It was at the end of the 1990s in the work of Joseph B. Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy that the notion of customer experience was born: it is about the emotions and satisfaction obtained by customers during the purchase journey and the use of your product / service.
It aims to strengthen customer satisfaction by creating a memorable moment with your services and products.
What is the difference between customer relationship and customer experience?
The terms “ customer relationship ” and “ customer experience ” are by no means the same thing. The customer relationship refers to all the exchanges between your customers and your company on all your communication channels. For example, customer support is a good illustration of this. The customer experience or CX (Customer Experience) brings together all the emotions and feelings felt by the customer during his buying journey. This is the result how your customers interact with your business before, during and after the sale. Unlike customer relations, customer experience is not just about answering your customers’ questions. It aims to give your customers a unique experience that will encourage them to come back to you and recommend you. For example, the friendliness with which store employees greet a customer is part of the customer experience. In B2B, a good experience will result in responsive teams and additional value provided for free.
Why have a good customer experience?
The primary purpose of a service or product is to provide a solution to a customer’s problem. Now imagine that you are not the only one offering this service. Your competitors offer the same product at the same price. How to differentiate yourself? The answer is simple: justprovide the best customer experience. As we have seen, the customer experience leaves a memorable mark on your customers. The combination of excellent reviews of your service or brand, recommendations by multiple customers and the quality of your communications is the recipe for proving that you offer an excellent customer experience. With a rating of 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot , Content Square is one of its French Saas that can potentially generate a lot of traffic. It’s a platform that helps you analyze your customers’ online behaviors to optimize customer journeys and increase conversion rates. Because the customer experience also largely concerns the interface of your website.
Customer experience: also in B2B?
The customer experience is all the more important to organize in B2B, with many interlocutors (who occupy different positions) in the client companies. Although the customer experience is not mastered by all B2B companies, some have been able to use it to their advantage. In fact, only 20% of B2B companies are seriously working on their online customer experience. According to Accenture, they get a very good return on investment.What is a successful customer experience?
For a successful customer experience, all the systems your company has in place must facilitate the buying journey. It is not always those who present the best innovations who survive, but those who know how to adapt to their environment. We can take the case of Raja, a B2B company specializing in packaging for individuals and professionals. In order to present its products, the company sent catalogs in which it presented its different models. Customers then contacted them by email or phone to place an order. With the internet, Raja has obviously created a website, and would prefer to follow up with his customers only by email rather than by email. But some of their customers are certainly not very digital (small industries, traders, etc.). That’s why they still offer catalogs, but which are now scannable with an application in order to place an order. The products can also be directly personalized thanks to an application on the phone. Everything is done to facilitate the purchasing process while providing the best customer experience. Depending on their profile, customers can choose the experience that suits them best (100% digital on the web or on app, mixed or 100% physical).What are the stages of the customer journey?
