The customer experience is a fundamental factor in a company’s marketing strategy, helping to define the expectations and needs of its consumers and to strengthen ties. It is defined as the set of emotions and feelings felt by customers throughout their journey to purchase a product or service. A source of influence on satisfaction and loyalty, it risks tarnishing the company’s image and preventing its development if mismanagement occurs. Through optimization, it can increase sales and attract new consumers. To improve your customer experience, here are some tips and tricks presented in this article.
Digital customer experience, a strategic priority
According to an Adobe report titled “Digital Trends 2018,” the customer experience is a strategic priority for organizations. Forty-five percent of respondents have it as one of their top three priorities for the coming year, while 20 percent make it their top aspiration. For respondents from Europe, 23% want to make the customer experience as compelling as possible. According to information from international audit and market research firms including Forrester Research (specializing in the impact of technology on the business world, editor’s note) with an emotionally positive experience, 6 times more customers would be inclined to buy, 12 times more likely to recommend a company, 5 times more likely to forgive a mistake and 7 times more likely to try a new product. Customer experience management would then appear to be of paramount importance for a company.
Understand your customers with the help of CRM software
To improve the customer experience, it is essential to know your customers and their consumption habits. These are essential conditions to offer each customer a personalized and efficient relationship. Without this, the consumer is faced with a failing service that is unable to provide answers and effectively steers them in the right direction. Software specialized in customer relationship management, also called “CRM software” are tools offered to the company to help it. They make it possible to centralize useful commercial information and to analyze interactions between the firm and its customers. With this software, a company is more likely to transform prospects into customers and to build loyalty among existing customers. There are thousands of them, free or paid, which identify the customer journey, the purchase path, and the consumer experience, proposing improvement processes to counter the competition. The start-up Q°emotion, for example, improves the customer experience through emotions. Its solution allows for analyzing these emotions to understand what consumers feel about a brand or a company. It studies all content written by Internet users such as comments, notices, complaint forms, or emails sent. In the case of annoying messages from the company, the reaction of the customers will be evaluated so that the company can adapt its vocabulary according to the interlocutor.
Using new technologies
Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, with increasingly stringent consumer expectations. Its growth is actively participating in new practical, atypical, and personal experiences.
Artificial intelligence at the service of companies
Artificial intelligence can transform the customer experience and create value for businesses and e-businesses. By collecting a set of data and statistics, it will be able to establish the primary parameters of customer loyalty through the retention rate and the number of repeat purchases. This technology also allows automating in a fast and concise way, the interactions of companies with their customers. With this, companies can provide a more immediate and personalized response and address individual issues while reducing service costs and improving customer service.
Chatbots, conversational agent software, new customer contacts
With artificial intelligence, chatbots, conversational agent software, are multiplying. They are proving to be a good solution for a company’s sales platform. They accompany the customer in his purchases, but also in the discovery of a service. The latter can then ask all the necessary questions and be listened to during his various complaints. These conversational robots offer the possibility of a 24h/24h service, an important asset seducing the new generations who are looking for everything that is fast and instantaneous in their path and practical purchase on the Internet. With chatbots, mixed, or augmented virtual reality also transforms the customer experience. Consumers are plunged into an artificial world where all their senses are awakened, allowing them to visualize a decor or a product while at home, using a headset, a smartphone, or a tablet. This technology is a means of building customer loyalty, outside of a visit to the store, by tuning products according to their needs and desires, while socializing the act of purchasing.
Ranking of brands and companies, champions of the customer experience
Companies and brands are striving to deliver the best customer experience, either through a digital transformation or by reinventing practices across multiple domains. In June 2018, with the help of the AFRC (Association Française de la Relation Client, editor’s note), KPMG’s Customer Experience Center of Excellence (an international network of audit and consulting firms) published its ranking of brands and companies that are champions of customer experience.
The criteria of the ranking
To determine this, the organization focused on 6 criteria such as personalization of the relationship, integrity, and problem-solving. On the podium, in the first place was the mutual insurance company, MAIF, followed closely by the coffee brand, Nespresso, and the medical appointment platform, Doctolib. Start-ups are also investing in their innovative solutions to enrich the customer experience both online and in physical stores. This is the case of the start-up, Sky deals, which offers a platform for in-flight shopping experiences where a traveler during the flight can make real-time purchases via his smartphone, computer, or seat-mounted screens. The products are then delivered to his or her home or directly to the airport of arrival.
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