Customer Experience Engineering (CXE) is a growing field that focuses on designing, managing, and improving the interactions between a company and its customers.

At its core, customer experience engineering seeks to ensure that every touchpoint a customer has with a company leaves a positive and lasting impression. This discipline combines aspects of design, psychology, marketing, and technology to create engaging, satisfying, and memorable experiences for consumers.

To excel in customer experience engineering, professionals need to have a deep understanding of customer behavior, preferences, and expectations. They use data gathered from customer interactions to pinpoint areas for optimization, making data-driven decisions that improve various aspects of a customer’s journey – from initial discovery, through purchasing and support, to long-term loyalty and brand advocacy. Moreover, the success of customer experience engineering also relies on dedicated tech team recruitment, as these teams are instrumental in implementing the technological solutions that enhance the overall customer experience.

The role of customer experience engineering in the business world today cannot be underestimated. As competition across industries becomes more fierce, companies that prioritize their customers’ experience stand to gain an advantage in the marketplace. By employing customer experience engineering principles and strategies, organizations can foster stronger relationships with their customers and ultimately drive business growth.

Understanding Customer Experience Engineering

Role of Experience Engineering in Business Growth

Customer Experience Engineering (CXE) is a strategic approach to designing and optimizing the interactions between a business and its customers. It focuses on creating a seamless and delightful experience for customers throughout their journey, including pre-sales, actual purchase, and post-sales support. This approach is crucial as it directly impacts customer retention, brand loyalty, and revenue generation.

By aligning a company’s products, services, and internal processes with customer needs and expectations, CXE helps businesses to stand out in the competitive market. It enables companies to:

• Identify pain points and opportunities to improve their offerings and customer interactions
• Measure and analyze customer feedback to drive continuous improvements in customer satisfaction
• Create a consistent and memorable brand experience that fosters long-term relationships with customers

Difference Between Customer Experience and Customer Service

It’s essential to understand the difference between customer experience (CX) and customer service to implement effective CXE strategies. While both are integral to a company’s success, they differ in scope and focus.

• Customer Experience (CX): CX is a broader concept that encompasses the customer’s perception of their interactions with the entire brand, including the products, services, and various touchpoints. It covers the overall journey from pre-sale research to post-sale support and aims to create a positive and memorable impression.
• Customer Service: Customer service is a subset of CX that focuses on the specific interactions between customers and company representatives. It deals with resolving issues, providing information, and facilitating transactions, but it does not cover the complete customer journey.

As a result, when engineering customer experiences, businesses must address not only customer service touchpoints but also consider the entire customer journey, covering aspects like product offerings, pricing, and communication channels.

By focusing on CXE, businesses can foster customer loyalty, increase customer lifetime value, and ultimately drive sustainable growth.

Fundamental Principles of Customer Experience Engineering

Empathy

Empathy is an essential component of customer experience engineering. It involves understanding and acknowledging the needs, emotions, and preferences of customers. Actively listening to customer feedback is crucial in identifying their pain points and evaluating how products and services can be improved. A company exhibiting empathy for its customers demonstrates genuine concern for their well-being, leading to increased trust and loyalty.

Personalization

Personalization enhances the customer experience by tailoring products, services, or interactions to each customer’s unique preferences and needs. This can be achieved through various methods, such as:

• Analyzing customer data to understand their preferences and past behaviors
• Segmenting customers based on their characteristics, such as demographics or preferences
• Offering product recommendations or customized promotions based on individual interests

By adequately addressing the individual needs of customers, businesses can boost customer satisfaction, encourage repeat business, and build strong customer relationships.

Consistency

Consistency is vital for delivering a cohesive customer experience across multiple touchpoints. This may include:

• Ensuring uniform messaging and branding across channels
• Maintaining a similar tone and style in customer-facing communication
• Aligning product and service quality in physical and digital environments

Creating a consistent experience can help build trust, reinforce a company’s identity, and meet customer expectations.

Proactivity

Proactive customer experience engineering involves anticipating customer needs and addressing them before they become a problem. This can include:

• Identifying potential issues and implementing solutions in advance
• Offering assistance throughout the customer journey via well-timed communication or support
• Providing relevant information or tools to empower customers to solve their issues independently

By being proactive, companies can reduce customer frustration and strengthen the overall experience.

Processes and Technologies in Customer Experience Engineering

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is a crucial process in customer experience engineering. It involves visualizing and understanding the customer’s interactions with the organization across different touchpoints. This helps businesses identify bottlenecks, pain points, and opportunities to enhance customer experience. Key steps in the customer journey mapping process include:

• Defining customer personas
• Identifying touchpoints
• Mapping customer interactions and emotions
• Analyzing findings for improvement opportunities.

AI and Machine Learning Techniques

AI and machine learning techniques play a significant role in customer experience engineering. They help analyze vast amounts of data to generate insights and automate various customer-facing tasks. AI can facilitate personalized and timely interactions, leading to improved customer engagement. Some common AI applications in customer experience engineering are:

• Chatbots: for resolving customer queries and offering assistance
• Sentiment analysis: to understand customer emotions and feedback
• Personalization: for tailoring offers and content

CRM and Customer Data Management

Effectively managing customer data is vital in customer experience engineering. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems help businesses collect, store, and analyze customer information from different channels. CRM enables better decision-making and organization of resources, ensuring that customer needs are met effectively. Key features and benefits of CRM include:

• Single view of the customer: consolidating customer data from various touchpoints
• Segmentation: categorizing customers based on behavior and preferences
• Automation: streamlining marketing processes and tasks

CRM integration with other technologies, such as AI, can further enhance customer experience by enabling more personalized interactions and proactive issue resolution.

