Last updated: The holy grail of customer experience requires agility

The holy grail of customer experience requires agility

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We’re inundated with motivational tropes, quotes, and messaging about customers. We constantly hear about how fragile our relationships with them are, how great customer service should “just work,” and how the customer is always right.

While none of these things are wrong, they can lead to an unhealthy dynamic.

All those factors can make it hard for brands to be confident in their CX. Because a great customer experience – so critical to happy, loyal customers – is also a constantly moving and shifting target.

So what are business leaders doing to adapt? Enter agile customer experiences.

Adapting while flying the plane: Responsive customer experience

How we manage the customer experience comes down to perspective. Aside from our own biases, the lens we look through belongs to the business. It’s the company, after all, that creates the framework for the customer journey.

With that comes other truths. Businesses must adapt and transform to keep up with their customers because, when you distill it right down, the customer’s experience is indivisible from revenue growth. We know what the goal is, and has always been.

With CX agility, businesses can not only keep up, but but stay ahead and smooth the ground for their customers. It’s the key to delivering effortless experiences without falling behind, says a report from Aberdeen Strategy and Research.

Against the background of constantly monitoring changes in market conditions and demand, businesses that implement a responsive CX are those that transform, innovate, improve, and adapt their customer engagement in order to understand and act on growth opportunities.

Aberdeen's 5 building blocks to maximize success

  1. Use root-cause analysis to determine factors influencing customer behavior & sentiment
  2. Establish KPIs to track & measure CX activities
  3. Proactively engage customers through outbound communications (e.g., notifications, alerts)
  4. Create models of customer buying behavior processes to map “customer journey”
  5. Use AI and automation to manage & adjust CX activities through data

CX agility: Benefits and strategies

Adaptability is an incredibly powerful tool to wield in business. According to Aberdeen, these organizations enjoy 2.2x greater annual increase in customer satisfaction rates and achieve 80% greater year-on-year increase in profit margins than their traditional CX-led counterparts.

Whether you’re looking at commerce performance, connected data, or marketing engagement, the benefits are remarkable. But what does an organization need to do to achieve them?

Here are three strategies to consider:

  1. Know thyself (and thy customer)
  2. Keep it personal
  3. Adapt, collaborate, and transform

Personalization, done right

You need to be able to build a connected, holistic view of your customer to really know them. That means offering employees across different departments access to different views of account data.

By using customer data platforms to connect with a blend of internal and external sources, you can spot prime touchpoints, as well as analyze the data for factors that influence behavior and sentiment.

Accuracy is foundational when it comes to great customer experiences. It allows consistent personalization, which reduces the customer frustration that leads to churn.

Analysis is only one part of it. The most adaptive organizations are proactive in their engagement with data, using everything from online surveys to IRL conversations with agents to build a truly customer-oriented customer. That data is integrated within their CRM system and informs their strategic decision-making process.

Making connections, staying human: That’s an nimble customer experience

Technology only takes you so far when it comes to responding to customer needs and market trends. With a nimble customer experience, brands can react quickly while creating a board culture that values end-to-end adaptability and insight-led decisions.

That’s what enables collaboration across departments. A connected view of customer data allows teams across sales, service, and marketing to address buyer needs and expectations accurately and consistently.

If these seem like a simple, logical flow for doing good business, well, you’re pretty much on the money. But major transformation starts by recognizing that you need to be proactive with your approach to and use of KPIs and their underlying data — with inputs from across the supply and demand chain.

Along with focusing on business goals, you’ll be able to engage with transparency and take care of the relationship in a more human way, notifying customers with alerts before issues such as delays can affect their trust.

This sort of sensitivity to wants and needs is exactly the standout behavior companies need to build loyalty in changing markets, whatever the weather.

Business, better:
Better outcomes.
Better experiences.
Get the game plan HERE

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