Businesses that focus on customer experience (CX) find unique ways to meet the needs of their customers. Customer experience goes beyond customer service and encompasses the whole journey for the customer. Now it’s time to take action. Once you understand your customer’s journey, then you can use that to grow your brand.
The process of renovating or building a new kitchen evokes a common emotional journey, and it’s one that is similar to what your customers go through when they encounter your brand or your product. Before making purchase decisions, they are hopeful, yet cautious. Once they have made these decisions but before finalizing purchases, they wonder if they made the right decision and are also anxious. Once the new kitchen is complete, they settle in and feel happy and energized, realizing they made a good decision. When you build your CX around that emotional rollercoaster, you can meet 99% of your customers on that journey.
But how do you do that? Riley & You has some ideas to help get you started.
Map your company’s CX journey. Adam Toporek from ConvinceandConvert.com says, “The most foundational step in customer journey mapping is identifying the touchpoints where your customer interacts with your organization…Any distinct point where the customer interacts with the organization should be mapped.”
Pick one CX area to improve. Now that you’ve mapped out your CX journey, what’s one area that you think you need to work on? Don’t try to tackle the whole journey at once – that’s overwhelming, and you’ll probably give up in despair.
Explain, discuss, share ideas, then delegate to leaders on your team. This is how you make improvements happen. Pick one area, set objectives, assign responsibilities, and give yourself a deadline to implement changes. You’ve done this in other areas of your business, and this is no different.
Focus on exemplars for hope. Look for a couple of people on your team who will embrace these CX concepts and help set the standards for others. Pro tip: They may not be your best salesperson or your longest employee. Look for the folks who are “young, scrappy, and hungry.”
Work on that CX area until you consistently create success. You might feel like you want to tackle the entire journey at once, but stay focused on success in a small area. Once you have that area running smoothly, then move on to whatever is next on your list. You’ll build a stronger journey if you make sure each section is solid before you move on to the next.
When you take the time to consider your customer experience, you will see repeat customers. That’s why investing in customer experience is a great place to put your resources, and Riley & You can help you with any point in your customer’s journey. We are here to support you so that you can grow your business one satisfied customer at a time.