Measuring Customer Experiences

Key Performance Indicators

Measuring customer experiences involves tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs help businesses understand how well they are meeting customer expectations. Some common KPIs include:

• Average time to resolve customer issues
• First contact resolution rate
• Customer effort score

These metrics provide valuable insights to guide improvements in customer experience engineering.

Customer Satisfaction Scores

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores are essential metrics to gauge customer happiness with a product or service. CSAT scores are typically gathered through surveys, where customers rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5. Ratings should be monitored and analyzed to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.

Net Promoter Scores

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is another metric to assess customer experiences. NPS measures the likelihood of customers recommending a company’s product or service to others. Customers respond on a scale of 0 to 10. The scores are classified into three groups:

• Promoters (9-10)
• Passives (7-8)
• Detractors (0-6)

The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Higher NPS scores indicate positive customer experiences.

Churn and Retention Rates

Customer churn and retention rates provide insights into the longevity of customer relationships. Churn rate is the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period, while retention rate is the percentage of customers who remain loyal. Monitoring these metrics helps identify issues and opportunities to enhance customer experiences and encourage long-term relationships.

Customer Experience Skills and Training

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in customer experience engineering. It involves the ability to understand, empathize, and manage emotions effectively while interacting with customers. Professionals with higher emotional intelligence can better adapt to different customer personalities, handle difficult situations, and ensure a positive experience for customers.

Communication Skills

Effective communication skills are vital for customer experience engineering. These skills include active listening, clear verbal and written communication, and appropriate non-verbal cues. Professionals need to understand customer needs, convey information concisely, and provide appropriate solutions.

Customer-centric Mindset

Developing a customer-centric mindset is essential for customer experience professionals. This involves prioritizing customer needs and preferences. By focusing on providing value to customers, companies can foster long-term relationships, improve customer satisfaction, and drive business growth.

• Put customer needs first
• Personalize customer interactions
• Maintain a proactive approach

Continuous Learning and Improvement

Continuous learning and improvement involves acquiring new skills, staying updated with industry best practices, and regularly evaluating performance. This helps customer experience professionals adapt to evolving customer demands and remain proficient in their roles.

Incorporate the following aspects for continuous learning and improvement:

• Regular training sessions
• Performance evaluations
• Encouraging feedback culture
• Implementing new techniques and technologies

Customer experience skills and training are essential to engineer high-quality experiences for customers. By fostering emotional intelligence, improving communication skills, maintaining a customer-centric mindset, and focusing on continuous learning and improvement, professionals can excel in this field and drive customer satisfaction.

Industry Applications and Real-Life Examples

Hospitality Industry

Customer experience engineering has been widely applied in the hospitality industry. Hotels, for example, have improved their check-in and check-out processes using technology and personalization. Implementing mobile apps and using guest data have allowed hotels to provide tailored experiences that increase customer satisfaction levels.

Additionally, airlines have utilized advanced seat reservation systems, offering passengers personalized experiences, such as premium meal options and an entertainment system. The goal is to craft unique and memorable experiences for each customer, ultimately leaving them with a positive impression of the brand.

Digital World and Mobile App Experiences

In the digital world, customer experience engineering plays a crucial role in website and mobile app development. Companies invest in intuitive interfaces, personalized recommendations, and responsive customer service features, ensuring that online platforms meet user expectations.

For instance, e-commerce platforms utilize machine learning algorithms for personalized product suggestions and dynamic pricing strategies. Similarly, streaming services analyze user preferences to curate content recommendations, creating a bespoke user experience.

COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Customer Experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented new challenges for companies in delivering exceptional customer experiences. With social distancing measures and contactless services becoming the norm, businesses have had to adapt to this changing landscape.

• Remote collaboration and support: Companies implemented tools such as live chat, video conferencing, and chatbots to facilitate remote communication and collaboration.
• Contactless services: Delivery and transportation businesses, for example, adopted contactless pick-up and drop-off options.
• Virtual events and experiences: Several sectors, including the arts, fitness, and education, transitioned to virtual formats, leveraging digital platforms to continue interacting with their customers.

In conclusion, customer experience engineering is a vital component for businesses looking to provide high-quality experiences and build strong relationships with customers. Companies must prioritize customer needs and maintain a proactive approach to foster long-term relationships. Additionally, continuous learning and improvement are key to staying ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape. With the right tools, techniques, and technologies, businesses can engineer meaningful customer experiences that meet customer demands.

How Deel brings customer support team in-house and elevates customer experience.

It’s been a whirlwind year since I joined Deel at the start of 2022. As Global Head of Support and Services, I lead our growing customer experience team and have had the privilege of witnessing first-hand the explosive growth of the company –  e.g. from $57M ARR to 295M ARR within a year!  But amidst all the progress, there’s one question that looms large: how do we keep pace with change while continuing to deliver an exceptional customer experience?

