Important Customer Experience Strategy Tips

Nobody’s denying that customer experience is an extensive field. It pretty much summarizes the entire interaction a customer has with a product;  from the day they first see or hear about it, to researching, shopping around and comparing it to its competitors, to the actual purchase and use of the product or service. Customer experience also involves the aftermath;  support or service issues tied to the product after use, as well as feedback and follow-up.

That’s a lot of ground to cover, so if you’re working in the multidimensional field of customer experience, you need to have a good strategy set in place.

There are many different ways to approach this field because there are many different ways customers can find and interact with your product. Examples include advertising, social outreach, social networks, online media, or from word of mouth by family or friends. Once the product has been released it may potentially branch out in a million directions. How can you make sure that you can accurately predict, account for and measure all these pathways?

Well, I can’t give you a perfect solution to this, nor can anyone, but what I can do is give you some proven customer experience strategy tips that will set you in the right direction, and get you started.

#1 – All Roads Lead to Rome

If you look at the customer experience maps and models of today, you will notice that fairly early on, all the starting points involve a customer visiting the company website. No matter when or how a customer will be lead to your site; so it’s your job to have the most user friendly website out there.

How can you accomplish this? Well for starters, you can make your domain name very easy to remember, and give it an easy, short address. Simple addresses are easy to tweet, share, text message and even quote verbally. Short names  are memorable; if they are passed via word of mouth, social networks or traditional advertising, they can easily go viral. A simple website name is one that you can easily remember a day after hearing it, “oh hey I should look them up.”

#2 – Full Circle

From here, a customer will begin to research your company, your product and your competition – online. More often than not, this will happen through searches that lead to SEO-powered articles, blogs and reviews.

Hire writers, bloggers, reviewers and other people to put the word out there for you. Make sure these srticles connect the customer full circle – leading back to your company (preferably on a linear progression to each next phase, until they shop). When you map your strategy,  predict how a a customer will respond post-research then they come back to you. Be on stand-by; be proactive and ready to respond.

#3 – Competition

Competition is inevitable. This is the last big strategy point I want to outline. Competition involves research on your end (how you present the product) and on their end (analyzing the results they find). A customer will weigh every aspect of your offering, versus one or more similar offerings by competitors. You need to look at features point for point, and see where your advantage and disadvantages lie. To help abate concerns, publish white papers and infographics that show why your product or service is better, more practical or more affordable than a competitors- without belittling your competitor). Outline customer testimonies, case studies and current clients.

These 3 tips outlined above, are some of the most basic, but important customer experience strategy strategy tips.  They are a great starting point; stick around because we plan to talk about them in more depth in the future.

 

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Matthew is the Lead Author & Editor of CXperience Blog. Matthew established the CXperience blog to create a source for news and discussion about some of the issues, challenges, news, and ideas relating to Customer Experience.