How to Improve Your Customer Experience Strategy

We all know happy customers are the backbone of any successful business. But in today’s competitive landscape, merely ‘satisfying’ customers isn’t enough. You need to create customer experiences that leave customers raving about your brand.

In fact, Shep Hyken spoke about this in a recent episode of Hiver’s Experience Matters Podcast.

“If all you’re doing is actually delivering an average experience, guess what happens? You’re a huge risk. You’ve got to try to get away from mediocrity and average, that’s for sure, and try to create a moment of magic. This is what’s going to get your customers to come back.”
-Shep Hyken, CX Expert I CAO at Shepard Presentations, LLC

Here, we’ve compiled 15 actionable tips to elevate your customer experience strategy.

Table of Contents

• What is customer experience?
• 15 Tips to Improve Customer Experience
  • 1. Identify your customer persona
  • 2. Map out the customer journey
  • 3. Build a customer centric culture
  • 4. Personalize customer interactions
  • 5. Humanize the conversation
  • 6. Implement loyalty programs
  • 7. Set realistic expectations
  • 8. Surprise customers (pleasantly)
  • 9. Leverage social media to your advantage
  • 10. Create an omnichannel customer experience strategy
  • 11. Remove data silos
  • 12. Simplify your returns and refunds process
  • 13. Implement an efficient checkout process
  • 14. Design a user-friendly website
  • 15. Provide self-service options
• How AI Can Improve Customer Experience
• Closing Remarks

What is customer experience?

Customer experience is the holistic perception and feelings customers forms about your brand based on their interactions across multiple touchpoints. It involves every aspect of the customer’s journey. Right from when they initially discover your brand to purchasing and using your products or services, to post-sales support and beyond.

For instance, customers interact with your brand multiple times across different channels – website, social media, emails – before and after making a purchase. A good practice here is to make sure data flows seamlessly across these channels so that the customer has a cohesive and consistent experience.

A positive customer experience lays the foundation for strong customer loyalty and repeat business.. A negative experience drives customers away.

15 Tips to Improve Customer Experience

Here are some proven strategies you can put into action if you want to elevate your customer experience strategy.

1. Identify your customer persona

One of the most important tips to improve your customer experience strategy is to develop a detailed understanding of ‘who’ you are catering to. 

Building a customer persona gives you insights into your customers’ behavior, preferences, and requirements. Businesses can tailor their services and products according to this information to offer personalized experiences.

Customer personas also help you anticipate customer needs and proactively address them to reduce friction points across their journey.

Here’s how you can build a detailed customer persona:

• Conduct interviews and surveys: Use surveys and interviews to collect information from your potential and existing customers on products/services they’ve purchased or shown interest in.
• Analytics: Use website and social media analytics to get insights on content consumption, traffic sources, and sentiments.
• Sales and customer service teams: They can give you information on motivations to purchase, pain points, and goals.

2. Map out the customer journey

If you’re looking to minimize friction points in your customer’s journey, a good practice is to map out all the interactions customers have with your brand. From brand awareness to post-purchase.

Creating a customer journey map can help you pinpoint the exact areas where customers face challenges.

Here’s how you can map your customer’s journey:

• Differentiate the journey into stages: Divide customer journey into awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. You can add more stages depending on the individual requirements of your business
• Identify touchpoints: For each stage, narrow down the touchpoints across which customers interact with your brand
• Design a visual representation: Use flowcharts, diagrams, or infographics to represent the customer journey in detail. Identify bottlenecks and opportunities where customer experience could be improved

3. Build a customer centric culture

It’s easy to think that customer experience is the sole responsibility of the support team.

However, the truth is that all the departments in an organization need to work in tandem to deliver an exceptional CX at all touchpoints.

For instance, customer support teams resolve queries and collect feedback. Product development teams use this feedback to improve offerings. The IT team maintains the infrastructure needed to support and run the product without disruptions. Finance teams ensure invoices are processed on time.