Lets focus on several key areas to understand how Deel provides exceptional customer experience whilst keeping pace with hyper-growth. I’ll give you a preview: it’s all about bringing talent in-house, not outsourcing it.

In-House Talent

Unlike most companies, we don’t outsource our support team. Instead, my team hires directly and fully remotely in over 31 countries and counting. At first, this might seem like a daunting task. But we’ve found that it’s not only possible; it’s also more impactful for both our people and company, plus it’s more cost-effective in the long run.

The truth is, many companies outsource their support function because they believe it’s cheaper, quicker and easier. But by doing so, they sacrifice control over the end-to-end customer experience. At Deel, we’re committed to owning that customer service experience, from recruitment and hiring, to training and career development. We’ve built a foundation that allows us to source great candidates worldwide, widening our scope and reducing limitations. Over time, we’ve honed our screening and interview process to ensure that only the best candidates make it through.

Deel’s Customer Support function has a dedicated recruitment team, which means they truly understand the type of individuals we need in our growing support organization. Once a candidate has been sourced they go through a rigorous interview process that focuses on:

• Real-life case studies of support tickets, where we score the candidate on how they would respond to them with focus areas on empathy, getting to the point, clear and concise instructions, and time to resolution.
• Real-time chat simulations, where candidates are asked questions within a chat environment and have the resources on a knowledge base to quickly find answers. They are pinged at least three times by the Deel team who are interviewing them, so they are doing at least three concurrent chats. We want to understand how they can multitask and stay calm in stressful situations, along with finding the correct resolution to the situation and ensuring empathy is always present in the chat session.
• Candidates also interview with the Head of Support (me), where they have the opportunity to ask questions. I inform them of the career development track (more on that below), and we chat about the key attributes that make for successful team members, which are empowerment, trust, and collaboration within the whole of the organization.

Onboarding and Enablement

An area that Deel is super passionate about is investing heavily in the support team’s training and development. We’ve reduced our enablement program from 6-8 weeks to just 2 weeks, thanks to investment in the right tools, a dedicated enablement team, and an agent pod specialization program.

• Every new hire is assigned to what we call the Platform Pod. This is where they start to understand the product, the processes, and tools that we use to support our 15,000+ customer base, and where they are assigned a development Team Lead and a Quality Assurance (QA) team to help mentor and educate them.
• New hires are constantly supported, constantly monitored, have subject matter experts on hand to supervise them, and learn our growing and dynamic knowledge base, where we follow the principles of KCS (Knowledge Centered Service) methodology.
• As team members gain valuable product knowledge, they have the opportunity to move into more complex pods that include Payments, People, Reviews & Complaints, and start to build a career within the support organization.

Career Development

When I joined Deel, my number-one priority was to build a robust and clear career path for our team members, as well as the opportunity to move horizontally out of support into other teams. Customer Success, Client Onboarding, and Fintech are a few teams that have welcomed support team members with open arms.

Every team member understands the matrix and career path we have created for the Individual Contributor (IC) track and the People Manager track. Understandably, not everyone wants to be a people manager, so we’ve built a fair system where everyone can continue down the IC path and get compensated well, while agents that want to build their people management skills have the resources and a mentorship program to ensure they are successful.

• A typical IC frontline agent career path may involve moving into the Training/Enablement team, QA Team, internal project management, Level 2 support, or our Reviews & Complaints team.
• A typical career growth path for people management usually starts with becoming a Senior Support Agent (or as we call it within Deel, a Shift Manager). From there, they can progress to a Team Lead, then Pod Manager, before becoming a manager, or team lead within our Operations Team including Enablement, Training, QA, Level 2.

Today, 100% of our Shift Managers and Pod Managers have been promoted internally, and 85% of our Team Leads were internal promotions too, so we have a fantastic track record of rewarding the support team with internal promotions. We couldn’t do all of this if we outsourced our talent – the point is to incubate and grow great talent in-house so Deel as a whole – and our customers – can fully benefit.

Genuine Care

Every Deel team member, regardless of the team they belong to, cares deeply about our customers’ experience.  Genuine Care, one of our core values at Deel, informs everything we do from Alex (our co-founder and CEO) down to each individual at the company. We examine all customer feedback, whether it is positive or negative in order to constantly improve the customer experience journey.

Our #company-trust slack channel flags every negative comment or feedback we receive from customers, whether it is a tweet, a low TrustPilot Score, a personal message to Alex or another Deel team member so that we can analyze each complaint, pull in the relevant teams to resolve the issue at Deel Speed, complete a root cause analysis, and fix the issue so that it doesn’t happen again. We also analyze every DSAT (Customer Dissatisfaction) that support receives from our transactional surveys and we proactively reach out to the customer via phone to acknowledge the issue, gather more feedback, analyze the root cause, and fix.

Measuring success

Like any well run support organization, we created a suite of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the team, the pulse of the customer and the overall customer experience journey.  Here is a sneak peak into some, but not all, of our KPIs:

• Reducing incoming tickets: Every Product Manager has a goal of reducing incoming tickets on their focused product area. They are tasked with analyzing incoming tickets based on the root cause so that product improvements, new features, or rich self support content can be created.
• Contact ratio: We track the ratio of customer complaints to incoming tickets on an ongoing basis with a company goal set at a contact ratio of less than 0.04%.
• Total time to resolution: This is one of our most important KPIs, as customers want issues solved fast, not just answered quickly. We focus a lot of resources and analysis to ensure very quick total resolution times along with first response times of two minutes or less.

