A great customer experience doesn’t only boost your reputation. It helps build a strong culture and boost your sales.

How do you enhance your customer experience?

In this blog, we share seven practical expert tips to enhance your customer experience. By the end of this article, you’ll have a clear roadmap to deliver and sustain the best customer experience. 

Let’s help you take your business to the next level.

What is customer experience?

Customer experience refers to how customers perceive a business or brand. This perception develops as they interact with your business.

It’s how customers feel when they:

• Visit your website
• Call your support line
• Receive an email
• Interact with your salesperson
• Make a purchase, and
• Use your product or service

It centres on the emotional and psychological aspects of the customer journey.

Is customer experience the same as customer service?

No, customer experience and customer service are not the same. But they are closely related. 

In customer service, customers interact with a representative of a business or brand. It’s usually to seek advice or help on a product or service.

Customer experience is different. It’s the whole customer journey. It includes customer service and other touchpoints like marketing, sales, delivery, billing, etc.

How much does customer service impact the customer experience?

A lot.

Customer service significantly affects satisfaction and retention. It can either make or mar the customer experience.

Both customer service and customer experience matter for a business or brand. They complement each other but aren’t interchangeable.

So, whatever you sell, you must enhance your customer experience. Your business success depends on this, and you’ll soon discover why.

Why should you improve customer experience?

These customer experience statistics illustrate the importance of improving CX:

• 96% of customers know that customer service influences their loyalty to a brand.
• 83% of companies understand that making customers happy increases their revenue.
• 32% of customers will abandon a brand they love after only one unpleasant encounter. And 92% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions.
• Customer lifetime value increases by 1.6x for customer-focused companies.
• Consumers are willing to pay up to 16% more for products and services with great experiences.
• 86% of buyers will pay more for a great customer experience. At the same time, only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations.

Fantastic CX will give you the following benefits:

• New leads via positive word-of-mouth
• Customer retention as they’ll keep coming back for more and
• Increased revenue, profitability, and beat your competition

So, how can you enhance the customer experience? How do you meet and surpass customer expectations?

How to enhance customer experience: 7 expert customer experience strategies that work

These ideas were scraped from customer experience experts online. You can visit their website and LinkedIn account to learn more about them.

Strategy 1: Define your CX vision and align it with your brand purpose

“A clear customer-experience vision defines brand values and guides decisions. Moreover, it motivates employees by connecting their work to a higher purpose.” – Gartner

This is the first step to enhance your customer experience.

Define your CX vision and align it with your brand purpose. This vision should be a concise statement. It should describe how to deliver the best experience your customers need.

Your CX vision should reflect your brand values, mission, and goals.

To define your CX vision, do three things:

• Understand your customers’ needs, expectations, and preferences
• Understand your competition and market trends, and
• Collect this data via customer research, surveys, interviews, personas, and journey maps.

Once it’s ready, communicate it to your employees, stakeholders, and partners.

Align everyone in your organisation with your CX vision. Embed it into your culture, processes, systems, and policies. Then, set up measures to help them deliver it consistently.

Regularly review and adjust your vision as your customers’ expectations evolve. This is key to transforming the customer experience.

Strategy 2: Measure and optimise your CX performance

“Customer-experience leaders gain quick insights to build customer loyalty. They also enhance employee happiness, increasing revenue gains by 5 to 10 per cent. Additionally, they can reduce costs by 15 to 25 per cent within 2 to 3 years” – McKinsey  

Measuring your performance will significantly enhance your customer experiences. You can’t improve on what you don’t measure.

So, for customer experience optimisation, you need the best metrics.

Use metrics like:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
• Net promoter score (NPS)
• Customer effort score (CES)
• Customer lifetime value (CLV), and
• Customer churn rate.

Conduct customer interviews and request testimonials and reviews. They help you understand your customers’ feelings. Then, find out the pain points and gaps in your customer journey.

Implement these changes based on data-driven insights. Want to enhance positive customer experiences consistently? Then, rinse and repeat as often as possible.

Constantly track and evaluate your results. You’ll see improvements in your customer experiences.

Strategy 3: Leverage data and analytics to predict and personalise customer experiences

“Data-driven personalisation is becoming table stakes for companies that want to win on customer experience.” – McKinsey

Personalisation is key to good customer experiences.

Customers today expect relevant, timely, and tailored experiences that match their needs, preferences, and context.

Data and analytics are essential to deliver such experiences. They reveal your customers’ identity, preferences, behaviour, and values.

They help you enhance your customer experience via personalised targeting.

So, leverage data and analytics to segment your customers. Use various criteria like demographics, psychographics, and behaviour.

Strategy 4: Have every level of your organisation speak with customers

“You can’t provide excellent customer experiences without understanding your customers. That’s how to build personal connections with them.” – Forbes

Customer feedback is an essential source of information and insight. It can help you enhance your products and services and boost the customer experience.

However, customer feedback is not only for the customer service or marketing teams. It’s for everyone in your organisation.

What to do?

Implement a strategy that allows everyone to interact with customers regularly and consistently.

Set rewards for excellent customer service. This will strengthen your customers’ bond with your organisation and enhance the experience.

Strategy 5: Design seamless and consistent omnichannel experiences

“Customers expect a seamless experience across channels. They want to be able to start a conversation on one channel (e.g., chat) and continue it on another (e.g., phone) without having to repeat themselves or lose context.” – Gartner

Seamless omnichannel experiences enhance customer satisfaction.

You must interact with your customers where they are. So, provide an integrated experience across various channels.

Meet your customers at physical stores, websites, mobile apps, social media, email, phone, and chat.

