Make a lasting impression by creating an unforgettable customer experience

If you want to stand out from the competition, you know that you can no longer simply offer a decent customer experience to those who interact with your company.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: to make a lasting impression with a customer experience so seamless and enchanting that no one will be able to forget you!

We explain everything there is to know about customer experience and the good reasons to invest time and money in it in this article co-written with Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel, president and founder of 1min30...

And to set you up for success, discover our top tips for improving it, and a few examples of companies that have proved their worth in this area.

What exactly is customer experience?

Let's define customer experience

Customer experience is the sum total of the emotions felt by a customer when interacting with a brand during the customer journey: before, during and after the purchase.

The different elements that make it up vary according to the type of business. For example, an experience can be 100% digital, 100% physical outlets, or a mix of the two (known as phygital). The term Customer Experience ( or CX) is also often used as a synonym.

Although each customer experience is unique, it can be influenced by :

• the purchasing experience,
• the website user experience
• payment facilities,
• the quality of advertising,
• in-store sales relations,
• after-sales service, etc.

A word from the expert

Consumer needs in terms of customer experience are evolving rapidly, and we can anticipate several key trends. Firstly, personalization will continue to play a central role. Consumers expect tailor-made experiences, adapted to their individual preferences.

At the same time, speed and simplicity will become increasingly important criteria. Consumers are looking for fluid, frictionless interactions and instant responses to their needs. Finally, the emotional dimension will become even more important. Brands that succeed in establishing emotional connections with their customers will create memorable experiences and build loyalty.

Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel,

When does the customer experience begin?

It extends from the very first contact with the company (advertising, website, call, etc.) to the end of the purchasing process, and continues after the sale.

It's worth noting that almost all purchases start with an initial online search. Very often, therefore, the first contact will be digital.

Positive emotions in customer interactions

KPMG analyzed over 2 million customer reviews to determine the ingredients of a good customer experience. Six pillars emerged:

✅ Every obstacle in the customer journey is not only natural, but also represents an opportunity to make a positive contribution to the customer experience, provided you:

• anticipate them as far as possible
• don't repeat the same mistakes;
• capitalize on the resolution of past problems ;
• and do your utmost to remove the blockage quickly.

Discover our free downloadable customer follow-up template :

A good customer experience reaches level 3 of the pyramid

A good customer experience is a positive experience with your brand. Now, even if it's difficult to compare them, not all experiences are the same, and provoke stronger or weaker emotions.

Inspired by Maslow's famous pyramid, the customer experience pyramid hierarchizes the different levels of experience with a company.

• Level 1: the company offers a product or service that meets one or more of its customers' needs.
  
• Level 2: the value proposition is perceived as qualitative and in line with expectations:
  • needs are met; use is smooth and easy;
  • when obstacles or problems arise, the company is committed to resolving them.
    
• Level 3: the experience is considered memorable:
  • the product or service used can be innovative;
  • it generates genuine, pleasant emotions for the user (joy, laughter, smiles, thrills, the "wow" effect, etc.);
  • all interactions with the company are fluid and personalized throughout the purchasing process, and even afterwards;
  • their needs are anticipated and their expectations exceeded.

💡 The third level is difficult to achieve. It does, however, have the advantage of offering a vision, a course to steer towards to best improve theconsumer experience.

👉 To reach the 3 levels of the pyramid, you can use specialized software. Bloomreach, for example, effectively optimizes your customer experience. Thanks to its comprehensive features, such as advanced personalization, intelligent recommendation and advanced marketing segmentation, you can create unique interactions that captivate your customers at every stage of their journey!

Why is it essential to improve the customer experience?

Companies need to provide memorable customer experiences, to create a bond of attachment to the brand.

This has a positive impact on the company on several levels:

Increasing customer satisfaction

The best way to satisfy a customer is to offer him or her a positive experience, before, during and even after the act of purchase.
In fact, optimizing the customer journey increases satisfaction by 20%, according to a McKinsey study.

Building customer loyalty

Satisfying customers is great, but building loyalty is even better. It's a profitable long-term operation, since acquiringa new customer costs seven times more than maintaining a relationship with an existing one.