As you can see, all these functions contribute to customer experience in one way or the other. This is why it is important to emphasize that CX is a multi-department function and everyone plays an important role in keeping the customer happy.

Here are some ways to build a customer-centric culture:

• Lead by example: Managers and supervisors should model customer-centric behaviors. For instance, resolving issues with patience and empathy.
• Train employees: Implement regular training programs to help your employees develop skills like active listening, tactical communication, and problem-solving.
• Automation: Automate routine tasks wherever possible to free up time for employees to focus on strategic planning for customer-centric activities.

4. Personalize customer interactions

The goal of personalization is to ensure that every interaction with a customer is relevant to their experiences. It fosters emotional connections with customers and makes them feel understood and valued. 

Creating content, products, and services that directly speak to a customer’s interests are also likely to improve engagement which can increase conversion rates.

There are multiple ways to personalize a customer’s experience. 

• Personalized communication: Send personalized product recommendations and content suggestions based on customer preferences or behavior. For example, a customer frequently browses women’s casual dresses, and has similar items in their wishlist. You can send a personalized email with a curated list of dresses and accessories picked just for them

• Dynamic website content: Set up your landing pages in such a way that they can dynamically adapt to the visitor’s preferences to display content or products relevant to them.
• Personalized onboarding: If you’re welcoming a new customer, the best way to engage them is to tailor your onboarding workflows to match their preferences. This way your new customers will get the most contextual and relevant information. For instance, HubSpot has personalized its onboarding and training process to suit the needs and preferences of different segments of customers

5. Humanize the conversation

Customer service can feel extremely transactional.

For instance, customers may receive robotic customer service emails that are very impersonal when they email support teams.

So, how can you make your customer service conversations more human? 

First off the list, encourage your agents to use their first names. You can also provide pictures of your staff in email signatures and even add links to their social profiles to help customers put faces to names.

Of course, making the people on your team feel real is only the first step. 

You also need to personalize your processes.

Here are a few techniques that can help: 

• Don’t rush: Empower your staff to take a little extra time every now and then while helping customers. 
• Empathize: Show your customers that you are there to help them and that you empathize with them. This means acknowledging their frustration. Use phrases such as: “don’t worry, here’s what I’m going to do for you,” or “I completely understand what you must be going through.” 
• Ask casual questions: Where there is time, consider allowing your staff to ask extra questions. For example, if the customer has purchased several products—but has an issue with only one of them—you can always ask how the others are faring. This easy and extra step will help the customer feel like they are being genuinely cared for. 
• Encourage follow-ups like you mean it: It’s also good to make your customers feel welcome to follow up once again if their issue persists—but you have to really mean it. For example, you can encourage employees to sign off on their emails with something like: “Thank you so much for reaching out with your concerns. Once again, my name is David, if you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to reach me.”

6. Implement loyalty programs

Loyalty programs incentivize customers to come back and purchase from you again. They offer additional value to customers which may prevent them from switching to your competition.

You can structure your loyalty programs using point systems, discounts, exclusive offers, personalized benefits, and other benefits. Offering such incentives is like rewarding customers for making frequent purchases and it helps them feel appreciated and valued. 

It also encourages customers to spend more to reap these benefits, increasing their total lifetime value over a period of time.

7. Set realistic expectations

Trust is an important element of a positive customer experience.

This is why it is important for organizations to set realistic expectations with customers about products, services, and support. Unmet expectations can lead to frustration and disappointment.

The simplest example of this is communicating realistic timelines for delivery of goods. Clearly communicate the expected delivery timeline either on the product page or during the checkout process so that the customer knows exactly when to expect it. 

Also, update the customer in case there is a delay in delivery. 

Here are a few tips to set realistic expectations with customers:

• Simplify your messaging: Use crisp, clear, and simple language to communicate product information, delivery times, and service completion
• Set service hours: Clearly communicate when your support team will be available
• Under-promise, over-deliver: Always under-promise and preferably have a buffer built into your interactions. This way you can account for unexpected difficulties which may impact timely service.
• Status updates: Set up status notifications to be automatically sent to customers so that they are informed about ongoing updates about their orders or services

8. Surprise customers (pleasantly)

Companies that are able to pleasantly surprise their customers have a significant advantage over those organizations that treat them to the usual experience. Let’s look at an example.