Our outstanding performance measures speak for themselves. Our lightning-fast chat response time averages close to 1 minute which ensures that we’re always there when customers need us. When customers reach out to us for help, we’re able to solve their problems on the first try 85% of the time, which is really important as we don’t like to transfer customers around. Our customers are very happy with our performance so far, scoring us 92 out of 100.  We’re able to achieve all this by doing everything ourselves and being very careful with how we work, which makes our staff happy and our customers satisfied.

Creating Value

We have developed various points in our support system to connect customers with other customer facing functions instantly. For our business customers seeking HR or workforce planning assistance, our system seamlessly connects the customer via video call to a dedicated member of our customer success and account management team. Similarly, for employees with complex HR or benefits inquiries, our system connects them to our specialized HR experience team. With this streamlined approach, we ensure our customers’ needs are met, and mutual value is created.

So, how do we keep pace with Deel’s explosive growth? By owning the customer experience, investing in our team, and setting high standards for ourselves. It’s been an incredible year, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

About the Author

Phil Dean is Global Head of Support and Services at Deel.

About Deel

Deel is the all-in-one HR platform for global teams with clients off different sizes across multiple sectors and geographies. It helps companies simplify every aspect of managing an international workforce, from culture and onboarding, to local payroll and compliance. For more information visit www.deel.com.

In this article, we will explore some examples of goodwill gestures that businesses can use to show appreciation to their customers.

Here are our top ten goodwill gestures for happier customers:

1. Offering a discount on their next purchase
2. Providing a free sample of a new product or service
3. Sending a handwritten thank-you note or card
4. Offering a complimentary upgrade or additional service
5. Providing a free gift with purchase
6. Extending the return or exchange period for a product
7. Offering free shipping or delivery
8. Providing a personalized recommendation or advice
9. Offering a refund or credit for a previous purchase
10. Providing a loyalty program or rewards points for future purchases

These gestures can help to build customer loyalty and create a positive relationship between the business and its customers. Here they are in more detail.

1. Offering a discount on their next purchase

Offering a discount on their next purchase can be a great way to reward customers for their loyalty. It is also cost effective, since customers are likely to return and make more purchases if they feel appreciated.

2. Providing a free sample of a new product or service

Providing free samples of new products or services is another way to show appreciation. Customers may be more likely to try something new if they know that the business wants them to have a good experience.

3. Sending a handwritten thank-you note or card

Sending a handwritten thank-you note or card is an effective way to show appreciation. Customers will remember the personal touch and this could potentially lead to increased loyalty and satisfaction.

4. Offering a complimentary upgrade or additional service

Offering complimentary upgrades or additional services make customers feel valued and appreciated. also encourages them to come back the future, since they know that they will be rewarded for their loyalty.

5. Providing a free gift with purchase

Providing a free gift with purchase is also a great way to show appreciation. Customers may feel special when they receive something extra and this could lead to increased loyalty and satisfaction.

6. Extending the return or exchange period for a product

Extending the return or exchange period for a product can help customers feel at ease when making purchases.

7. Offering free shipping or delivery

Offering free shipping or delivery is a great way to show appreciation for customers who place orders online. Customers may be more likely to return if they know that their orders will arrive quickly and without any additional fees.

8. Providing a personalized recommendation or advice

Providing a personalized recommendation or advice is another way to show appreciation. Offering customers tailored advice and suggestions can help build trust and encourage them to return in the future.

9. Offering a refund or credit for a previous purchase

Offering a refund or credit for a previous purchase helps show customers that the business values their opinion and wants to make sure they are happy with their purchase. This can lead to increased loyalty and satisfaction.

10. Providing a loyalty program or rewards points

Providing a loyalty program or rewards points for future purchases is another way to show appreciation. Customers may be more likely to return if they know that they will get something in return for their loyalty.

Such gestures of goodwill help create a customer-centric atmosphere and foster customer loyalty. Businesses can use these strategies to show appreciation and build stronger relationships with their customers. This is an important part of customer service, as customers need to feel valued in order for them to remain loyal to a business. By showing appreciation and making customers feel special, businesses can ensure that their customers keep returning and stay loyal for years to come.

Tony Smith, contact centre and employee experience expert, IR

Contact centres must provide exceptional customer experience (CX) – and technology, such as AI and chatbots, is playing a key role in transforming that experience.

The fast-evolving customer journey is, however, also completely changing the employee experience (EX), with agents now tasked primarily with handling the complex and demanding customer interactions that technology cannot resolve.

But how many contact centres are actively assessing the impact on the employee experience  and, critically, measuring the resultant influence on CX? From flexible working to interactions with subject matter experts across the business, call centre agents are working across complex, multi-vendor collaboration environments – and every part of the IT infrastructure needs to work seamlessly if employees are to have the quality of experience required to deliver the new customer journey.

Given the improved business performance associated with engaged employees, the interplay between CX and EX cannot be overlooked. Tony Smith, contact centre and employee experience expert, IR explores the correlation between employee engagement, job satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and the importance of a single view of the truth across the entire customer – and employee – journey.

