Before life moved online, the most personalized and memorable customer experiences were delivered by people wearing white gloves and they were a privilege for the few.
Today, however, with a proliferation of digital channels and customer choice, such instantaneous and hyper-personalized customer experiences can be crafted by any brand that has the right omnichannel and data capabilities. And customers in 2023 certainly expect every brand to be doing this.
Here, CX Network presents four tips from seasoned CX practitioners on how to create a stand-out customer experience.
Contents:
- Accept that the customer is already digitally savvy
- Integrate real-time experiences into the customer journey
- Empower employees to be the ones who stand out
- Pay attention to contact drivers and channel suitability
Accept that the customer is already digitally savvy
Gautaam Borah, ecommerce director, author and CX Network board member
While execs scratch their heads on digital creativity, CX Network board member and ecommerce director Gautaam Borah says brands must recognize that they are dealing with digitally savvy customers. To stand out from the competition, Borah notes, their brand must be present from the moment a customer looks for a product or a service.
To do this, Borah says the organization must be customer-centric, digitally transformed and focused on analytics.
“If you take the example of a Web 3 company, it can be digitally creative by nurturing a strong engaged community across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Discord,” Borah notes.
“Customer needs are explicitly stated in regular community interactions, mostly in Discord where their customers are concentrated, and these inputs can be used for product design and iterations. If we look at the e-commerce sector, you can also use heat-mapping tools such as Microsoft Clarity to indicate which part of the platform may be ready for a redesign,” he adds.
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Integrate real-time experiences into the customer journey
Nadya Melic, CX Network board member and VP of customer solutions, APAC and ME, Vodafone Business
Many CX practitioners limit their focus to service and support channels when assessing brand presence. Nadya Melic, CX Network board member and VP of customer solutions for Vodafone Business APAC and Middle East, says the solution is to create a CX ecosystem that encompasses the entire customer journey and experience, from marketing to sale and service.
It requires CX, marketing and product teams to see the organization through the customer lens. Melic says that brands should look to integrate real-time product demos and engage with customers through press, social media, video, VR and metaverse-based technology.
She says: “Brands should not be afraid to showcase what their products can do in real time and in a live scenario. The more access we have to the reality of the performance of a product, the experience is easier and brand awareness is stronger.
“VR and the metaverse can be used for real-time stimulation, meaning customers have realistic experiences, while brands can use the platforms to create equal access for people from different backgrounds,” she adds.
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Empower employees to be the ones who stand out
Valeriia Chechotkina, CX production operations manager for Revolut
British-Lithuanian neobank Revolut is a fast-growing business in an increasingly crowded marketplace of disruptors. Rapid growth has created additional pressure on Revolut’s employees to deliver exceptional customer experience across tech, product and support.
Valeriia Chechotkina, CX production operations manager for Revolut, says: “Companies have to focus on their internal culture and the customer-first mentality they promote within. The odds are that more and more projects and initiatives will be focused on improving CX and EX, since that is one of the main reasons for customers changing products.”
To improve its employee experience, Revolut trained its agents to become support specialists, rather than generalists.
Chechotkina explains: “We had generalists on front line support who had to know all the product and app information and were constantly trained on new features and updates. It’s a lot of information for one person and complex to keep on ahead on. We then split these generalist agents into specialized teams, for example insurance specialists, crypto, credit, et cetera, from front-line service to the data and management teams.”
On the customer experience itself, Chechotkina says customers need service that is intuitive, efficient and does not inconvenience them. “Simple, elegant and helpful is the recipe for a truly ‘wow’ experience.”
Watch Valeriia Chechotkina talk about creating customer wow moments at CXN Live: Financial Services 2022: Why Revolut specialized its CX agents
Pay attention to contact drivers and channel suitability
Saki Takeda, director of product management and customer service at Netflix
Digital native brands such as Netflix, built their business models on simple, original and effective experiences, rebelling against the CX status quote of their respective sectors. Netflix never charged the late fees its analogue rivals once did, while Uber brought transparency and tracking to the taxi industry.
These advances might be facilitated by the digital-first business model, but customers now carry the same demands for simple, original and effective CX to legacy businesses and brands.
Advising on how such organizations should converse with their digitally-savvy customers, Saki Takeda, director of product management at Netflix and CX Network board member, says organizations should take time to understand their situation before putting a strategy in place.
She says: “Organizations should invest in researching and understanding their customer demographics their channel preferences to determine a strategy for digital-first in combination with their contact-driver analysis.
“This will provide them with a clearer understanding of where they should be heading,” she adds.
For more insights on creating memorable customer experiences on digital channels, download the CX Network research report CX Reimagined.
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