Here’s how to enhance consistent omnichannel customer experiences:

• Identify pain points and gaps. They’re opportunities for improvement.
• Optimise each channel for usability, accessibility, and performance.
• Integrate your channels via technology, data, and processes. Ensure a smooth transition of information and context.
• Personalise your channels. Use customer preferences, behaviour, location, and device. This helps you deliver relevant and tailored experiences.
• Then, monitor your channels and touchpoints and gather feedback.

These steps require strategy, technology, data, and creativity. And TelebuHub makes it easier for you. See how TelebuHub works to learn more.

Strategy 6: Empower your employees to deliver exceptional customer service

“Customer service is not just a department; it’s everyone’s job. Motivate your employees to make decisions and solve problems. They’ll delight customers and are more likely to deliver exceptional customer service.” – Forbes

Customers expect fast, friendly, and helpful conversations. To enhance your employees’ ability to deliver exceptional customer service:

• Hire the right people with the skills, attitude, and passion for serving customers.
• Train them on your products, services, policies, and systems. And teach them soft communication skills like empathy and active listening.

• Equip them with the best software to enhance customer experiences.
• Motivate them with recognition, rewards, and feedback. And,
• Support them with coaching and mentoring. Assist them whenever they face challenges or difficulties.

All this requires investment, trust, and empowerment. And for good reason, too. Your call agents are your valuable assets

Strategy 7: Create memorable and emotional customer experiences

“Customers don’t just purchase products or services; they buy experiences. Experiences make them feel something. Experiences connect them with your brand. That’s what inspires them to share the good news with others.” – McKinsey

Customers today don’t care much about the functional benefits of your products or services. They want emotional benefits.

So, create customer experiences that enhance positive emotions like joy, surprise, delight, and gratitude. This will keep your loyal customers coming back for more.

To do this, follow these tips:

• Understand what triggers your customers. How they relate to your brand values matters.
• Design experiences that appeal to your customer’s senses and emotions.
• Create wow moments that delight your customers. Deliver experiences that exceed their expectations. And,
• Measure the emotional impact of your experiences. Always use the best software analytics tool to measure and improve.

Understand your customers’ psychology and behaviour. And to do this, you need a talented and passionate team.

Enhance their potential with these excellent customer experience solutions. You’ll soon see improvements among your customer service teams.

Boost your CX and grow your business with TelebuHub

These strategies will help you enhance your customer service and achieve your goals. However, you need TelebuHub. It’s the best customer-centric solution to support your CX efforts.

TelebuHub is a cloud-based communication platform that connects you with your customers via voice, video, chat, SMS, email, and social media. TelebuHub lets you:

• Monitor and control all your customer interactions from one dashboard.
• Automate and personalise your customer communication workflows
• Integrate seamlessly with your existing systems
• Monitor and measure your CX performance, and
• Optimise your CX strategy and tactics

Want to learn more? Book a free demo ASAP, or contact our sales team today.

FAQs

What does enhanced customer experience mean?

Enhanced customer experience (CX) means providing customers with superior value, satisfaction, and delight across all their interactions with your brand. It’s about beating the competition via increased customer loyalty and retention.

What makes a good customer experience?

A good customer experience meets or exceeds customer expectations and enhances the customer experience. It makes customers feel valued, respected, understood, and happy.

What are the main components of customer experience?

The main components of customer experience are:

• Customer journey: From awareness to purchase to brand loyalty.
• Customer touchpoints: Interactions across channels and devices.
• Customer feedback: Customers’ opinions on brand experiences.
• Customer satisfaction: Level of happiness with brand experiences. And,
• Customer loyalty: Repurchasing, referrals, and brand loyalty.

What is customer experience with an example?

Customer experience includes all the moments that shape a customer’s perception and satisfaction. For example, in banking, customer experience can be influenced by factors such as:

• How easy it is to open an account, apply for a loan, or transfer money.
• How warm, helpful, and knowledgeable the staff are.
• How fast, secure, and reliable the online and mobile banking services are.
• How personalised, relevant, and timely the offers and communications are.
• How well the bank handles complaints, feedback, and issues.

To enhance the customer experience, delight your customers. They’ll be happy and willing to recommend the bank to others.

A bad customer experience can make customers frustrated. They’ll be dissatisfied and very likely to switch to another bank.

What are customer service skills?

Customer service skills are qualities that ensure customer service enhancement. Some critical customer service skills are:

• Communication: Active listening, clear speech, and appropriate body language.
• Empathy: Understanding and sharing customers’ feelings and emotions.
• Problem-solving: Identifying and resolving customer issues efficiently.
• Adaptability: Adjusting to customers’ diverse situations and expectations.
• Patience: Remaining calm and professional with difficult or angry customers.

What are customer experience solutions?

Customer experience solutions are products and services that enhance customer satisfaction. They help you:

• Collect and analyse customer feedback
• Segment and target your customers
• Manage and optimise your customer journey and touchpoints
• Automate and personalise customer communications
• Monitor and measure customer satisfaction and
• Integrate with your existing systems and processes

How do you measure customer experience?

Measuring performance helps in enhancing the customer experience. To do this, use critical metrics like:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Loyal customers who’ll recommend your brand minus those who won’t.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): The percentage of your satisfied customers.
• Customer Effort Score (CES): How easy or difficult customers find your brand.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Total revenue a customer generates for your brand over their lifetime.

Find out more on call centre metrics that improve productivity.

How do you handle demanding customers?

Handling demanding customers can be challenging. However, some best practices can help you deal with them effectively and professionally. Some of these best practices are:

• Acknowledge their feelings and emotions.
• Apologise sincerely and genuinely for any inconvenience or dissatisfaction.
• Ask open-ended questions.
• Offer prompt and suitable solutions or alternatives.
• Assure them that you value their feedback and will take measures to prevent similar issues from happening again.