Your customer experience strategy is imperative to not only determine the performance of your business but also, gain valuable insights into how happy your customers really are. Our various assessment channels allow us to see exactly how your business engages with your customers throughout every touchpoint. These are indispensable parts of the customer experience. From the employee who first engages with your customer, to the user experience of the website, to the final sale and follow-up journey, every step is key to building a winning customer experience strategy.
What Is Customer Experience?
Customer experience refers to the quality of the interactions that your customer has with every element of your business. Explicitly defined as the perception that your customer has built towards your brand, a positive customer experience is required for your business to be able to grow and become successful.
What Is A Customer Touchpoint?
A customer touchpoint is any specific point where your customers are engaged with your business, with this interaction coming under many areas. These elements could include:
- Website interaction
- Social media interaction
- Emails
- Advertisement
- In-person interactions
It is important to know your customer touchpoints so you can clearly see how customers interact with your business, be able to map out the customer journey and experience, whilst regularly reviewing these touchpoints to maximise customer succession.
Why Is Customer Experience Important?
Above all, it is crucial that your customers only have a positive customer experience when interacting with your company. Otherwise, you’ll experience customer disloyalty and dissatisfaction, affecting your business significantly and hindering growth. A great customer experience will make your customers want more and provide you with many long-lasting benefits, such as:
- Customer retention
- Building a strong reputation
- Boost sales
- Improving employee morale and happiness
What Is A Customer Experience Strategy?
A customer experience, otherwise known as CX, strategy is a detailed roadmap that includes the company’s plans to maintain, improve and ensure only positive and high-quality customer experiences are held across each touchpoint. This CX strategy enables the company to set reachable and achievable goals, typically consisting of tasks that will contribute to overall customer satisfaction. Some examples could be:
- Implementing live chat online for better customer experience
- Delivering personalised customer experience
- Create unique CX with social listening, seeing what is trending and what isn’t working
- Listen to customer feedback and action this, showing that you’re listening to what they’re saying.
- Make your customers feel appreciated, surprising them with personalised messages, rewards and even gifts (if this is possible)
At Mystery Shoppers Ltd, we conduct detailed market research and compliance audits as part of our services to measure your business performance. With the ability to create tailored mystery shopping programmes and solutions to assess how well your customer experience strategy works, we thrive on working closely with businesses to improve the happiness of customers and achieve long-lasting success.
Did you know?
It really is no surprise that customer experience is so integral to a customer’s journey, with a staggering 96% of customers saying that “customer service plays an important part in their choice of being loyal to a brand”.
So, here are expert opinions on our five tips to improve your customer experience strategy:
1. Test Your Services
To be able to work on any areas that are lacking customer service within your business, it is crucial to establish exactly where these areas are. Understanding your customers’ needs is the pinnacle of this, by being able to empathise with exactly what it is your customer is needing.
This is why our mystery shoppers are a great way to see how your business is performing, as it’s not just shopping! Specialising in the usage of a combination of tools to measure service quality, and compliance and obtain deep insight on products and services across all industries, we are experts in this area.
Depending on your business and the industry your business operates in, (including hospitality, transport and more) we will provide you with a bespoke service to be able to effectively assess and monitor your company. From highlighting key areas for development, we conduct detailed analysis to enable your company to grow as much as possible and drive B2B growth.
2. Gather Informative Customer Feedback
Feedback is the most important component of effective learning and development, as this increases transparency and communication between your business and its customers. Enabling clear communication allows customers’ needs and requests to be addressed quickly and efficiently, reducing any confusion that may occur and dissatisfaction that could potentially be faced.
At Mystery Shoppers Ltd, we obtain detailed feedback, from our undercover shoppers, which we can then analyse to determine whether you are designing your strategy around your customers and your market needs. We will help you to implement a strategy that fulfils these needs, being able to resonate with your customers by putting ourselves straight in their shoes and see your company through the eyes of a mystery employee.
3. Identify Pain Points
Pain points, also known as areas where your customers often experience a specific problem with a product or service, must be addressed and dealt with immediately. Otherwise, customers will have a negative customer experience and most likely hold a negative view of your company within their head, as well as not returning back again.
Unlike traditional surveys which can hold biased views, our mystery shoppers provide real-time feedback that is not restricted to a list of five questions and tick boxes, where your company has no idea of the thought process that led to these decisions and how they could be improved.
Identifying these genuine pain points and talking to teams about their results allows businesses to engage directly and listen to their customers. By understanding the problems that your customers are having and how you as a business can overcome them is integral to the success of your business.
4. Personalise Every Customer Touchpoint
Do your customers feel as if your business knows and values them? If the answer is anything but yes, then this step will be critical to complete for your business. Your customers want to be invested in before they invest in your business.
The good news is that our mystery shoppers can pinpoint which areas of your business would be so much better if they were personalised. For example, do you send your newsletter subscribers intro emails that don’t feature the customer’s name? Or have a policy where guests are sent follow-up messages after they’ve requested support from your team? We can work with you to implement these personalised aspects of the customer journey, creating long-lasting and close-knit relationships.
5. Empower Your Employees
A key part of the CX relies on helpful, forward-thinking employees who go out of their way to fulfil the needs of their customers. We are sure that your organisation is built up of many hard-working members, which is why we want to keep your employees motivated and happy. As they say, happy employees = happy customers!
We also want hard-working employees to be recognised for their tremendous effort and contributions, which is why we love gathering positive feedback where your customers have been over-the-moon with the support that was given to them. Our mystery shoppers can do just this, acknowledging individuals who have shown exemplary behaviour and encouraging others to follow suit.
Elevate Your Customer Experience Strategy Today
Now that you’ve read our top tips, you can start implementing a winning customer experience strategy with the help of our mystery shoppers.
Book your free company quote today, where we can discuss the best strategy for your business.
We can’t wait to hear from you, so contact us today by calling +44 (0)1409 255025 or emailing us at enquiries@mystery-passengers.com.