How many times does customer view/feedback about your product/service help you to enhance sales? Did you ever feel in your work that a personalized connection goes a long way to retaining a customer? How many times have you felt overwhelmed with information flow and data to use it to your advantage to create an edge for your product/service? If your answer is consistent “No” for the above questions, then you need a rethink. Even if your answer is “Yes”, there is constant learning on customer experience management to use it support your business.

Customer Experience Management is how customers engage with your company and brand, not just in a snapshot in time, but throughout the entire arc of being a Customer. So it’s a customer for you when he is researching for his need for a product/service, and then evaluating a product/service provider followed with sales and after-sales purchase.

Every organization irrespective of its size and business are in the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE business, and how an organization delivers for customers is as important as what it delivers.

We list five major reasons why your brand/organization needs “Customer Experience Management”.

1.     Understanding your “Customer”

 It’s vital to understand your customers, their emotions, expectations, and motivations to better serve their needs through your product/service. Each day the world is changing so are “our customers”. So if a customer earlier was comfortable with physical merchandise shopping, now he/she wants and is equally buying through mobile apps and internet websites. With changing dynamics, customers’ perceptions, preferences & value that they derive through the organizational product/service too is getting influenced every day.

Customer experience management and the tools such as feedback processes, customer journey mapping, etc can support a brand/organization to understand how their product/service is fulfilling the need of the customer and what are the” customers” attitude, preferences for a product/service. Customer experience management through various tools is to just not rely on gut feelings, past practices, or pseudo/incomplete understanding about customers but a scientific and metric-driven procedure to “understand your Customers”.

2.     Creating a Competitive edge for your business.

 A business thrives through an edge or “Unique selling point” which differentiates a product/service from the overly crowded marketplace. Customer experience management for a brand/organization can give the executive team clarity on how their product/service is adding value to the “Customer”. What is the pain point of the customer through organizational current offerings and how can satisfaction and value be derived to make the customers stick to you and to attract more customers to your brand/organization.

We see most of the times the organizations compete on “Price”. Customer experience management can support your brand/organization to create a unique selling point as per your brand promise through offerings that create satisfaction/loyalty and an edge for you.

3.     Enhancing growth and business success

 Organizations have to make sure that they treat their customers well or in other words, customers need to carry with themselves a positive emotion of their experience with the brand/organization for growth and success. To a customer, an organization is one big team. It doesn’t matter to them that you are catering to millions of customers at a time or have some “X” process to deal with contingencies. They need a clear understanding/consistent experience which reduces the cognitive, physical loads or creates efficiencies of time for them.

The customer decides the mode of contact with the brand/organization as per their convenience, preference. And it is the “customer” only who will decide if the brand/ organization is standing true to its brand promise and clearly how relevant it is for them.

Understanding customers well and creating a clear and consistent experience through organizational deliverables need engaged employees, technology, and an understanding through a customer experience strategy that remains the center for business growth/success.

4.     Creating a tribe of loyal customers who stay with you

 A satisfied customer will be far more engaged with a brand/organization, as they will talk about the positive feelings and experience to family, friends and will continue bringing in more customers along with their own purchases. Research proves that a satisfied customer is less sensitive to price fluctuations than an unsatisfied customer. And as always it is always easy to retain a customer than having and attracting a lot more. Simply, in today's times, the only way to survive when an online recommendation can break you is to create a tribe of loyal customers. They talk about you, engage with you and buy from you to create a charter for growth and success. And customer experience through the entire journey will make sure that they have good satisfaction to become your loyal customers and become advocates.

 55% of people are willing to recommend a company due to outstanding service -- moreso than product or price.

5.     Greater clarity on where your organization is going and “Why”.

 Customer Experience Management uses numerous tools for measurement and improvement of the processes, products, policies, people, and place. The tools such as customer maturity assessment, feedback processes like Csat, NPS, customer effort score etc help the organizational executive team to understand and map their deliverables,  strengths, and areas for improvement.

 This clarity on the “As-is” that is working for an organisation and arenas that needs more work can go long way to get clarity on where the organization is headed to. Understanding of the customers and mapping with organizational deliveries to create One view of the customer shall support to create an understating of “WHY” for the organization.

 Customer Experience Management is as much about your brand promises for product/service pricing as it is about emotional connections while understanding the expectations and perceptions that a customer has for your brand. And thus it is more about a journey on how the customer is interacting with your brand/organization which requires a focused technology, people engagement, policies, and above all clarity about your “Customers”.