Focus on the customer and optimize their experience. You hear this everywhere these days. There is often talk of the customer journey, customer touchpoints and the customer lifecycle - but what exactly is all this? And what does customer experience management (also known as CEM or CXM) actually entail?
Table of contents
Customer Centricity
It all starts with customer centricity: a conscious decision to focus on the customer. This means not looking for customers who like the product that is already there, but instead creating products that precisely meet the expectations of the desired customers. This means that before production begins, the question of the customer's needs is asked and, at the end, the desired products are delivered, including the appropriate services.
Questions about the customer's needs and wishes:
- What must the product be able to do?
- What should it look like?
- What does the customer want to pay for it?
- How does he want to pay?
- Where does the customer need convincing?
- What information does he need?
- etc.
The basis for this is to ask yourself how you can make the entire purchasing process as pleasant and courteous as possible for the customer, from the first contact to the handover of the service. The process and product should be so convincing that the customer is happy to make further purchases and ultimately recommend both the products and the company to others.
Customer Persona
The customer persona serves as an aid here. A potential customer is visualized for this purpose. By collecting answers to the above-mentioned questions, you can determine the characteristics that potential customers have. This can be done using tracking data on website behavior, targeted customer surveys or evaluations from the service sector.
In the customer persona, you then define a typical representative from a target group using a cross-section of the collected responses. The fact that you gain a very precise idea of the persona - from age, profession and goals to needs and challenges for which they are looking for solutions, etc. - makes it much easier to adapt your own business processes accordingly.
What are your customers' needs?
Customer touchpoints
When considering what will make the identified persona happy, the question also arises as to where you can come into contact with them. These contact points are the customer touchpoints. These can be very different and are becoming more and more common these days, with contact points going far beyond customer service and websites. Social media channels, newsletters, mailings (see also CRM in marketing), events or industry forums must all provide equally positive experiences for the persona. A negative impression is enough to prevent a purchase decision or weaken existing brand loyalty.
Customer journey: the customer journey
The customer journey describes the entire customer journey from the first contact to the first purchase and beyond. The time span from initial contact to purchase and the various contact points can be measured digitally using appropriate software. Depending on the product or service, it can take a while before a purchase decision is made.
During this decision-making phase, there may be many different contacts. As a company, it is important to be aware of this and, as described above, to consistently provide potential customers with positive experiences so that they do not abandon their journey.
Customer lifecycle
Once a customer has made a purchase, their journey can continue. If you continue to provide them with relevant content and services (CRM for service & IT), it is not just the brand that remains in their mind: their positive experience is reinforced, their trust is strengthened and they are less inclined to engage with another brand. The longer the customer stays, i.e. the longer the customer lifecycle, the better it is for the company. Ultimately, this also increases the customer lifetime value, i.e. the economic customer value for the company.
Customer experience
With knowledge of the wishes and needs of a persona, the touchpoints, their journey and the lifecycle, the company can focus on ensuring or even exceeding the satisfaction of potential and existing customers in all areas. This can be done via relevant content on websites and landing pages, social media, newsletters, mailings, events and much more.
At the same time, business processes should be optimized so that everything runs as simply and quickly as possible and no frustration arises.
Customer experience management
In customer experience management (CXM), whether in the B2B or B2C sector (What are the differences between B2B & B2C?), all of these points are of great importance. However, it is particularly important to coordinate them so that an interlocking process is created in which satisfaction is focused on at all times.
Companies such as Amazon have already shown that CXM pays off, as have a number of studies, such as the Temkin Group's 2018 study on the return on investment of CXM. 10,000 households were asked about their experiences with 318 companies from 14 sectors.
The evaluations show that the correlation between customer experience and repurchase rate is very high. According to the study, investments also pay off directly. Depending on the sector, sales increases over three years range from around 50% to almost double for software companies.