Engage Everyone

It is increasingly recognised that the delivery of great customer experience (CX) demands a great employee experience (EX), but far too few companies consider the two in tandem. Just as it is highly unlikely that dis-engaged employees would go the extra mile to help customers, contact centre employees faced with unhappy customer after unhappy customer are hardly having a great EX – and that can lead to higher rates of churn, disruption and, as a result, a poor CX.  It cuts both ways.

The challenge is that today’s contact centre environment is hugely complex. Companies have invested heavily in an array of innovative technologies designed to allow customers to interact through a variety of mediums. They are leveraging AI and chatbots to empower customers with 24×7 self-service. And they are encouraging agents to reach out  directly to subject matter experts in a bid to accelerate the resolution of complex customer questions. The problem for both customers and employees is that the experience across this complex environment is rarely seamless.

How many call abandonments are due to employees’ poor video quality when working from home? Are employee churn rates rising because customers are fed up with constantly repeating information from chat bot to web screen and agent? Companies will never achieve the customer journey vision without truly understanding, tracking and managing the interaction between CX and EX.

Complex Environments

The CX journey is often envisaged at corporate level but translating that to reality is not straightforward, especially when departments are using different technology.  It makes perfect sense for customers to self-serve but what happens when an individual needs to transition to an agent? Is the information input by the customer during a webchat automatically captured and shared with the contact centre agent when the interaction moves to a video call? If not, and the customer has to repeat the information every single time, the agent is starting each interaction in a negative situation, causing frustration on both sides, and leading to a quality of EX that is likely to accelerate agent churn.

Plus, of course, employees are often working remotely, which means the CX reaches through the organisation and into people’s homes. How is the business managing the new challenges associated with ISPs, Wi-Fi, laptops, unauthorised cameras and headsets, as well as multiple video conferencing platforms and collaboration tools? If contact centre employees do not have a good digital workplace, and if their tools are not performing as they should, their EX is too poor to enable the delivery of the desired CX.

It is important for the CX and EX teams to come together, to understand the customer journey, where it interacts with employee journey and to determine how, where and when problems are occurring. And that requires an end-to-end view of the entire IT estate: it is simply not possible to achieve the depth of understanding or speed of response required when reliant on disparate data provided by different monitoring tools.

Single Journey View

End-to-end monitoring of the entire contact centre environment, including home working and the different UC tools used across the organisation, can provide the business with invaluable insight into both CX and EX, and how they overlap. With a single view across the organisation, from contact centre tools to voice applications, video platforms, web and collaboration tools, a business can quickly determine whether the current IT estate can support the customer journey vision.

In addition to identifying strategic issues, such as the need to increase capacity at peak hours, a single view can also rapidly flag problems at a granular level to minimise disruption and avoid dissatisfaction. If agents – and customers – are complaining about video quality, for example, is the problem the video platform, the operating system, public internet, router or Wi-Fi? Or has the agent plugged in their own headphones and speakers? Is there a problem in achieving successful interactions between contact centre agents using one UC and subject matter experts using another? A single, cross platform tool can rapidly flag an issue, identify the problem and enable rapid remediation.

A single view of the truth also provides companies with a chance to assess the potential impact of changes that may affect the customer journey. Will, for example, a deployment of a new ERP or CRM system affect any part of the customer journey due to network capacity issues? How will the introduction of a new customer self-service tool work in practice? Using synthetic testing to assess the end-to-end implications for both CX and EX is enormously valuable, ensuring a business never introduces a change without truly understanding the wider business implications.

Conclusion

Investment in technology has become a priority for companies not only to improve CX but also address the challenge of employee recruitment and retention by delivering a better EX. In the process, however, too many have inadvertently created new pressures that need, urgently, to be addressed if the business is to deliver its optimal customer journey.

Bringing together those tasked with CX and EX and providing trusted, cross business insight can be transformational. With a complete understanding of both journeys, where they overlap and are complementary, a company can ensure that every change, and every technology investment is understood and managed to ensure the customer journey vision is realised to the satisfaction of both customers and employees.

About the Author

Tony Smith is contact centre and employee experience expert at IR. To learn more about IR, visit https://www.ir.com/products/collaborate.

Customer experience planning is essential to the success of any organization. By creating a great customer experience, you can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here are 10 tips for success.

1. Define Your Goals: Do you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve with customer experience planning? This will help determine the scope of your strategy and decide which goals to focus on.

2. Know Your Audience: Spend some time getting to know who your customers are and what kind of experiences they’re looking for. Use this information to create personas and map out their journey with your product or service.

3. Conduct Customer Research: Gather feedback from customers through surveys, interviews, focus groups etc. This data will help pinpoint areas where improvements need to be made as well as insights into what makes a positive experience for them.

4. Create Personas: To ensure that your customer experience strategy is tailored to the needs of your customers, create detailed personas based on research gathered from surveys and interviews. These personas can serve as guidelines when designing new experiences and touchpoints along the customer journey.

5. Map the Customer Journey: Track each step your customers take while interacting with your product or service to gain an in-depth understanding of their journey with it. Identify any potential places where friction could occur, or where improvements could be made, and make changes accordingly.

6. Identify Touchpoints: Carefully consider every single interaction point between the customer and your brand – including website visits, emails, social media posts, phone calls etc.. Document them all for future reference so that when updating or fine-tuning processes you can keep track of what works best.