Increase brand awareness

Satisfied consumers are more likely to recommend a company or brand to friends and family, or on social networks.
A study by Forrester found that companies that put customer experience at the heart of their strategy saw their brand awareness increase by a factor of 1.6.

An exceptional customer experience helps you stand out from the crowd, giving you an edge that can make all the difference in a highly competitive market.

Increase sales

Over 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a product or service if the customer experience is good. The positive impact on your sales is therefore financially tangible.

☝️ According to a Twilio report, after a bad customer experience :

• 38% of customers switch to a competitor or cancel their order,
• 66% tell a friend about their experience;
• 41% stop doing business with the company altogether.

Examples of inspiring customer experiences

A champion ofonline customer experience, Amazon has been thinking about how to use technology to improve the shopping experience in physical outlets.

Starting from customer needs and identifying sticking points, they determined that going through the checkout and queuing were what most spoiled thein-store customer experience.

So they developed a technology that recognizes who's buying what, and charges the right amount directly to the customer's credit card. No more queuing!

Here's how in pictures:

Another example: to improve the in-store customer experience, Sephora has developed an application, MySephora, which contains all customer information and can be consulted by advisors to facilitate their work in real time.

74% of customers appreciate the experience, which they consider different from that offered by other brands.

7 tips for a great customer experience

1. Define a clear strategy

To achieve good customer experience management, your thinking should be guided by four fundamental questions:

• What is the scale of the task ahead?
  • Depending on your company's level of maturity on the subject, determine whether your customer experience requires a simple improvement or a more profound transformation.
  • Identify the "pain points" in the customer journey that generate dissatisfaction.
    
• What are the business objectives for optimizing your customer experience? What precisely are the expected results?
  
• What principles and values underpin your customer experience?
  • Your areas for improvement must take into account your values, your corporate culture and your brand image.
  • ☝️ Remember the emotional dimension that your customer experience must include.
    
• How are you positioned in relation to your competitors? That's why it's a good idea to rely on marketing research and in-depth benchmarking.

2. Know your customers inside out

This step goes hand in hand with the previous one, because to adopt the right strategy, you need to understand who your customers are and what their aspirations are.

You can create personas, which are fictional characters representing the segment of the population you're targeting. To create a more precise vision of your customers :

1. give them socio-economic and psychological characteristics;
2. identify the issues and needs your offer is likely to address.

A word from the expert

An essential tip for improving the customer experience is to put the customer at the center of all decisions and interactions. In-depth understanding of customer needs, preferences and journeys is key. Use the data collected to personalize every interaction, anticipate expectations and create memorable moments. What's more, facilitate customer journeys by eliminating friction. Simplified processes and transparent communication contribute to a positive customer experience. Finally, actively listen to your customers' feedback and use this information to continually iterate your approach and constantly raise the level of customer experience.

Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel,

3. Involve all company departments in the adventure

To guarantee optimum customer satisfaction, make sure you involve all stakeholders (marketing, customer service, support, R&D, etc.).

Teamwork is one of the keys to success: don't forget that the customer must be satisfied at every level, at every point of contact in the purchasing process.

4. Think omnichannel customer experience

As you can see, you always need to look at the customer experience as a whole, with effective customer support from the pre-purchase phase through to after-sales service.

These moments are crucial, as they often involve questions, frustrations and complaints that need to be answered quickly.

Implementing continuous, omnichannel communication helps to build a solid relationship of trust.

☝️ To achieve this, we recommend the use of appropriate customer relations tools. Here are 3 examples:

• Helpdesk software such as Freshdesk can make all the difference. It centralizes requests from the ticketing platform, phone calls, chats, emails and social networks. It can also automatically assign a task to an agent, with a priority level and the customer's history, to provide context and anticipate responses.
  
  
• RingCentral Experience Client centralizes all the channels deployed for your retail activity (Live-chat, messaging, In-App messaging and Google my business). What's more, the tool enables every employee to respond to customers in real time, to avoid frustration.
  