Zappos is famous for its customer service surprises. They have a “call us for anything” approach in which representatives are known for helping not just with problems relating to shoes, but just about anything. 

In the past, they have also been known to send flowers, pizzas, and more to customers. Talk about delivering the best customer experience!

Here are a few easy ways to surprise your customers:

• Occasionally mention specific customers (positively) on your social media accounts. 
• Send them a follow-up a few days after solving their problem, asking if everything is working fine. (Be sure that the message feels conversational rather than a template.) Check in after say a month to see if everything’s fine.
• Have the CEO write a handwritten note to thank them for the trust they place in your business. 
• Provide custom discounts or money saving recommendations based on what you learn about a customer 

9. Leverage social media to your advantage

Great brands don’t use their social media accounts for only marketing and branding efforts. Rather, with a little bit of creativity, they are able to create memorable interactions that leave customers happy. 

Here are a few tips you can use to truly take your social media game to the next level:

• Respond promptly: Attention span of people on social media is incredibly brief. Respond to comments, mentions, and direct messages quickly. Acknowledge both positive and negative feedback. This shows you are attentive and care about your customer’s experience.
• Use social listening tools: Use tools like HootSuite, Sprout Social, or Locobuzz to monitor industry trends, brand mentions, and keywords. This can help you understand what customers think about your brand
• Create communities: Building dedicated forums or groups on social media platforms enables customers and prospective customers to actively interact with your brand. It also provides a platform for customers to interact with each other and get peer support for resolving issues.

10. Create an omnichannel customer experience strategy

Modern customers expect a consistent brand experience through their entire journey with you. They interact with your brand across web, email, phone, chat, and social media and if they want to switch between these channels, they should be able to do so seamlessly. 

An omnichannel customer experience is all about offering customers an integrated experience across multiple channels. 

Here is a four-step process to build an excellent omnichannel customer engagement strategy and enable better customer experiences:

• Carefully assess your customers: Create detailed buyer personas, identify their pain points, and how your product or service can best solve them.
• Identify customer touch points: This step will help you understand where your customers spend their time, how to best engage with them, and create personalized experiences.
• Create customer journey maps: Identify the first customer touchpoint and follow their entire journey with you till the point of sale. Get a comprehensive view of various touchpoints and ensure they are integrated to provide a unified experience.
• Analyze and optimize: Make good use of customer feedback to continuously find gaps and optimize your omnichannel experience.

11. Remove data silos

Many organizations track metrics such as Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT),or Net Promoter Score (NPS), but fail to use them correctly. This is because in most cases, these metrics are not properly integrated with other important business data. 

Support agents don’t get the complete picture and cannot draw any meaningful conclusions due to this kind of siloed data.

Here’s how you can remove data silos to get a 360 degree view of the customer

• Use integrated systems: Integrate your CRM with ecommerce platforms and other sources of customer data such as Shopify or Magento. This gives you a complete overview of the customer and their order information
• Improve data accessibility: Ensure relevant teams have access to important data so everyone has the information needed to improve customer interactions
• Standardize data formats: Implement standard rules and conventions for date formats, address formats, customer ID, and units of measurement. This ensures consistency in how the data is viewed across the organization, minimizing confusion. For instance, all customer IDs should start with CUST, followed by fixed length numeric characters. Example — CUST0001

12. Simplify your returns and refunds process

As a customer you may have come across situations where a product is damaged or just not how you expected it to be. In such cases, the solution is to return the product in question and get a refund.

A simple return and refund process is fundamental to ensuring customer satisfaction and building trust. 

Customers are more likely to complete a purchase if they feel confident they can return the product and get their money back in case they don’t like it. This is because an easy return process reduces the perceived risk of purchase.

