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At the core of all winning business strategies is the customer experience. Without a singular focus on each step of the customer journey, companies big and small will find it impossible to grow in today’s market.
The problem many are facing, however, is that the boundaries of the customer experience are changing all the time. Who should be considered when mapping a customer experience, which teams should engage with customers, and how, are all questions that can’t be answered in a simple or uniform way.
So, how do you know what to prioritize? How do you get your organization to work efficiently with so many changing factors? We’ll tell you.
Build a foundation of data
The refrain we keep hearing about today’s customers is that they want a personalized experience. The vast majority of customers will churn if they have a bad experience, and many will pay more for a superior customer experience. In other words, in order to grow revenue, you need to know what your customers want at any given moment. That means your company needs a foundation of comprehensive, accurate data to understand who you’re serving.
While almost all companies track performance metrics, many use self-reported data or manually-entered data to build their reports. Something is better than nothing, of course, but this method leaves a lot of room for error and bad strategic decisions. To ensure your enterprise is sustainable and grows with your customers, you need an automated data capturing system that pulls information across your various workplace apps. Without a holistic view into how your team is interacting with customers, you won’t know what’s working, what’s hurting, and how to anticipate the needs of your customers.
Before you do anything else, make sure that your company dedicates itself to a gold-standard of data reporting from the top down.
Ruthlessly segment your customers
Comprehensive, accurate data will help improve most workflows, but to supercharge your growth, you need to use it in conjunction with segmentation. Enterprise organizations, specifically, engage with customers of all sizes with a multitude of differing goals. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to winning customer experiences.
What’s more, the customer experience starts way before a company purchases your product. Potential customers are evaluating your brand through their colleagues, through social media, and through conversations with your competitors. They have added pros and cons to their evaluation of you before they even hit your website or talk to a sales rep.
In order to create the kind of real-time, personalized customer experience for each of these different audiences, your data must be segmented clearly and as precisely as possible. Use the data you collect to identify best practices for each of your account types, including previous customers and potential customers. Build out processes that work for each segment, and communicate those steps across your organization so that no matter who a rep is talking to, they know exactly what to do to provide the best possible experience of your company.
Don’t shy away from technology
The addition of more data and audience segments can sound overwhelming if your team already feels like they have too many tasks to complete each day. And they’re right. One of the biggest obstacles for improving efficiencies is knowing which tasks to prioritize. This is where technology comes in.
And we understand. Customer spending is slow and you need to cut costs where you can. But you can’t afford to cut costs when it comes to your revenue teams. They need access to automation, AI, engagement, and workflow optimization tools because customer spending is slow. If they can’t execute on your best practices at the right time every day, then you’re putting new revenue at risk, you’re making unnecessary spends, and you’re putting the sustainability of your business in jeopardy. With the right tools, you can create the kind of customer experience that outshines the competition and makes your organization much more productive.