Customer Experience is the cornerstone of any successful business strategy. Everyone talks about it, but to do it well, you need to know it in bulk email marketing services depth. In this post, we start from the basics and explain what Customer Experience is. Why it is important for your business, and how to improve it.
What is Customer Experience?
The most famous definition of Customer Experience is, without a doubt, that of Meyer and Schwager who in 2007 published Understanding customer experience on the Harvard Business Review. Here it is:
“Customer Experience is the internal and subjective reaction of the customer to any direct or indirect contact with a company”
After reading it, it is easy to understand why it is so important. But what do we mean by direct and indirect contacts? The first are those channels through which the company and the customer interact directly during the purchasing process or while using the product . Indirect contacts , on the other hand, do not occur at the request of the customer but of the company. Therefore, these are all interactions based on sales channels, communication or word of mouth .
Evaluate your company’s level of Customer Experience
The next step, once you understand what Customer Experience is, is to understand how customers evaluate it and consequently what tools you can use to improve it.
The Manning and Bodyne Pyramid, first published in Outside In in 2012, is a great tool to get an idea of how customers rate the Customer Experience. The criteria considered are, in order of importance:
- Response to needs
- Ease
- Pleasantness
It is only when these 3 criteria are fully respected that the customer will not only become loyal but will also activate a word-of-mouth mechanism among his friends and family. A virtuous circle that can lead your company to obtain excellent results. Of course not without effort. These criteria, in fact, are evaluated by the customer every time he comes promotes bloggers’ creative enthusiasm into contact with your company , whether it is making a phone call to one of your employees, receiving a text message or entering one of your sales outlets to receive assistance.
You can’t not communicate, effectively
It goes without saying that to improve the Customer Experience it is therefore necessary to communicate in a timely and effective way . Only in this way, in fact, will you ensure that the contact between the customer and your company leads you to climb the pyramid. The types of communication that can help you in this are the most varied:
- Notifications, reminders and alerts: to alert customers about news, emergency situations or to notify them of an in-store pickup;
- Updates on shipments and returns: to best manage the logistics of your eCommerce and always keep the customer updated at every stage;
- Appointment management: to avoid no-shows at appointments, to make the customer feel pampered by reminding him when and where the appointment is but also to allow him to reschedule it in a few steps;
- Customer Service: To ensure that any problem is resolved as quickly as possible. So that even an unexpected event can turn into a positive experience.
But which tools should we focus on? Mobile messaging has become crawler data increasingly popular , thanks to the universality of SMS , Whatsapp , Chatbot and much more. These are channels that customers already know very well , with which they are used to interacting and which have very high opening rates. Consider that SMS has an opening rate of 96%, for example. Or that 66% prefer to communicate with companies via SMS or messaging apps (TechCrunch).