7. Create an Omnichannel Strategy: Aim to provide consistent experiences regardless of context – digital or physical – by utilizing omnichannel strategies such as making sure customer support is cohesive no matter how it’s accessed, or devices used.

8. Personalize the Experience: Today’s consumers expect more than just good products and services; they also want personalized interactions. Whenever possible think about using rewards programs, dynamic content, targeted emails and thank-you pages.

9. Measure and Optimize: Measure key performance metrics aligned with CX goals (i.e. increased customer retention, reduced churn rates etc.) over time in order to optimize and tweak processes as needed.

10. Constantly Evolve: While this isn’t necessarily a ‘tip’ per se, it is important to stay up to date on industry trends such as artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, and natural language processing (NLP) in order to continuously improve upon existing customer experiences.

In conclusion, customer experience planning is an essential part of any successful business. With these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to creating a great customer experience that leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The holiday season can be stressful – for customers and businesses alike. Here are three ways to better engage with customers during the holidays, brought to you by Zenarate.

1. Empathy First

Customer empathy starts by seeing things through the eyes of others. Through understanding and conveying a sense of shared experiences – “I know how frustrating that can be” – a bond is forged, and hostilities are lowered. Empathy is a key driver of brand perception. 71% of customers say that businesses that have shown empathy during the pandemic have earned their loyalty.

2. Soft Skills Matter

The ability to acknowledge customers and be an expert problem solver requires customer-facing employees to have a well-rounded set of knowledge and skills. For instance, while AI offers incredible advantages for some types of customer engagement, it can’t replace critical soft skills that strengthen human connections and improve experiences.

3. Embrace Active Learning

People learn by doing and practicing real-life scenarios before becoming experts. This is critical during the busy holiday season. Leading approaches, like simulation training, help associates confidently approach the busy holiday season. By mastering best practices first, team members can be prepared for almost any situation a customer can have.

The holiday season is a challenging time for many businesses – but it doesn’t have to be. By following these tips, you can better engage with your customers and make the most of the holidays!

In today’s business world, about 89% of businesses compete solely based on customer experience (CX).

Building a solid customer experience strategy to attract new customers and retain existing ones is even more crucial for business success now. But building your CX strategy from scratch can be a daunting task. In this article, we will discuss CX strategy- what it is, why you need one and how to build one for your brand.

What is a customer experience strategy, and why is it important?

A customer experience strategy is a plan of action to improve the overall customer experience at every touch point in the customer journey, pre and post-sales. A solid CX strategy outlines defined goals and actionable steps to help analyze and optimize CX efforts to increase customer satisfaction overall.

As every brand action affects customer perception directly or indirectly, building a strategic CX plan will ensure a consistent brand experience and help retain customers. In fact, up to 73% of customers assert that CX is a deciding factor while making purchase decisions.

Some key elements that contribute to excellent CX are:

• Timely response with effective solutions
• Effective communication and clarity
• Maintenance of human touch across your CX strategy
• Going the extra mile for your customers

5 Ways to create an efficient CX strategy

1. Define actionable goals

One of the first steps while designing your CX strategy is to set clearly defined goals. You can take actionable steps toward your goals by outlining what you want to achieve as goals help measure, analyze, and optimize your success rate and return on investment (ROI).

While setting goals, ensure they are measurable, attainable, and time-bound. This way, you can keep track of them periodically. You can readjust your strategy accordingly after reviewing your metrics to see what works and does not.

For instance, a specific and actionable goal is to increase the net promoter score (NPS) by 10% in the next quarter. This goal is specific, measurable, and time-bound; hence can be reviewed at the end of a quarter to cross-check targets.

2. Leverage automation and AI

In today’s era of digital transformation, organizations are adopting technology and AI to maximize business potential. As a customer base grows, leveraging technology like Interactive decision trees to automate routine processes is the way to go. But this does not mean robotic CX or generic mass emails.

If used correctly, AI and automation tools can add tremendous value to your CX strategy and prove convenient for your customer support team. For instance, 70% of customers now expect a self-service portal on websites.

Some benefits of AI-powered self-service portals and chatbots include the following:

• Auto responses to frequently asked questions by customers
• Allow agents to focus on more complex tasks by reducing the need to attend to every customer
• Promotes agent empowerment as it deflects large number of calls to self-service channels
• AI chatbots assist in personalized, quick responses. They extract relevant information from a pool of knowledge repository and present customers with specific information like order numbers, recent purchases, and so on.

3. Understand your target audience (TA) and buyer personas

Mapping out your target audience and buyer personas is a crucial step in your CX game plan. These will help you understand your customer base and the pain points they experience while interacting with your brand.

By understanding the pain points of your personas in their customer journey, you can enhance their experience for a smooth and enjoyable CX. Accordingly, you can focus on reachability on their preferred channels of communication to provide consistent, reliable service.

4. Build an omnichannel strategy

Customers today want convenience and personalization while interacting with a brand. According to Epsilon, 80% of customers will shop from a brand that offers personalized experiences.

In the same way, customers prefer to choose their own journeys across multiple channels at different touch points. By creating an omnichannel strategy using a knowledge management system, you can ensure a consistent and unified experience in branding and information.