  
• With a unified platform like Zendesk, you have all the tools you need to deliver a quality experience to your customers across all channels. By centralizing customer data and analyzing it, every member of staff can intervene effectively. You can automate the sending of personalized messages tailored to the different stages of the customer journey.

5. Personalize customer relations

According to a Monetate study, 79% of brands that have exceeded their annual sales forecasts have implemented a relevant personalization strategy.

To achieve this, you need to know each customer... or at least give them the illusion that you do. This recognition must be palpable across all communication and distribution channels (store, call center, website, etc.).

💡 If you're in e-commerce, be aware of how essential it is toanalyze your data (or customer data) in order to:

• understand your target ;
• send them a personalized message, both in terms of wording (or choice of headings) and product offering.

To do this, you need a suitable tool such as CRM(Customer Relationship Management) software, developed to efficiently manage the processing and analysis of prospect and customer data.

☝️ Salesforce Marketing Cloud, for example, is perfectly suited: it offers the possibility of creating personalized customer journeys while promotingautomation and the involvement of the various stakeholders (customer service, sales and marketing).

6. Automate (intelligently) certain interactions

🤖. More than ever, the 2021 trend should be towardsintelligent automation, with the development of self-service or selfcare technologies (dynamic FAQs, chatbot).

In fact, 40% of consumers would prefer self-service to human contact.

Automation implies having an integrated customer relations platform to centralize customer data and contextualize past and future interactions, whatever channel is used, online or offline.

7. Measure customer experience for continuous improvement

Customer experience management involves measuring your actions and customer satisfaction.

Choosing key performance indicators (KPIs)

Each segment of the customer journey has its own indicator or indicators! Here are a few tried-and-tested examples:

• Abandonment rate. Specific to e-commerce, it's highly evocative: if a customer doesn't go ahead with a purchase, it's because he or she was dissatisfied at some point along the way (payment too complicated, hidden charges, delivery times too long, etc.).
• Retention rate. This reveals a customer's loyalty, which, as we've seen, largely depends on the quality of their experience.
• Product return rate. This is a particularly revealing indicator of your customers' satisfaction with your products.
• Complaint rate. For a more precise analysis, you can categorize the different types of complaint according to their severity and recurrence.
• Customer journey tracking (CJT). More advanced than the customer effort score (CES), it analyzes the customer journey, and when frustration or abandonment occurs.

These indicators are essential for evaluating the performance of your marketing actions and identifying potential areas for improvement in your strategy. Forget manual reporting of these indicators (phew!), software automates all this for you.

🛠 monday.com CRM, for example, is an intuitive, ultra-easy-to-use solution that guarantees comprehensive tracking of your prospects and customers, thanks to clear, automated dashboards and reporting. Make informed decisions based on figures updated in real time:

• sales figures and team performance,
• management and customer experience KPIs,
• mailing and marketing campaign performance analysis... and much more!

Collecting customer reviews

You can make satisfaction questionnaires available online or in-store, ask customers for their opinion on the website or a product review by email after a purchase, and so on. This will enable you to carry out a proper diagnosis of the current customer experience.

NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a useful tool for this. It asks a question like "Were you satisfied with your experience with us? Depending on the result, respondents are classified into three categories:

• Promoters (score 9 to 10),
• passive (score 7 to 8),
• and detractors (score 0 to 6).

Customer experience generates value

It's a fact: customer expectations are increasingly high, and their purchases are much more considered than before.

☝️ Companies can no longer limit themselves to the bare minimum of transactional interactions and after-sales service.

What's more, the Internet and social networks have changed the game for consumers, giving them more power. They can have a positive or negative influence on a company's reputation.

👉 So nurturing and enhancing your customer experience, and therefore instilling positive, pleasant emotions in your customers, is an essential key to generating value, and the new hobbyhorse for companies.

🎯 To successfully meet such a challenge, keep in mind that everyone in your business must act in concert in the360° apprehension of the customer experience.

Stay connected to your customers, your values and your objectives. And don't forget to constantly measure the impact of your actions, in order to identify areas for improvement.

Your customers have everything to gain... and so do you!