Clunky websites, impossible-to-remove pop-ups, hidden fees, and slow deliveries can all discourage potential customers from completing their purchase. If your approach to customer experience needs a holistic update, it may be time for a customer experience transformation.
Here’s what you need to know to strengthen your CX strategy and cultivate satisfied customers.
What is customer experience transformation?
Customer experience transformation is the process of strategically redesigning how shoppers engage with your business across the entire customer journey. It involves considering every customer interaction with your brand at every touchpoint. This starts when they first see your products on social media to purchase and after-sales support, and allows you to better meet customer expectations and drive customer satisfaction. Building a customer-centric culture means examining customer data and feedback to gain deep customer insights, This allows you to deliver more personalized experiences that appeal to your audience.
According to Filip Pejic, founder of beverage brand Pearly, customer experience transformation involves making sure the customer feels heard at all steps in the buying process. You want to focus on “resolving any issues or pain points as easily as possible,” he says, plus, “delivering a unique, seamless, and unexpectedly awesome experience.”
How to transform your company’s customer experience
- Establish customer feedback loops
- Identify and solve for customer pain points
- Create an omnichannel customer experience
- Embrace personalization
- Adopt artificial intelligence tools thoughtfully
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to transforming your customer experience and improving customer engagement, here are a few simple steps to get you started:
Establish customer feedback loops
The most effective way to drive CX transformation is to regularly collect customer feedback to learn what’s working and what’s not. You can learn about customer issues by conducting surveys, social media polls, and focus groups, and by analyzing online reviews and messages sent to your customer service teams.
While advanced analytics are helpful, engaging in meaningful conversations and making customers feel valued are just as important. For Jono and Nick Pandolfi, co-founders of the handmade ceramic company Jono Pandolfi Designs, listening to customer needs and collecting valuable insights has been essential. In their early days of selling plates to restaurants, the brothers regularly spoke with chefs to understand budget constraints. This created a collaborative environment that helped them tailor their customer experience to the needs of working chefs.
Identify and solve for customer needs and pain points
Once you’ve established feedback channels, use them to identify common concerns and pain points that drive your transformation strategy.
For Jess Gray and Becca Stern, founders of furniture brand Mustard Made, collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback led to meaningful product improvements. For example, after receiving messages that customers were struggling with assembly instructions, the brand created a more seamless setup experience.
“In the early days, we were doing all the customer service, so we knew exactly which parts people were getting stuck on,” Becca told the Shopify Masters podcast. “So then the challenge with each production run was how to try and either make that step clearer or, if possible, take that step out altogether.”
Mustard Made is constantly working to improve ease of assembly, a critical customer experience factor.
“So at the moment, I think we’re on the third iteration of our instructions and instruction videos,” Becca says. “We recently put those on our website in the last couple of months, and the customer service issues have gone down significantly because the videos are so much clearer. We know exactly which parts people need a little bit of clarity on, and it’s been so beneficial for our business to really invest in that.”
Create an omnichannel customer experience
Building an omnichannel customer experience means your customers receive seamless service, whether they’re interacting with your brand at in-person retail stores, via your customer service email, or on social media. Having a unified customer profile allows employees to retrieve information quickly, thus saving your customers the hassle of having to re-enter details or restate their concerns. An omnichannel customer experience also includes having cohesive branding and messaging across channels, so customers feel like they’re interacting with a single entity across channels, rather than disconnected elements.
Embrace personalization
Customers are far more likely to engage with your brand if you deliver an experience tailored to their needs. According to a McKinsey study, personalization can increase marketing return on investment (ROI) by 10% to 30% and increase revenue by 5% to 15%. To create a personalized experience for your customers, consider their preferences, purchases, prior interactions, and demographics, to send them content, offers, and experiences they’re likely to find valuable.
Adopt artificial intelligence tools thoughtfully
There’s a lot of new technology out there, and conflicting data on the ROI of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. To use these technologies to support your CX transformation, consider your customers’ needs and where you can optimize output without losing quality. For example, you could use AI chatbots to improve the speed of customer service query responses, machine learning tools to gauge customer sentiment, and predictive analytics to analyze past customer behavior to anticipate customer needs.
When used thoughtfully, AI and other new technologies can dramatically boost customer experience and foster brand loyalty. They can also help identify emerging trends to proactively offer solutions for shoppers, helping you rise above the competition.
Customer experience transformation FAQ
How can I improve my customer experience?
There are several steps you can take to improve the customer experience and better meet customer needs, including collecting more in-depth customer feedback, creating seamless omnichannel customer experiences, and using new technologies to improve your offerings and add features. Ultimately, the goal is to improve customer retention and satisfaction and create a higher customer lifetime value.
How to develop a customer experience strategy?
Developing a successful customer experience strategy involves understanding your customers by collecting comprehensive feedback and engaging in meaningful interactions. You can then assess your current operations to identify and rectify pain points, using new technologies to add new features and functionalities to your products, website, and operations.
What three things make a great customer experience?
A great customer experience is different for every business and its unique needs, but typically involves creating delightful interactions (from a social media post to a customer service engagement), seamless customer journeys from when they learn of your product to post-purchase communications, and personalized and relevant content that meets customer needs.
