How to Build and Implement a Winning Customer Experience Strategy

Celia Cerdeira at Talkdesk delves into how companies can craft a successful digital customer experience strategy.

Historically, the customer experience (CX) was largely in-store. Companies would carefully craft print ads or film attention-attracting TV commercials, drawing audiences to their brick-and-mortar location to complete the sale.

Today, the customer journey looks different-it’s almost completely digital, and customers interact with brands across various touchpoints.

Whether they’re using websites, social media, mobile apps, or chatbots, customers not only want but expect fast, seamless, and personalized experiences at every stage.

One thing hasn’t changed. Companies offering smooth, effective customer journeys enjoy higher revenue, customer satisfaction, customer retention, and more. In a world where customers have more choices than ever before, a successful CX strategy is key to a company’s survival.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience can impact everything from brand perception to customer loyalty and overall revenue, but what does customer experience mean?

It covers all customer interactions with a business across every touchpoint. That includes everything from the initial discovery of a product or service to the purchasing process and even post-purchase customer support and troubleshooting.

The customer experience also encompasses referral programs and upselling interactions. The journey can involve mobile devices, computers, emails, websites, SMS messaging, social media, and other devices and channels.

Positive customer experiences can help organizations build strong relationships, leading to repeat business and transforming customers into advocates who actively promote the brand to their friends and family.

On the other hand, a negative customer experience can quickly damage a brand’s reputation and drive customers away, often for good.

To improve customer experience, companies need to understand customer needs and expectations through data-driven insights, feedback, and analytics while working hard to create more tailored and efficient interactions.

How Should Organizations Track Customer Experience?

Providing an incredible customer experience is a must – and the only way to achieve that is by tracking customer experience metrics.

After all, companies wouldn’t be able to measure the success of their current CX and make improvements if they ignored key performance indicators (KPIs).

Companies should implement a tracking process across their business, particularly in their customer experience solution, and track KPIs like:

Customer satisfaction (CSAT). CSAT surveys provide valuable insights into how customers feel after completing a purchase, transaction, or interaction with a customer service agent.

First contact resolution (FCR) rate. FCR rate indicates the percentage of customer issues that are resolved in the first interaction and agent effectiveness.

Average wait time. This is how long customers need to wait to connect with agents, and it should be as low as possible.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS represents how likely customers are to recommend a company to others and measures customer loyalty.
• Average handle time (AHT). Measuring AHT, or how long an agent spends per customer interaction on average, helps companies understand individual agent and team performance, allowing them to reward agents who go above and beyond and help those falling short.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV). This metric represents the total value a customer brings to a company over their entire relationship, including their initial purchase and all potential future purchases, and provides insights into which customer segments are most valuable.
• Customer effort score (CES). A company’s customer effort score represents how much effort a customer needs to dedicate to finding the information they seek or resolving their problems. It can give companies an idea of how their customers feel about them.
• Average abandonment rate. This is the percentage of customers who end their interaction with the company before reaching a resolution within a given time, and it can be a symptom of long wait times, inadequate support, and inefficient processes.
• Customer service level (CSL). CSL measures how accessible an organization is to its customers and is closely related to overall customer satisfaction.

What is a Successful Digital Customer Experience Strategy?

Companies must continuously adapt and refine their approach to CX to meet their customers’ evolving expectations.

A successful digital customer experience strategy isn’t a single step – it’s a process that involves thinking about customers and their journey across every interaction point and then tailoring offerings and communications accordingly.

To create a digital customer experience strategy, companies should:

Lean on Customer Experience Analytics

Understanding customers and improving their journeys starts with collecting and analyzing customer experience analytics.

Access to customer experience analytics can give contact centre teams the actionable insights they need to improve the customer experience in real time.

Companies can easily collect and visualize data like call durations and response times or analyze customer interactions to discover everything from customer intent and sentiment patterns to emerging issues and surprising opportunities.

With this in-depth data, companies can make informed decisions. They can quickly find and resolve customer pain points, learn customer preferences, and identify agent coaching opportunities.

By adapting in real time, they stay one step ahead of customer expectations, avoiding customer churn and driving long-term loyalty.

Accept Customer Communication Across the Channels They Prefer

Every customer is different. Some may prefer the immediacy of a chatbot, while others still like the human touch of talking with agents on the phone. Other customers may choose to send messages via apps or social media.

That’s why organizations need to support customer communications across multiple channels, including but not limited to email, live chat, chatbots, social media, SMS messaging, messaging apps, and phones.

Additionally, companies must ensure that these channels are closely integrated so that if a conversation starts on one platform but moves to another, the customer will experience a seamless transition, and the agent will have all the context needed to continue the conversation without missing a beat. This ensures customers don’t have to repeat themselves, creating a more satisfying experience.

Make Sure Customers Can Help Themselves

It’s also important to give customers self-service options, powered by generative AI, that allow them to help themselves. Customers find these options convenient, as they can find solutions and answers on their own timeline.

This approach also frees up agents’ time, reducing customer queue times and enabling agents to tackle more complex or delicate issues that truly require the human touch.

In addition to placing FAQs and an online knowledge base in an easily accessible place, companies can provide customers with AI-powered chatbots.

These bots can answer questions, recommend specific solutions or products, provide real-time updates, confirm orders, and track order statuses.

Companies should also offer self-service solutions that route customers to an agent if they need additional assistance.

Improve Every Customer Touchpoint

To deliver a seamless and satisfying customer experience, companies need to closely examine every customer touchpoint and make targeted changes to see improvements.

Every touchpoint helps shape customers’ overall experience and perception of a brand, so it’s vital to ensure that every interaction is smooth and intuitive.

Companies should consider the following guidelines:

• Make things as simple as possible. A confusing navigation system can make it difficult for customers to find what they’re looking for, resulting in frustration.
• Optimize websites for mobile and smart devices. Many customers access websites through mobile devices, so companies must ensure pages load fast and properly on mobile devices.
• Personalize the experience. Use data and analytics to hyper-personalize the customer experience to individual preferences and behaviors. Personalization can range from product recommendations based on past purchases to messaging that resonates with the customer’s interests and helps create a more engaging and relevant experience.
• Create a consistent experience across channels. Companies should maintain a uniform brand voice, user interface, and design elements across all channels to make transitioning from one touchpoint to another as seamless as possible.
• Streamline the checkout process. For businesses with e-commerce sites, the checkout process should be as quick and easy as possible. Adding too many steps or only a single payment option can discourage customers, causing them to abandon their cart before completing their purchase.
• Gather and act on customer feedback. Finally, organizations should continuously collect feedback from customers about their experience with various touchpoints and use this data to identify areas for improvement.

Digital CX Strategy Makes a Difference

The better the experience, the more likely customers are to enjoy a brand, become loyal customers, and turn into advocates who recommend it to others.

In today’s digital age, where customers interact with brands primarily through online channels, CX strategy is a cornerstone of business success.