For a prospect to be interested in your products, you must set up a succession of actions to direct him to purchase (a well-defined sales tunnel). To do this, marketing techniques such as the AIDA method (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) make it possible to direct the customer in the path of purchase. However, what interests us here is not the vision of the company, but that of the customer during his journey. There are 5 steps:1. The recognition of the need and the quest for information
Every customer journey begins with the customer recognizing a need and finding solutions that can satisfy them.2. Comparison
During his search for information, the customer begins to compare solutions with each other in order to find the offer, service or product that best meets his needs. A product or service can put itself forward by offering a comparison with its main competitors. This is for example what we do at Twilead on this page .3. Choice
Once having weighed the pros and cons , the customer finally makes his decision and chooses the offer that suits him best . If you can get to know your customers, you can tell when that decision-making happens . For example, if you sell software and offer a 14-day trial period, you know (easily) that the customer makes their decision at the end of the free trial. Depending on your business, certain triggers cause customers to make a decision.4. Usage
It is here that the customer begins to give an opinion sur his purchase. Does it really meet his needs? For this experience to be a success, you must first study all the possibilities after a purchase. If you sell a physical product, it is for example the failure of one of the components. If you offer a SaaS or an application, your servers may be down. You need efficient customer service. Your 2 “North Stars” (KPI) to ensure its effectiveness are:- Response time
- The percentage of resolved cases
5. Evaluation
The customer will express his opinion on his purchase on several channels (word of mouth, review sites like Trustpilot, etc.). This assessment will be the first step in the journey of the next customer (the quest for information). It is also a way to rectify any mistakes that the company may have made and to improve certain points: be attentive and ask for feedback!Improve your customer experience in 6 key points
There are several marketing methods you can adopt to improve your customer experience.1. Your customers do not all have the same customer journey: map them
Customer journey mapping is a strategic tool for understanding the customer experience. It’s a graphical representation of the different interactions with your company during the customer journey. It therefore allows you to identify the different points of contact with your customer. These will allow you to optimize your communication strategies to provide a positive experience at every point of interaction. For example, advertisements, content shared on social networks and messages with the community manager are interaction points specific to social networks.2. Have a mobile-friendly site
Nearly 73% of internet connections are made from smartphones. You just can’t deprive yourself of this source of traffic! You must then optimize your websites to be mobile friendly. The optimization doesn’t stop at adapting the design for the mobile format. You can :- Adopt a dynamic theme
- Make your site responsive (reactive) so that the user experience is perfect
- If you have an online store, ensure that your product sheets highlight the key information of your product or service without having to search
- Use cookies to provide a personalized experience
3. E-commerce: be transparent about delivery times
A successful customer experience is a seamless customer experience. You can offer the most innovative product or service on the market. But if you don’t present any details about the next steps, you risk having a low conversion rate at the checkout stage. No one likes to wait 2-3 weeks to get the product they purchased. The longer your customers wait, the more tempted they will be to give you a negative review and flood your customer service with questions. You can minimize this type of case by highlighting your delivery times on your product page, and reminding them during the online payment stages.4. Have a responsive checkout page
The longer a sales funnel is, the more likely it is to intimidate your customers . According to Datackathon, between 55% and 81.4% of online shopping carts are abandoned. This statement is valid for your checkout page: a prolonged checkout process on several pages can significantly reduce your conversion rate. Opt for plugins or applications that allow you to create single-page checkout processes. You must also offer several secure payment methods, including Paypal. Just like the rest of your website, your checkout page should be responsive. Any feeling of slowness will frustrate the customer during the checkout process and may cause cart abandonment.5. Personalize the experience
A successful customer experience is a personalized customer experience. We must make good use of the various information collected. This information will allow you to segment your customers based on commonalities. You can then create content dedicated to its different customer segments . In particular, one does not address a customer in the same way as one addresses a prospect. You must therefore segment your speech well for these two populations. Email marketing is a great representation of content personalization . Indeed, the email addresses collected generally come from lead magnets (free content with high added value, in exchange for an email address). In particular, you can segment your prospects according to the lead magnet downloaded. Create personalized email marketing campaigns based on the specifications of each segment. You will maximize email open rates and conversion rates. It is also possible to create email marketing campaigns centered on events such as Christmas, Black Friday, Easter, New Year’s Eve (very useful in B2B), the customer’s birthday, etc.6. Create interaction with questionnaires, feedback sessions
The best way to optimize the customer experience is to ask the principal what they prefer. There are several ways to interact with your target customers. Suggest questionnaires or feedback sessions with emails or phone calls. You can also do this during events that you have organized for the launch of a product (a webinar for example). You can analyze the behavior of your prospects, but nothing beats the information coming directly from them!Which tool to choose for a successful customer experience?
Twilead is an all-in-one tool with all the features needed for your customer experience. Twilead is above all a CRM (very complete). To help you create the best possible customer experience, Twilead offers the following features:
- Customer relationship management
- Sales management
- Marketing Automation
