How Your Organization Can Start a Customer Experience Program

Think about the last time you had a remarkably satisfying experience as a customer. Did you write a positive review for the brand or tell your friends about it? That’s how customer experience (CX) can influence a brand's image and boost its revenue. Remember, a happy customer is your most valuable asset and your best marketing strategy! After all, there's no better way to promote a brand than word-of-mouth marketing. So you see, customer experience has a profound impact on your business and must be taken seriously.

To create the best customer experience, you require a customer-centric mindset and approach. Next, you must launch a customer experience program to optimize how your business connects with its customers and builds brand value. Read on to learn how your organization can start a result-oriented customer experience program.

Why a Customer Experience Program?

From Fortune 500s to small start-ups, most companies are looking to build their own CX programs. Why? Because when your customers have a great experience with your brand, they’ll be less inclined to switch to other brands. Thus, customer experience is an excellent growth driver for your brand and helps create brand advocates. And a customer experience program provides the tools and processes to implement your customer experience management strategy.

Simply put, a CX program is the system of execution for customer experience management. It is the tool you use to improve the interactions customers have with your brand and the perceptions they lead to. Hence, the two basic elements involved in a customer experience program are:

• Gathering customer feedback
• Implementing changes to improve

How to Start a Customer Experience Program:

1. Have a Clear Vision

The first step is to draft a road map or blueprint that outlines the customer-focused vision you wish to communicate about your organization. This road map can be a set of straightforward statements that will act as guiding principles for your employees. You must explain your intent statement and communicate the customer experience vision clearly to them.

And once you have a set vision and principles, start embedding them into all organizational areas of development and training.

2. Identify and understand your customers

Now that you have a road map, it’s time to identify the different customers that avail of your products and create an emotional connection with them. Knowing your customers is key to flourish as a business. You can attempt to segment your customers and create ICPs to understand their needs better. Or you can leverage a customer database to track your customers and gather critical customer insights. 

Furthermore, creating an emotional connection with your customers is essential because 50% of the experience is based on emotion. And customers become loyal to a brand when they can emotionally connect with it; this is precisely how customers gauge how much a brand cares about their needs and pain-points. 

3. Capture Customer Feedback in Real-Time

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” – Bill Gates.

How do you know if you are delivering the best customer experience? The answer is customer feedback. You must create a dialogue with your customers and give them a platform to voice their opinion on your products and services. Also, it is best to capture feedback in real-time. You can use live chat tools or conduct surveys to collect feedback and analyze it.

Remember, both good and bad feedback is crucial for an organization’s growth. So, don’t be discouraged by negative feedback and start thinking of measures to improve as a business. Therefore, gathering customer feedback to implement change is possibly the most significant step in starting a customer experience program.

4. Move to Action

Lastly, you must mobilize your team to implement the required changes and improve customer experiences. Train your staff according to the new protocols and educate them on customer needs. Tracking your team’s performance regularly and asking for employee feedback will motivate them to deliver better customer experiences. Don’t forget to reward your employees for boosting their morale and creating a positive workplace environment.

Parting Thoughts

Let’s face it! A business cannot exist without its customers and must work hard to generate and retain them. Identifying the touchpoints along your customer’s journey and incorporating feedback can improve customer sentiment towards your company. And while you can’t consistently deliver perfection, you must always strive to deliver excellence in all areas.