It’s the age of CX. Trust me!
Right now is a hectic time for Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in business, not only do they have to adapt to every new marketing technique out there, they have to spread themselves very thin in an ever-increasingly complex and competitive world.
Every single moment, experience, purchase, and interaction a customer has with your company and brand is a chance for you to dazzle and amaze them, and it’s up to the CMO to lead the charge.
CMO’s are now tasked with becoming experts in traditional marketing skills, CX, UX, brand, automation, data, AI, CRM, customer journey, design thinking, loyalty, and staying ahead of their industry…. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. I mean really, it’s enough to send you down the rabbit hole.
I’ve been working in CX for over 12 years and seen it evolve, transform and change as customers become more educated, knowledgeable, and experienced buyers. If you are embarking on a CX program, regardless of what industry, here are the key points you need to consider, strategise and get the ball rolling on ASAP.
Leadership Buy-in
The first place to start to ensure you are getting buy-in from everyone up the top, leadership team, and managers. The messaging about becoming client-centric, focusing on loyalty and ensuring every client has a wonderful experience needs to start from the top. In the words of the great Steve Jobs; “You need to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology – not the other way around.”
If your entire team isn’t fully committed, across the board, to enhancing and innovating your customer experience then you’re going to have gaps in your strategy, putting all of your effort and hard work at risk.
Staff training and development
From sales, customer service, reception, delivery, and support (online or offline) there needs to be consistency at every level and a thorough understanding of your CX program. Make sure you invest in training and create continuity on standards, service, engagement. Become humanised in your approach, even if you are using AI or bots, create transparency and continuity will help your customers feel safe and trust your brand.
Data, data, and then more data
Whether you’re using NPS, CES, CSAT, or another feedback acronym, make sure you are starting to collect data and feedback from your customers & buyers. This feedback helps drive CX strategy, set standards, create measurements, innovate and experiment.
Data is so incredibly valuable for businesses looking to intensely audit and analyse their current strategy and build a new customer experience from the foundations up.
Customer Journey
Create a customer journey matrix that maps out every possible interaction, event, avenue, and different touchpoints. This is essential in order to understand the points of contact and interaction that a customer has with your brand or business. Accurately tracking all of these different and unique touchpoints – and most importantly how will your customers interact with them – helps you understand customer behaviour and context.
Our Customer Journey Mapping Template is great for breaking down your CX into four stages, acquisition, nurture, conversion, and retention. It’s a really great starting point if you are trying to find the gaps in your CX! Read the blog Mapping Your Customer Journey – Capturing the Complete Customer Experience and download our template here.
Conclusion
How your customers engage with your business both online and offline impacts whether they are one-time buyers, passive customers, or raving fans. We want to have raving fans engaging with our business and not just for today, but for their entire lifetime. We don’t have to tell you the impact this has on your bottom line. If you miss the boat on transforming your customer’s experience it will impact the growth and success of your business. Not only that, you will be missing a very valuable opportunity to create trust in your brand within your customer base that makes them want to remain loyal to you….and loyalty is everything baby!
Your customers are your greatest asset. Trust me! Innovating your customer experience, using NPS, agile methodology and design thinking frameworks will increase sales & loyalty ten-fold. If you’re interested in learning more about optimising and evolving your CX, reach out to us enquiries@miacademy.com.au
I’ve got a few CX blogs in the works right now if there’s a particular area you want me to focus on hit us up on social and let us know!
This blog post was written by our very own CX expert and all-round legend, Nat!
Natalie Khoury has over 15 years of experience in solution sales and customer experience. As a net promoter associate, Natalie’s knowledge and expertise help drive the success of our customers at Milk It Academy – a research-based training firm created to advance the everyday knowledge of professional in marketing, UX, CX, and solutions sales. For over a decade Natalie has worked with global brands including Experian, Connexity, Cheetah digital, Titan’s, Alfa, and BlueChip IT.
2 thoughts on “4 Key Focus Areas for Mastering CX in 2021”
A very insightful Blog Post. Thanks so much for the great read. I find it amazing that some of our bigger corporations Telstra Australia Post to quote some with whom we have daily direct contact are exceptionally poor in this area. Yes, they continue to “mouth out” the words the “customer comes first” but it really is a tragedy that it does not happen. Every time I interact with either of those companies I come away so disappointed in my experience. Why because they don’t walk the talk
Hit the nail on the head Mike!!
I think once upon a time we would remain loyal to those businesses despite their poor customer experience, they had it easy in that way. Today we are more likely to be loyal to brands that offer both great product and great CX. As expectations change, hopefully, we will see these brands begin to invest in CX far more!