Transforming the Customer Experience

Buyers demand an experience where cross functions work seamlessly.

To win in today’s market, companies across industries must prioritize the customer experience (CX) in everything they do—sales, marketing, services and business models. It requires rethinking go-to-market techniques and how to engage with clients throughout their purchasing journey. And for companies looking to transform the client experience, digital is no longer “optional.”

What Is Customer Experience Transformation?

Customer experience transformation is the process of improving how clients interact with a brand. It aims to promote satisfaction, loyalty, advocacy and conversion. 

CX transformation is an ongoing process that seeks to keep a company competitive. It involves exhaustively overhauling components like:

• Tone and voice
• Engagement 
• Digital platforms
• Workforce
• Technological tools 
• Internal processes
• Company vision

How to Transform Customer Experience

Revamping client experience requires a customer-centric approach that ultimately leads to business growth. It also requires key steps to prepare in advance:

• Envision the ideal client experience by collaborating with key personnel across all departments. Involving each department ensures that everyone will work toward a shared vision.
• Engage a company that offers CX transformation services. A dedicated team working on the overhaul process will provide better efficiency and communication than having each department focus on its own customer experience transformation changes. 
• Allocate a budget to introduce relevant systems to support the changes. For instance, the transformation process may require employee training and adopting new tools.

Undertaking the Process

After preparation, implement the client experience transformation framework using these steps: 

• Review the current state of customer experience: Gather data through interviews and sentiment analysis and assess key performance indicators (KPIs). This consumer data will provide valuable feedback about the impact of existing client experience efforts and reveal improvement opportunities.
• Set realistic goals: Using existing data, create realistic objectives and goals to achieve the target audience experience. 
• Develop a comprehensive plan: Create a plan to make these goals a reality. This stage should focus on specificity—defining the exact strategies, solutions, milestones, resources and actions to achieve the goals. Aim to design a personalized plan that addresses audience pain points and makes an impactful emotional connection. 
• Execute the plan: Execute the plan’s strategies and solutions by adopting technological tools, training staff and restructuring workflow processes. Other activities include hiring new talent and modifying the organizational structure to support the changes. During the implementation process, keep all teams in the loop and address any concerns they have.
• Measure performance: After performing the initial changes, measure KPIs on social media platforms and the website to monitor their impact on audience experience. Also, conduct interviews to collect more information and encourage customers to leave reviews. Use this information to determine if the plan solves customer challenges and meets their expectations.
• Optimize performance: Analyze performance data to continuously transform the customer experience. The transformation process should continue to progress after the initial implementation, as there are always new details to learn about the target audience’s needs. Carry out deep research into the target audience’s trends, behavior and preferences to identify and address existing gaps. 

Traits of a Successful CX Transformation 

To perform a successful CX transformation, incorporate the following traits in the process: 

A Customer-Based Approach 

Through comprehensive market research, seek to gain a deep understanding of the target audience by focusing on individuals’ preferences, behavior and pain points. Also, monitor performance on platforms like the website, email, social media and mobile apps, where customers engage with the business.

It’s also essential to listen to what the target audience is saying. To this end, consider deploying social media listening tools. 

A Holistic Approach

Obtain a holistic understanding of the customer journey and experience. Transform the entire client journey from the moment they first interact with the business to after purchase. By adopting a holistic technique to inform a CX overhaul, organizations can address all aspects of the audience experience. 

A Flexible Mentality

Begin CX modifications with an open mind since not every strategy or solution will provide the target results. It’s best to go into the overhaul process with a flexible mentality that embraces innovation and tests new ideas to solve pain points.

For instance, if consumers are unhappy about how long it takes employees to reply to their emails, consider getting a 24/7 website chatbot. Ensure that the chat system has answers to common questions and is capable of redirecting users to a live agent if they need further assistance. 

Optimizing the Customer Journey 

Digital technology has changed how companies conduct business and how consumers interact with the businesses they patronize. However, accurate predictions of change are rare. Early technology had limitations, and many organizations were cautious as they added to their digital infrastructures. Many had or continue using silo-based IT infrastructures where customers interact with the organization using numerous channels, each with its own employees, procedures and technology.

