What is customer experience?

Why would any customer or business want to buy from you? What gets them to stick around? The short answer: customer experience.

Think about it—would you rather buy from a business that personalises its offerings for you or one that offers poor customer support? No prizes for guessing.

In fact, 86 percent of consumers will leave a brand if they have two poor experiences. That should be proof enough to tell you about the importance of customer experience.

But what exactly does it entail? And more importantly, how can you measure it? Let’s discover the answers to all that and more.

Customer experience defined

Simply put, customer experience (CX) encompasses the overall impression your brand makes on a new customer as they interact with it throughout their journey. This perception starts taking shape right from their first interaction with your brand as a prospect and keeps changing even when they become loyal customers.

It impacts the customer’s opinion of your brand and, thus, their likelihood of buying from you again or recommending you. When your customer-facing performance surpasses customers’ expectations, it’s a good customer experience. And that’s exactly what you should strive to achieve.

Why CX matters

Overall customer experience has become a central focus of companies for a good reason. Here’s why you must pay attention to it.

1. Helps you stand out

CX can be a key, real-time differentiator for your brand in a cluttered market. As brands compete for attention, the experience you offer can make your products and brand more appealing. Whether it’s a unique purchase experience or a happy customer’s testimonial, you can use it to promote your brand.

2. Wins customer loyalty

When you provide superior customer experiences, they’ll likely keep coming back to you for repeat purchases. Additionally, loyal customers may even recommend your brand to others, leading to greater customer acquisition. It also helps you increase your customer lifetime value (CLV).

3. Boosts brand reputation

Happy customers may share their experiences within their circles or online. It can have a ripple effect on your brand image and reputation. When other prospects come across reviews saying good things about your brand, they’ll form a positive image in their mind, leading to better word-of-mouth marketing.

4. Generates more sales

Here’s the thing—84 percent of consumers spend more money on great experiences. So, a vast majority of your customers might end up purchasing more from you, leading to greater sales and business growth.

Customer experience vs. customer service: What’s the difference?

Customer experience is often paired up with customer service. Although the two concepts are related, there are some key differences.

Customer service focuses on helping customers with their issues so they can better utilise your products. The way your support team provides service to your customers can affect the overall CX. But it’s not the only factor that influences it.

Instead, customer experience is a broader concept and includes every interaction customers have with your brand across multiple touchpoints. These include your website, payment process, product ease of use, and more. Customer service is only one of those customer touchpoints in their journey.

How to measure customer experience

By now, you might have a clear picture of the components of a positive customer experience. But to improve CX, you need to be able to measure it in the first place.

Based on the insights you get from measuring your CX, you can determine how to better implement customer experience management (CXM). Here’s how you can go about it.

1. Conduct surveys

You can cut the guessing game short by directly asking customers for feedback. Create surveys using a survey platform or your CRM and send them out to your customers. You can launch in-app surveys or choose to send them through email or other modes.

There are three major types of surveys you can conduct to get a clear understanding of your customer experience:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey: These surveys typically ask the customers about their satisfaction levels. You either provide them with a scale from 0 to 10 or let them select from “Very unsatisfied” to “Very satisfied.” A higher customer satisfaction score is a likely indicator of better customer experience.
• Net promoter score (NPS) survey: This survey helps you determine your brand loyalty and measures the likelihood of a customer recommending your brand to someone else. It typically involves a scale of 0 to 10 for the likelihood of recommendation. A higher score means customers are happy with your offerings.
• Customer effort score (CES) survey: It helps you measure customer experience by asking customers about the ease of using your product or service. The idea is that ease of use plays a major role in customer retention. You can use a scale of 0 to 10 or ask customers to agree or disagree with the statement about ease of use.

2. Analyse support ticket trends

You can use your CRM or ticketing software solution to track ticketing and support activities. The concept here is that customers choose to raise tickets or reach customer support only if they encounter issues. A lower ticket volume or number of support queries is indicative of superior customer experience, and vice-versa. Likewise, you can analyse the ticket data to see which issues are routinely popping up.

3. Analyse customer churn

Regardless of how fantastic your offerings and service level are, churn will always be there. But an increasing rate likely points toward a bad CX. To identify the reasons behind customer churn, you can launch exit surveys asking customers why they’re leaving your brand. Working on this feedback can help you prevent future churn.

4. Track your customer metrics

You can also monitor customer metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), using your CRM to better understand your CX. A higher lifetime value means customers are sticking to your brand, which could be the result of a superior experience. You can also measure your retention rate and average resolution times (for customer service) to determine the state of your CX.

Start improving your customer experience

Customer experience plays a major role in your business growth, fueling retention and driving revenue growth. Start measuring your CX, and make changes to your CX strategy, to elevate customer satisfaction levels. And be sure to invest in the right set of tools to help you measure and improve customer experience.

Act! CRM can help you personalise your marketing and communications with customers. It can also reduce resolution time and bring in consistency through marketing automation. Start your free trial now to see how Act! will elevate your customer experience.

Customer experience FAQs

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