Here are some way to simplify your return process:

• Clear policy framework: Be absolutely clear when defining conditions for your return policy. Ensure it is easily understandable and that there is no ambiguity so that customers are completely aware of what they can return and what they cannot.
• Flexible time frame: Offer a realistic return window so that customers can decide whether they really want to return a product. Ideally a 3 week window is appropriate for smaller purchases while a 30 day return window may be reasonable for larger ones.
• Hassle-free returns: Keep the return process simple and easy. Avoid extensive documentation and offer pickup so that the customer does not have to spend too much time and effort in returning an item.

13. Implement an efficient checkout process

Friction during the checkout process can be frustrating for customers. In fact, nearly 17% of shoppers abandon their carts due to complicated checkout procedures.

Simplifying the checkout process improves conversion rates and also enhances the customer experience. Customers always want an easy and hassle-free shopping experience and a complicated checkout process is just not it. 

Here are a few ways to improve your checkout experience

• Simplify the checkout process: You don’t need multiple pages and forms during the checkout process. All that does is frustrate the customer and lead to abandoned carts. Instead, try using a single-page checkout flow.
• Optimize forms: Avoid using overly complex forms that ask for too much information. Collect only the required information and implement auto-flll and auto-complete to help customers save time.
• Optimize for mobile: Most purchases happen over mobile devices. Don’t count on customers completing their purchases if your checkout page is no responsive on mobile devices.
• Diverse payment options: Having multiple payment options and buy now, pay later payment plans improves the checkout experience and makes it easier for customers.

14. Design a user-friendly website

A potential customer gets their first impression about your brand from your website, and you want to make sure it is well-designed and user-friendly.

It should be easy to navigate and more importantly, should be accessible from any device. An visually engaging and informative website also encourages visitors to spend more time on it, which improves the chances of conversion.

Here are some tips to design a user-friendly website:

• Minimize friction and make it easy to locate important information
• Use clear call-to-actions to get users to engage with your website
• Ensure your website loads quickly across all devices
• Use high-quality, engaging content that delivers value to visitor

15. Provide self-service options

A recent report by Salesforce finds that nearly 61% of customers would first try to solve a problem on their own before contacting support. This is why self-service options are important.

A self-service option such as a knowledge base, or a chatbot enables customers to find answers to queries by themselves. Since these tools work around the clock, customers can get help at any time, even outside business hours.

Apart from customers, self-service options also reduce support staff workload since they can be used to provide instant responses to common queries. This allows your team to focus on more complex queries and also reduces operational costs.

For instance, Hiver has a knowledge base feature that allows you to build a centralized repository of help articles to answer frequently asked questions. It has an intuitive interface and adaptable site settings that can be modified to align with your brand’s look and feel.

You can also use Hiver Chatbot to provide 24/7 support to customers. The bot can resolve repetitive inquiries and help agents handle increasing volumes of incoming queries.

How AI Can Improve Customer Experience

Artificial intelligence solutions are a game-changer for businesses across several industries. From automating repetitive tasks to providing intelligent design suggestions to streamlining processes such as inventory management, AI plays a huge role.

Using AI powered tools can also elevate your customer experience strategy in multiple ways. In fact, a recent report by Hiver reveals that nearly 60% of support professionals are seeing the benefits of AI in customer support. 

AI powered solutions like chatbots and virtual assistants can be deployed on your website to offer 24/7 support to customers. They can provide automated responses to common queries, reducing wait times, and easing agent workload.

They can even be used to analyze customer data to identify patterns and study user behavior. Businesses can use this data to drive personalized marketing campaigns, offer product recommendations, and create tailored experiences. You can even use the data to continuously refine your customer service processes and proactively address issues before they escalate.

Closing Remarks

Customer relationship management is a difficult task. People often reach out to customer service expecting to have an awful time. But, you can prove them wrong, and give your brand a competitive edge against the other players in the market.

The right technique will help you increase your customer lifetime value and satisfaction scores. Use these powerful methods mentioned in the article to delight your customers and keep them coming back!