Updated March 2025:
There is a ton of research about the value of delivering exceptional customer experiences (CX). Allocating budget and resources towards customer excellence is no longer a “nice to do.” To win in a competitive marketplace, it is a “have to do.” Continue Reading →
The future is unpredictable especially as we are still conquering a global pandemic. While there’s much uncertainty, it is clear that human connections and relationships matter more than ever before. Companies that are thriving and will continue to grow have clear strategies to deliver great CX in 2021 and beyond.
Journalist Phil Britt interviewed me and three other business leaders about how to boost CX in 2021 and upcoming years. I encourage you to read and apply our advice shared in Oracle’s SmarterCX publication, and summarized below.
Expand customer experience metrics
If you currently measure Net Promoter Score (NPS), add on more questions that help dig into why people would or would not recommend your brand, says Stacy Sherman, founder of Doing CX Right. Measure the “level of effort” (LOE) as knowing how easy or difficult it is for customers and prospects to interact with your brand (i.e. get help) will indicate the likelihood of referring and even buying again.
To boost CX, it’s important you spend significant time and energy getting to understand your customer and their needs, says Ryan Pitylak, chief marketing officer and founder of ZenBusiness.
“You need to do the research to find out what motivates your customers and do all you can to understand their purchase journey. At ZenBusiness, where we provide the resources needed for others to form, start, and run their own businesses (LLC formation, website development, tax preparation, and more), we continually survey and interview our customers,” says Pitylak.
“Companies that align their sales and marketing departments are significantly better at closing deals,” says Ali Cudby, managing director of Alignmint Growth Strategies and adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Purdue University.
Even simple shifts make a difference. Here’s one example any company can apply immediately: Make sure the language sales folks use to describe the company and its products and services lines up with the branded marketing copy in official company communication. According to Cudby, companies that align sales and marketing generate more than 200% more revenue from their marketing.
How you welcome customers into your company’s environment sets the tone for your entire relationship, says Cudby. Yet, so many companies squander this opportunity to make a great first impression. Sure, your internal teams may need a minute to transition from prospect mode to customer success. And yes, those activities may take time on your end, but the customer doesn’t care about your internal processes. They care about their own experience.
Brands that help customers achieve more in life and are with them every step of the way end up creating exceptional customer experiences, says Pitylak. Showing your customers you care about them will lead to a positive customer experience. This starts with great customer service.
Many successful brands today obsess over every aspect of the customer’s experience. They also hyper-focus on the needs of their most valuable customers, and then based on the needs of those target customers – not all customers – prioritize building the right products, personalized offers, and CX to delight them, says Jeremy Korst, president of GBK Collective.
“Too often, we see companies do the opposite — defining their product and CX strategy from the inside-out —based on a set of internal assumptions, such as technology or features the company thinks is compelling, rather than what their most valuable customers (MVCs) actually want,” says Korst, who continues, “The result is a less than optimal approach to the market, where companies make compromises on the CX they deliver in the market, or attempt to serve all potential customers, rather focusing on their MVCs.”
What actions will you be taking to drive better experiences for employees and customers? Make sure you are DoingCXRight® and not just talking about it.
Customer effort and NPS are useful measurements of business success, just as much as revenue and profitability. The reasons are obvious as unhappy customers are unlikely to buy again and even worse, they’ll tell others too. So, how does a company increase the chances that customers will rate their interactions highly and remain brand loyal?
The answer is creating customer experiences leveraging proven CX techniques. If you are not familiar with journey mapping basics, I encourage you to read my other article: WHAT Is A Journey Map and WHY Create One?
As a refresher, the purpose of creating a customer journey map is to help design better products and services and overall great experiences. It is a valuable method to identify problems and areas of success as customers become aware, learn, buy, get, use, etc.
While Journey Maps typically look visually different from one organization to another, they consistently enable you to empathize with how customers feel when interacting with a brand.
Who is your target audience(s)? What are their interests, needs, and wants? What obstacles keep them from achieving their goals? What are their demographics, such as age, income range, education? Where do they go to find information? Answering these questions and related ones often require research through informal and formal interviews and surveys. Leveraging internal data on current customers and insights from “voice of employees” (VOE) is valuable as well. (Learn more about persona development.)
A journey map helps to define key touchpoints and channels, such as: where will customers learn about your products and services? i.e. retail store, webinar, industry events. How do they receive communications? i.e. email. social media, sales rep visits, etc. This information provides insights as to why customers may or may not be satisfied and where pain points reside.
You want to put yourself in the “customer shoes” and identify the emotions they feel along the journey. To do this effectively, I recommend leveraging tools to guide you through the process. While there are many templates available on the internet, sharing one that I created to help get you started. Download my free template below
I can help you get started with Journey Mapping if you are new to it, or provide advice on how to optimize your existing map as customer needs evolve. There’s no need to guess—let me guide you through the process.
Access a useful document to jumpstart your CX practice. Use this with your teams to design best-in-class experiences.
A journey map is an important part of creating better customer experiences. I’m glad you are here to learn about what journey mapping is and why it matters to achieve business success.
To keep it simple, a journey map is merely a diagram that shows the steps customer(s) go through when interacting with a company. It is common to interact with companies in multiple ways such as shopping online and visiting a retail store.
The need for a journey map becomes most important as the number of touchpoints increases and when the customer buying path gets complex. (more…)
I had the honor to join Dan Gingiss on his well-known inspiring LIVE LinkedIn show. We dive into many customer experience topics and explain why and how we are all an experience maker!
I believe you’ll find value in our conversations about how to improve customer service and employee experiences too as they go hand in hand. Besides learning, you will laugh too as we get into some candid conversations and stories.
I’m interested in hearing your views after watching the episode.
Remember, it is in your control to create great employee and customer experiences. Company culture starts with you! Learn more about incorporating diversity and inclusion programs to elevate experiences for all.