Distributing customer interactions across numerous touchpoints creates problems. The overall experience can feel out of sync when interactions vary across the touchpoints that clients consider important, such as placing orders, paying bills or requesting technical assistance. CX transformation aims to align business processes around a unified set of methods, technology and goals.

Repositioning a Business for Success

A successful CX transformation drives consumer engagement earlier in the process, increases conversions and improves customer retention by ensuring that audiences can engage with the brand when and how they want.

CX transformation prioritizes customer-centric shifts in four key aspects of the business:

• Goals: Analyze the company’s vision and strategies to achieve it.
• Personnel: Align digital channels by introducing employees to a customer-centric program.
• Processes: Structure processes to focus on the consumer and boost performance.
• Digital: Implement new cross-compatible systems that unify digital touchpoints, moving away from fragmented technology that detracts from CX.

Benefits of CX Transformation 

Reorienting a business’s approach to focus on customer experience is a smart investment of time and capital because it offers the following benefits:

• Customer satisfaction and retention: Clients notice when a business puts them first. They will appreciate the business’s willingness and ability to provide useful information, direct them toward helpful resources and facilitate a smooth experience on digital platforms. As a result, they are more likely to return.
• Employee engagement and retention: Encouraging inter-departmental collaboration around a common mission can help staff feel connected with the company, and they’ll want to be a part of its future.
• Financial gains: CX transformation helps engage prospects earlier in the process, convert leads and grow customer relationships.
• Service cost reductions: Improving customer service representatives’ ability to respond to consumers’ needs will optimize business processes and employee performance, as they can find satisfactory solutions faster.
• Dexterity: A CX reshaping will uncover data that continually satisfies clients with products, services, digital capabilities and other offerings that meet their always-evolving needs.

Implementing CX Change in an Organization

CX transformation includes four essential steps.

Aligning Top Management  

Key leaders within an organization need to work together to put the customer at the center of business goals. Reorientation may require significant change to the vision and the method of achieving it. Exercise attention to detail when assessing company goals, practices and messaging to find areas for improvement.

Perpetuating the New Culture

With executive leadership buy-in for a customer-centric vision, solidify this mission within the business’s culture. Make the organization’s new identity part of job descriptions, employee newsletters, office décor and team events. Then, reward employees who successfully carry out the customer-centric mission in their performance.

Optimizing the Customer Journey

Assessing the customer journey is a way to further improve vital processes. Identify the functions that customers find the most important along their journey, such as opening an account, submitting a payment, resolving a technical issue or requesting details on a product or service. Then, investigate the functions they use most frequently, the devices they use to access them and ways to design them to improve digital cohesion.

Now, it’s time to enact change. If necessary, update the IT infrastructure to enable internal collaboration and ensure smooth transitions along each step of the buyer journey. Experiment with various ideas, consider consumer feedback and change the transformation approach accordingly.

Using Customer Insights to Improve Processes 

Collect real-time data regarding consumer needs and habits as they pertain to the customer journey to establish a feedback loop that encourages ongoing improvement.

Audit technological tools and processes to ensure they promote smooth transitions between points along the journey. Clients should easily find what they are looking for and receive useful assistance from the customer service team when necessary.

Customer Experience in the Age of Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is changing how businesses interact with their audiences. Organizations have many options to improve the buyer experience, from social media, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to cloud computing, mobile applications and e-commerce. The brands that will succeed in this digital transformation era are those that adapt these technologies to boost customer experience. 

For instance, health care providers can use generative AI to give acute-care patients instructions when they leave the facility. The communication details can include best practices, medication instructions and lab data.

Once a company has leveraged digital channels, it must synchronize all of them to enable collaboration between departments.

Uncover More CX Insights With Alexander Group

CX transformation can yield tremendous benefits for your organization, but many businesses lack the resources to handle the process independently. Alexander Group partners with you to deliver a customer-centric transformation that optimizes the journey across numerous channels. We bring proven methodologies and a rich repository of data to help you drive CX restructuring and lead to a greater return on your investment.

Alexander Group hosts numerous events and produces expert insights to help further your organization’s mission. Contact us online for more on customer experience transformation and other services.