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Excellent customer experience. It’s the priority goal for any organization who wants to win and retain customers. And it’s a game changer for those that get it right.
At its best, CX is a smooth, omnichannel interaction between a person and a brand; personalized to deliver contextually relevant information to the right person at the right time – about the products and services they want – when and where they want it.
At its worst, a poor customer experience is a clunky interaction, that interrupts the buyer journey. This happens when brands can’t recognize individual customers across channels and meet them where they are in their journey, which causes waste in messaging and spend on irrelevant audiences, and ultimately creates a poor relationship – and frustration – for the consumer.
After all, people expect an outstanding customer experience; where a brand recognizes them, their preferences and previous engagements to deliver contextually relevant service and messaging that are meaningful to them. Get your CX right, and loyalty and advocacy will result.
Of course, there are a lot of moving parts to consider to get CX right. Creating a truly seamless experience requires:
Remember; quality CX is not a plug-in-and-go solution. It’s the result of a healthy data infrastructure, strategy, and technology ecosystem; that together enable the right processes and environment for relevant real-time brand engagement with a customer across all areas.
With many moving parts at play, where should an organization begin, to create a foundation for excellent CX? There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution; different businesses will have different requirements to achieve a quality customer experience.
It may first help to define what a great customer experience strategy looks like, to consider what’s needed for your organization.
A good CX is:
Note that CX encompases the entire customer journey from first contact through nurture to a customer – and beyond for quality customer loyalty.
Customer experience is not limited to customer service (typically a single touchpoint interaction with a brand). It is also not the same as a good user experience (UX), although an easy UX of a website, app or otherwise may contribute to a good CX. Customer service and UX are contributors to the larger concept of the CX.
Creating a personalized, relevant, timely and consistent customer experience across channels may sound complex.
But the key is to start with data. Unified, enhanced data, leveraged in the right ways, is the key to unlocking the path toward designing and delivering quality customer experiences that drive business impact.
Considerations to create a data-driven customer experience strategy
It’s important to build your data strategy and program from the ground up. This means starting from the customer data level up. After all, you need to know who your customer is first, and identify what you already know about them (and what you don’t) to enhance your data and serve more relevant experiences.
Building a solid data foundation and strategy supports your entire enterprise; enabling the insights needed to make transformational decisions. And to do that, your data, data strategy, data layer, and technology infrastructure need to all start working together.
Strategic considerations to create a data-driven CX experience include:
Especially in uncertain times, customer experience is key to ensure loyalty and confidence; confidence that an organization can recognize and engage with customers as individuals – digital as well as offline, virtual or physical – then understand their needs, drivers and concerns.
Having a data-driven customer experience strategy, supported by the right data and technology, is key to truly knowing your customers and creating a personalized single customer view. Below, we explore exactly which elements to consider to build that data strategy, and unlock the foundations to data-driven, personalized customer experiences.
In uncertain times, such as we have seen through 2020 in particular, customer habits and behaviors shift dramatically. The pandemic for example, has accelerated people’s digital habits, yet changed fundamental needs and priorities; and shifted how brands and customers engage. As a result, most brands find themselves in the position of needing to get to know their customers all over again. Delivering a strong, data-driven digital customer experience and understanding changing customer needs has never been more critical.
Today it’s essential that brands get data-driven marketing right, to reinforce customer confidence and to retain trust and loyalty through uncertain times.
And achieving that, requires prioritizing a renewed focus on gaining a true understanding of the customer; driven by having the right data, having the data and the technology right, and using everything together in the right way to drive business and customer value.
With data existing across multiple channels, technologies, departments and partners, where should an organization begin in order to get it right, understand ever-changing customers and deliver experiences that improve confidence and results?
Considerations to ask to build your data strategy, and manage data to create a truly data-driven and personalized customer experience include:
Do you have the right data to understand the ever-changing habits of your customers?
Do you have the data right to trace a person’s journey across touches with your brand?
Are you managing data in the right way to ensure the trust of your customers?
Data, technology, compliance. This trio of considerations forms the foundation for effective, data-driven customer experiences at every turn; that truly recognize the customer as an individual, and works to support them to build trust and loyalty.
Of course achieving this is no small task; here, partnering with a data expert such as Acxiom can help to develop or refresh your data strategy, review technologies and support compliance to ensure actionable, effective data insight and activation.
What considerations should marketers make in order to create a seamless, personalized customer journey, and positive experience at every touchpoint?
Think omnichannel
There are so many channels available today. It’s important to take a data-driven, multichannel or omnichannel approach that recognises how to engage with an individual, when to interact, and what touchpoints are most relevant. You should also create a journey that accounts for any previous contact, to build that consistent brand experience and interaction at every turn; from your website, to ads, emails, social messaging and more.
Centralize your data
With centralized, unified data insight across the right platforms, you can identify what messaging to serve to which person and when, throughout the customer journey. For example, did someone just visit your website on mobile, look at sneakers and drop off? Then why not serve ads to that person relevant to that product? Or, if that person is already on your mailing list – email them a relevant offer – to create a timely, omnichannel experience.
Equally, if someone just bought from you – don’t retarget them with that same product; doing so will only cause friction and a poor customer experience, plus wasted ad spend!
Don’t just use intuition
Especially in today’s landscape, never just assume you know how to engage with a customer based on intuition or previous experience. Building that data-backed understanding of your customers and their evolving priorities will support the best, insight-driven decisioning and customer experience.
Don’t be ‘creepy’!
Beyond the many different privacy regulations across the US, which can vary, state to state – be sure to engage throughout the customer journey in a helpful way, always staying away from the ‘creepy’. Data must always be used in a transparent manner, ensuring the customer feels in control.
What customer experience metrics should you consider to assess the success of your initiative?
Because customer experience is an all-encompassing objective that impacts your every interaction with a customer, it’s important to take an omnichannel, multichannel view of attribution.
Remember, your underlying data needs to be right first at a foundational level. Your strategy and experience is only as good as your data!
But with the right data and technology underpinning your approach, it’s possible to create true omnichannel customer experiences that recognize an individual from first to last touch – and beyond – ensuring quality, long-term loyalty and brand support.
Remember, today’s customers expect an outstanding customer experience. Get your CX right, and loyalty and advocacy will result!