Customer Service
Customer experience management: Strategies and trends for a redefined world
The global pandemic has shifted the focus and priorities of businesses and individuals alike. The customer service industry has witnessed a drastic change in customer behaviour, generating an increase in demand for customer support channels.
In the blink of an eye, businesses woke up to the value of customer experience (CX) as crucial to rise above the competition and handle customer touchpoints across the entire experience cycle.
The importance of enhancing CX with a brand and retaining customer loyalty had pushed the global customer experience management (CXM) market to a robust growth of 11.7% in 2020. Further growth is only to be expected.
While this proves the renewed significance of CXM, let us brush up on CXM with some fresh strategies and trends for a redefined world of business.
What is customer experience management?
CXM involves handling the interactions of customers with businesses across their physical and digital touchpoints. The aim here is to deliver a seamless, personalised experience that retains the customers’ loyalty and trust in the brand.
Gartner defines CXM as “the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed their expectations, leading to greater customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.”
So, is CXM similar to customer service? No! While both terms are largely used interchangeably, CXM is a proactive approach that anticipates a customer’s interactive journey with the brand and ensures that the obstacles and challenges are removed at the beginning of the journey. This differs from the reactive approach, which is common in customer service.
Why is customer experience management important?
CXM, like customer service, is an important aspect in building and sustaining brands. With excellent customer experience management, businesses can generate and boost revenue, strengthen brand reputation and image, improve customer loyalty, and retention rate and reduce customer churn, among others. In addition, statistics indicate that:- 73% of companies with above-average customer experience perform better financially than their competitors.
- Brands with superior CX bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag behind in CX.
How do you deliver the best customer experience?
Competitive insights, research and data, goals, and initiatives are all key elements in a robust CXM strategy. Here are a few points businesses should consider:Empathise
: Emotionally engaging with customers is the key to understanding their challenges. Through strategic data collection and social media platforms, brands can interact with customers while acknowledging and solving customer frustrations. Emotionally engaged customers are more likely to remain loyal and transform into brand advocates.
Deliver a high degree of personalisation
: Once businesses understand their customers better, that knowledge can be used to personalise interactions. Statistics show that 40% of customers are willing to share personal data for personalised customer service.
About 91% are likely to shop with brands that offer relevant recommendations, while 80% of the customers are more likely to make a purchase based on personalised experiences. Thus, tailoring service towards specific customer personas goes a long way in enhancing CX.
Capitalise on data and analytics
: Data is crucial for connected experiences. Troubling gaps or disconnects between customer expectation and experience can be bridged through data and analytics.Tons of information regarding satisfaction, behaviour trends, purchase patterns, and what customers feel at each stage of interaction can be understood by tracking customer preference data. This aspect of customer relationship management is crucial to better CXM.
Maintain transparency
: Data transparency is an integral part of business that increases customers’ trust in a brand. Embracing data security and privacy, owning up to mistakes, and proactive communication are essential steps that help gain customer trust.
Capture, absorb, and respond to customer feedback
: Customers have more presence, power, and choice than ever before. Therefore, customer insights are crucial to CX. Businesses need to understand their customers better by measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty.Feedback can be taken and responded through multiple communication channels in the form of surveys, social media comments, emails and phone calls, chat tools, and online reviews and ratings.
Analyse and map customer journey
: No two journeys are the same. A journey map is a detailed outline or a snapshot of a customer’s entire interactive process with a brand, leading up to the purchase and beyond.Mapping a customer’s journey helps businesses understand the challenges a customer may face at various touchpoints and help create consistency and offer personalised experiences and helpful interactions. Such steps enable brands to improve customer relationships and enhance growth.
How can digital technology enhance customer experience management
CX software platforms are tools for businesses to collect, track, measure, report, manage, analyse, and personalise customer experience. CX platforms can also be used to act on feedback from customers to take meaningful, effective action. They help manage a connected ecosystem, raising awareness and agility to ensure a smooth customer journey.Along with the right tools, it is also essential to have seasoned CX service partners that simplify CXM and deliver consistent, holistic experiences across all channels and touchpoints.
Customer experience management by Infosys BPM
The Infosys BPM customer service practice understands today’s business expectations and meets them in a sustainable and comprehensive manner. We operationalise digital capabilities that redefine the end-to-end customer experience with self-service, transparency, analytics and streamlined technologies.Contact us to explore end-to-end customer support solutions that deliver a single holistic omnichannel experience with continuous customised value, operations that go beyond SLAs, and intensive partnerships with clients.
