How to Build a Customer Experience Strategy

A well thought out customer experience strategy can make all the difference to a growing business. Top brands never stop improving the customer experience that they offer, and as a result customers’ expectations are on the rise too. That’s why customer experience is now a deciding factor in the overall success of a company, particularly if that company happens to have ambitious expansion plans.

If you’re looking to retain existing customers, expand into new markets or launch a brand new product range, customer experience should be a priority. Find out more about what it is and why it matters to give your brand the best chance of fulfilling its potential.

What is a Customer Experience Strategy?

A customer experience strategy is a strategy aimed at improving the interactions customers have with a brand. Typically, such strategies cover a range of different actions, all of which combine to improve the experience that customers are offered.

What is Customer Experience and Why is it Important?

Customer experience is the term used to describe how customers feel about a brand, based on the interactions they’ve had with it. Every interaction a customer has with a company will help to shape their overall opinion of the organisation in question, and their experience of the buying journey.

CX is important because it has such a huge bearing on whether or not a customer is likely to return again to purchase another product. It’s also crucial in terms of word of mouth recommendations. If a purchaser has a good experience, they’re likely to share news of this with friends and family – on a large scale these recommendations can be hugely profitable to a brand. On the other hand, a negative experience could result in underwhelming reviews which might see profitability take a hit.

What Does a Good Customer Experience Strategy Look Like?

A good customer experience strategy is one that’s designed with the customer in mind. It should have several aims. Firstly, it should improve how customers experience a brand. Customer experience strategies will usually include a range of ways in which this should happen, so that every interaction can be optimised in ways that appeal to different buyers.

The best strategies will be data-driven, and use carefully recorded data to ensure that changes are informed by the most up to date information a brand has to hand. The same metrics can also be used to measure the success of different customer experience strategies as they run, enabling teams to tweak changes as they go for the best possible results.

How to Build a Customer Experience Strategy?

Learn how to build a customer experience strategy that really works for your buyers. Take a look at the following tips to find out more about what goes into the best customer experience strategies.

Understand your target audience

All great marketing strategies require a clear understanding of the target audience in mind, and customer experience strategies are no exception.

Begin by analysing the data you already have on your customers, looking into the particular styles of interaction that most appeal to your buyers. Then design a customer experience strategy with the aim of optimising these interactions and improving retention rates for existing customers.

Personalize 

Personalisation is key to many of the best customer experience strategies. As increasing numbers of brands begin to offer personalisation, it’s becoming ever more important for companies to follow suit.

Customer experience strategies should include plenty of potential for personalisation, demonstrating to customers just how valued they are by the brand. Interactions can be personalized in a number of ways, from the times and dates on which they’re sent, to the inclusion of customer-specific information based on previous purchasing patterns.

Leverage automation

If you’re hoping to improve customer experience, automation is your friend. Automation makes many of the most exciting developments in personalisation possible. It also frees up huge amounts of time for busy marketing teams, increasing their capacity to explore new CX opportunities.

Use automation to schedule interactions for the times at which customers are most likely to engage with them to improve both campaign efficiency and ROI. Make use of automated tools that measure customer feedback and turn it into usable insights, and keep an eye out for the next big thing in marketing automation to make sure your customer experience strategies are always one step ahead.

Measure your performance

Before you launch your next customer experience strategy, you should have a clear idea of what the success of your strategy would look like. Quantitative targets should be used to demonstrate whether or not your strategy is meeting its goals.

Measure how your actions stack up against your targets regularly and you’ll be able to keep an eye on what’s working well, and what you need to improve. Decide on the metrics that matter most to your overall strategy at the very start, and measure your performance as you go.

Think about the long-term

Great customer experiences aren’t created overnight. They’re usually the result of huge amounts of hard work, from the initial planning of a whole host of different actions, to measuring the results of these changes and continuously improving them over time.

Think of your customer experience strategy not as a short-term fix, but as a long-term goal that your team should never stop working on. Be flexible in your approach, and make sure that your strategy has room to react as you start to learn more about your customers. Think long-term and keep your foot on the gas, even once those glowing reviews start rolling in!

—

A data-driven, fully informed customer experience strategy could be all you need to significantly improve customer retention rates and maximise the profitability of your company. Explore the opportunities and challenges of customer experience in more detail to learn all about what a great CX strategy could really do for your brand. For expert advice and opinion on all things customer experience, don’t hesitate to contact our team.