The heartbeat of every business stems from active customers. Having a positive customer experience when engaging with your business is the main priority of every business owner. You would want them to have a seamless experience, making the process of working with you - a smooth and easy one. A difficult customer experience is a sign for them to start looking for alternatives and switch to your competitors. To ensure that customers stick to your brand, every consumer engagement with your company and brand must be positive. This is where transforming your customer experience (CX) comes into place.
According to NGGroup, CX transformation is the process of changing an organization's values, structures, operations, technology, and culture in order to improve its customer experience capabilities by creating an environment that can operate with a customer-centric mindset and deliver high-quality customer service at scale. Here are the 4 steps to implement CX transformation in your organisation.
1. Deeply understand your customers
You can start off by creating the user journey map, this refers to the path experienced by your customers when engaging with your brand. To gain a better insight of your customers, you can also carry out quantitative as well as qualitative research with your customers to better understand their behaviour, wants and needs. Surveys, website analytics and CRM data would be helpful in providing broader insights and a deeper understanding of customers' preferences and feedback on your current CX.
2. Develop a transformation strategy
Importantly, you should create a clear and inspirational vision that aligns with your ideal customer experience and the potential your employees have to execute consistently at this stage. Now that you have all of the necessary information about your present CX as well as customer input, you can begin to design a better version of your ideal CX without jeopardising your brand's value proposition. To have a successful CX, you must first identify the logistics, timetable, goals and KPIs that will benefit your company. Create a road map to assist you in bringing your company's vision to life. It should be action-oriented, with the road map guiding all of your employees' decisions. However, before finalising your plan, you need to think about your present logistics, which include staff capabilities, technologies and channels, all of which are required to provide seamless client experience. If you run into transformation barriers in the future, having a backup plan is essential - this is where you look at the additional skills and abilities needed to conquer the obstacles.
3. Execute the transformation
Keep your roadmap as a reference while starting to implement your plan. Executing new changes is not as easy as planning it. The real battle is when you convert your roadmap theory into practice. The most typical misstep is assigning the various elements of the roadmap into different functional groups. This will result in communication issues, ownership concerns and accountability issues. It is important to frequently revisit the new CX roadmap and keep track of the teams’ progress. The roadmap should be flexible depending on the phase of your business maturity. When a tweak is needed, make progressive changes according to the current situation.
4. Measure your success
Measuring your CX transformation could be done by collecting customers’ feedback by doing surveys, interviews and analysing your metrics. You could begin with Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) to capture their satisfaction - for example through product/ service review ratings, delivery promptness statistics or overall customer experience. You may also look into the performance of your contact centre to see how engaged your customer care personnel are with your consumers. Compare these data with your previous strategy and analyse what is your best practice and formulate a new improved CX transformation strategy.
These 4 steps, when applied as a continuous improvement cycle, can help you retain CX competitive distinction over time by enhancing your brand reputation and increasing customer loyalty. When they become loyal fans, they will be a returning customer in the future and will also shout appreciation, act as a perpetual referral source for new consumers and send new business your way. Your business will not only survive but thrive after you've attained that level of service.