agent assistance, others prefer the freedom of self-service. Self-service is where customers access resources to solve problems on their own. Empower them with self-service tools such as FAQ knowledge bases, AI chatbots, how-to video tutorials, and optimized IVR platforms. 

Successfully implemented self-service pays for itself twofold. It not only improves the customer experience and satisfaction score but also boosts revenue. By enabling your customers to solve their problems, you will considerably minimize customer care call volume and the quantity of support needed.  

Keep in mind that not every self-service solution is helpful. Complicated technologies and poorly configured chatbots that trap customers in endless loops can only contribute to increased dissatisfaction. While rule-based chatbots are limited to simple, linear conversations, next-generation AI may gauge the customer’s sentiment and communicate more naturally using Natural Language Processing (NLP). Continue investing in virtual assistance and chatbot technology and improve the website’s content findability. 

Preserving the human touch

When it comes to driving customer happiness (which can lead to more sales and improved loyalty), human connection outperforms operational metrics. In addition, the drive to ruthless operational efficiency has left many organizations vulnerable to customer attrition. 

Although chatbots can resolve simple queries in seconds, they lack an agent’s empathy and problem-solving abilities. The ideal CX strikes a fine balance between human and digital. 

With AI resolving simple requests, agents are left with more complex issues. That necessitates well-trained and knowledgeable agents capable of first-call query resolution. 

To satisfy the full range of customer expectations, next-generation customer service requires ongoing investments in agent training and technology and a successful marriage of the two. 

Offering customer support 24/7

Customers want you to respond to their problems at all hours, including holidays and weekends. Outsourcing work to BPOs in different time zones allows you to be always online, allowing your organization to provide customer support around the clock, 365 days a year.  

Optimizing workforce with Workforce Management (WFM)

Workforce management (WFM) plays a significant role in running a contact center, with WFM teams handling various tasks to optimize staffing levels. 

WFM can help you manage every part of your employee’s tasks. It significantly enhances operational efficiency, from tracking time and attendance to distributing work, scheduling shifts, budgeting, and forecasting demand. 

WFM is critical to attaining optimal business, customer, and agent outcomes. As a result, most CCaaS solutions incorporate a WFM module, and expert workforce managers are in high demand. 

The bottom line… 

No matter what industry you’re in, providing a high-quality CX could drastically improve customer loyalty and retention, increasing sales and profits. 

Customers today have the power to influence how a business operates. The customer experience you provide plays an important role in the future success of your company, regardless of whether you offer superior goods. Ultimately, every business exists to serve its customers. As a result, customer experience has inevitably become a major focus for companies.  

Customers expect customer support to be available around the clock, and traditional solutions can be costly in terms of labor and training. However, if you need professional assistance at a low cost, a high-quality BPO is always available. By prioritizing your CX, your brand’s reputation will be solidified as exceptional, giving you a competitive advantage over other brands in your niche. 

FrontLogix is a boutique CX BPO that offers personalized and customer-centric CX solutions that are particularly suited to the client’s demands, resulting in outstanding results at a lower cost.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors, go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes article: Are You As Good As You Think You Are? The Big Disconnect Between Brands And Their Customers

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