An omnichannel approach will help:

• Integrate multiple channels – This will allow your customers to access support across multiple channels in a seamless way. Organizations can deliver an omnichannel customer experience as information is consistent across all channels that you support. They can simply pick up where they left off previously on one channel and continue on another.
• Improves customer satisfaction – By having a unified contact strategy, you can offer different support channels for your customers to access. While some simple queries can be solved through self-service, other more complex problems can be resolved by live agents.

5. Measure your CX metrics

Reviewing your CX strategy is just as important as designing one. By analyzing crucial CX parameters, you’ll be able to measure whether your strategy is effective. Some important parameters include:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – It measures the likelihood of customers recommending the business to family or friends
• Customer Effort Score (CSE) – It measures the effort customers need to exert to get their problems resolved with a brand
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – It is the degree to which customers are satisfied with a product or service
• Agent Effort Score – It measures the effort an agent has to put in finding the answer to the customer queries. This metric is the result of all other CX metrics like average handle time, average speed to answer, average response time, etc.

Bottom line

Measuring your CX efforts will help you understand how your business is performing as well as your customers’ perception of it. Encouraging customers to share their feedback and reviews is a great way to engage with them and understand how they feel about your brand overall. Accordingly, you can optimize this feedback to build a solid CX strategy and up your customer service game.

In the wake of significant inflationary pressures leaving consumers with less disposable income, retailers can’t afford to ignore the critical importance of creating exceptional customer experiences.

Verint has conducted independent research into the positive influence customer experience strategies have on earning shoppers’ discretionary dollars in the inflationary era.

The data, based on a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers who had purchased from a mass market retailer from February to July 2022, provides insights into how retailers are doing in their customer experience initiatives to maintain “share of wallet” at a time when global inflation is soaring.

To the Retail Customer Experience Victors, Go the Spoils

More than two-thirds of consumers surveyed are less confident in the economy than a year ago and 76 percent are spending less, trimming retail purchases.

Struggling with inflation and economic uncertainty, 56 percent of shoppers indicated “value for the money” as one of the two most important factors impacting their loyalty to mass market retailers. The survey also reinforced the fiscal benefits of customer retention and keeping existing customers happy. Ninety-one percent of consumers shop at their favorite mass market retailer at least once a month, with 83 percent spending $50 or more on average.

After having an amazing customer experience, 88 percent are likely to make a repeat purchase, 82 percent are likely to recommend to friends or family, 68 percent are likely to join a loyalty program, and 63 percent said they are likely to write a positive review.

At the same time, retailers that delight first-time shoppers can also benefit greatly. Three-quarters of consumers who tried a new mass market retailer for the first time in the past six months shopped there more than once, with 90 percent of first-time shoppers making purchases at least once a month thereafter.

Still, a negative customer experience can send shoppers packing. Reasons that consumers were likely to stop purchasing from a retailer included: if a customer service issue isn’t resolved in a single attempt (62 percent), if unable to communicate on their channel of choice (57 percent), if forced to repeat themselves (55 percent), and if they have to endure long wait times (50 percent). Customer patience has been depleted and there are competitors eager to take advantage of any less-than-stellar retail experience.

Brands Must Optimize All Channels for Engagement

Email, phone and in-person interactions are the most commonly used channels for brands to interact with their customers. However, our research found that customer interactions are increasing most on modern digital channels, and as customer journeys become more complex, it’s important to develop effective omnichannel strategies to cover all bases.

Opportunities for digital engagement are not being optimized; 62 percent of companies have websites, online communities, or digital forums, but less than 15 percent of customer interactions happen there, and it’s a similar story for messaging and social.

Meanwhile, overall customer interactions are growing in volume; 82 percent of respondents say their interactions are increasing on at least one channel. Modern digital channels saw the most frequent reports of volumes increasing, with social media (61 percent), chat (56 percent), messaging (56 percent) and website, online community, or forums (54 percent) the top four. There’s room to expand the number of conversations across those four channels, with the average percentage of customers interacting with companies less than 16 percent.

At a time when customer retention is extremely important, concentrating only on the traditionally most popular channels such as email, phone, and in-person, is not an option. With only around one-third of people surveyed saying their company is looking to add chat and messaging in the next 12 months, companies could be missing the chance to engage customers via these increasingly popular digital channels. Automation will be the key to engaging on these channels at scale and managing the increasing volume of customer interactions.

The Importance of Knowing Your Customer Better

Not only is providing amazing experiences likely to generate higher revenues through repeat purchases, but great customer experience is also likely to lead to more referrals and grow a company’s loyalty program.

The first step is understanding exactly how a company can deliver standout omnichannel customer journeys and ensure they keep their share of wallet during times of economic hardship. Then companies can pinpoint which areas of their customer engagement strategies are working well, or badly, and act swiftly to make any required changes.

This is where collecting customer feedback in real-time becomes critical. Gathering customer insights in the moment enables retailers to take immediate action, often through customer self-service or a hand over to a contact center employee for assistance. Real-time digital feedback data means issues can be identified and handled early, on a micro and macro level, before becoming widespread.

Automation also plays a key role in the delivery and analysis of customer insights. Companies can drill down into the recurring customer issues and identify areas for improvement across each touchpoint and channel. With the level of automation growing for 8 in 10 companies, ensuring it’s deployed on the right channels, for the right use cases, will be key.

Keeping Customers Coming Back

Today’s retailers are putting a premium on building positive experiences across multiple engagement channels to help retain loyal customers during the economic downturn. Success is predicated on retailers embracing a channel-less mentality and a “One Workforce” approach in which a high-quality customer experience is guaranteed, no matter what channel is used or what type of employee (human, bot, hybrid) handles the engagement. It makes providing a consistently exceptional customer experience possible.

About the Author

Jenni Palocsik is Vice President, Marketing Insights, Experience and Enablement, at Verint.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve, it’s important to start thinking about CX trends now. Here, James Dodkins reveals four CX trends that you can’t afford to ignore in 2023.

Companies Will Reprioritize Their Values to Meet Changing Buyer Priorities

Price will drive the majority of buyer decision making. Organisations will need to think more about how they can still drive-up customer service in a way that doesn’t impact the price the customer pays so for example it could be intelligent automation and AI which can help organisations anticipate customer needs and react to those needs in real time to retain customers and give them the best offers.

Hyper Personalization Will Happen in 2023

Personalization will become even more precise. We’re at a stage of customer service maturity particularly with apps that means hyper-personalization is the natural next step in customer service and by that automation will start replacing typical human to human interaction. For example, you arrive at a fast-food drive through, and it recognizes your license plate and brings up your last order. Do you want this again with a 10 percent discount? Just say yes or just touch the ordering device. So really speeding that up and providing a hyper personalized experience.

Companies Will Begin to Accurately Measure Customer Trust

We live in an experience economy where speed, quality, price can be negotiated. For example, having an item get to you more slowly if it doesn’t cost as much or being happy to wait for an item of better quality, all of that’s negotiable. The only non-negotiable right now is trust making it the premium currency in a customer relationship and it’s crucial that a way is found to measure it.

Customer Feedback Surveying Will Stop Being Annoying

People see surveys as a measure of experience, and don’t realize that a survey is an experience itself. Most surveys are annoying and irrelevant and the only way to fix this and increase your response rate is to make surveys fun, contextual, and more personalized. Brands will focus on creating interesting survey experiences for their customers to gain more valuable feedback for continuous improvement.

About the Author

James Dodkins is Customer Service Evangelist at low-code and intelligent automation platform Pegasystems.

When it comes to modern business, there are a lot of moving parts. With so many things you have to do to be successful, it can feel like an uphill battle to own any business.

Whether you own a restaurant or are building a tech start-up you think will be the next big thing, customer service is historically a big part of a company’s success. It doesn’t matter what your business does, if your customer service is bad you won’t be able to thrive. Below is your guide to improving your business’s customer service and user experience.

Create an Email Newsletter

If you have a tight group of fans, followers, and customers, one great way to improve your customer service while showing the people individual care is through an email newsletter. You can send a monthly or weekly newsletter telling your customers and the press exactly what you are working on. What sales will be available? How are you improving your business? When you are looking for a way to engage with customers and get their feedback, you should create an email newsletter. It is a good way to start.

Use Customer Experience Services

Another way to work on your customer service is to improve their experience when they call, come in, or contact the business in another way. Professional Customer Experience, or CX services, provide many ways to work more closely with your customers. For example, these services offer customer support on the phone and in person. They provide social media services. There are community management and trusty and safety measures. The right customer experience specialist will show you a better way to increase efficiency and how you can treat your customers better than ever. If you improve the customer experience of working with them, people will remember.

Improve User Interface

Whether you are dealing with customers at the register or are creating an app for them to use, improving your user interface will better your service. It goes together with customer experience. If your website is tough to navigate or your app doesn’t make sense, people won’t want to use it. Today, even if you aren’t focused on an online or tech business, making a better website or improving the way that your delivery app works will increase business and feelings about what you do. Whether the tech is an inherent part of your business model or not, improving your online user interface will improve your business.

AI Chatbots

Many of the questions, concerns, and problems that customers have could be easily solved by artificial intelligence and chatbots. AI chatbots will interact with customers on your website or inside your app to answer their questions and point them in the right direction for what they need to do. Whatever your business is doing, AI chatbots can provide a speedy and timely response to any concerns that the customer has. A lot of customers might want to talk to a human being, but if you first offer the ability to answer the questions and provide solutions to problems that come up in the process of transaction and customer service. If your company uses a website and gets calls about the product, using AI chatbots could change the way you do things.

Team Building & Bonding

One vital part of running any business is how your team responds to customers. If they are responding negatively to them, it is likely because they aren’t happy at their job. A great area to focus on regarding your customer service and experience is your employees. Your employees can have a large impact on what people think of your company.

You want to cultivate happy and productive staff that happily engages with and helps customers. If you want to have great customer service that provides a memorable experience for everyone you interact with, you should work on your team building and bonding. There are plenty of ways to do this. Get to know them. You should allow them to get to know you and do things together and relate to each other. It will all improve.

Whether you are involved in a business focused on tech, food and beverage, consulting, design, or something else, there are plenty of ways to improve the experience of your customer and the service that you provide them. It starts with your approach and ends with your follow through.

There are plenty of ways to improve your customer service and the experience people have with your website, app, tech, or employees. If you focus on making their time engaging with you pleasant and helpful, people remember. You might create a future customer.