Tips for Creating a Successful Customer Experience Strategy

Easy Tips for Creating a Customer Experience Strategy

Business leaders in 2022 will need to be heavily focused on improving their customer experience (CX) strategies if they hope to succeed.

In order to thrive in a post-pandemic world and adapt to the changes the coronavirus has brought about, businesses will need to leverage the resources and solutions available to them. Only then can they overcome the challenges of building deeper connections and relationships with their customers.

In this blog, we will cover some of the fundamentals of customer experience and three useful tips for creating a successful CX strategy for your business. 

What is a Customer Experience Strategy, and Why is it Important?

Customer experience (also referred to as CX) describes your customers’ interactions and experiences with your business from the first interaction to becoming a loyal and happy customer. Customer Experience and Customer Service are not the same thing. Customer service (the assistance offered to customers before and after they purchase a product) is only one part of the customer journey, whereas CX encompasses the entire customer journey. 

In a nutshell, a customer experience strategy describes your company’s approach toward creating the best customer experience possible for your business’s current circumstances.

A positive customer experience is an integral part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) because it increases the chances of repeat and loyal customers. Businesses increasingly recognise that their customer experience can differentiate them from their competitors. Unlike price or product range, which only win over customers for as long as you can keep up with or beat your competition, customer experience helps you build strong, long-lasting relationships with customers.

According to research, customers not only make purchase decisions based on customer experience, but they are also willing to pay more for a good experience, and even forgive mistakes made by companies they are loyal to.

Three Tips for Creating a Good Customer Experience Strategy

Always be Prepared

Research and preparation should be the first step in most projects you undertake, and your customer experience strategy is no different. You will need to conduct thorough research into your target market to ensure that your strategy is targeted at the right audience. 

Focus your research on three main areas: 

  1. Customer Personas – You are theoretically inventing someone who represents your ideal customer. The customer persona can represent customers you would like to acquire as well as customers you currently have. You need to understand your customers’ demographic profiles, behaviours, needs, wants, motivations, and pain points to ensure your strategy enables you to connect with them. To start creating personas, you should conduct customer interviews and analyse your data to derive meaningful insights relating to various customer types.
  2. Empathy Mapping – Empathy maps help businesses better understand customer needs. With this approach, teams can build a complete picture of the customer and what actions they might take based on their beliefs, emotions, and behaviours. To make sense of the customer’s experience and preferences, empathy mapping uses the four quadrants of ‘think’, ‘feel’, ‘say’, and ‘do’.
  3. Stakeholder Mapping and Management – A stakeholder management process entails understanding the attitudes of stakeholders before making changes to how you do things. The purpose of stakeholder planning is to know what stakeholders need and wish to see, how to influence them, what risks may occur, who is important to inform about changes, and who might have a negative impact on the change you are planning.

Create an Emotional Connection with Your Customers

A competitive market requires you to have strong relationships with your potential customers before they make a purchase decision. This isn’t easy. The process of building a relationship with clients and maintaining it naturally happens, but connecting with new clients requires more effort. It takes an emotional connection before a lead decides to make a purchase. Once they become a customer, that emotional connection only gets stronger. An emotional bond is the most valuable part of customer loyalty and will help improve your customer retention.

Regularly Optimise the customer journey

The entire customer journey must be considered when creating a great customer experience. Understanding the entire interaction with the customer and how it is received at every touchpoint is crucial. You need to monitor your current strategy and keep note of what is working and what isn’t. You can then adjust your strategy where necessary to ensure that your CX strategy is delivering the desired results.

Focusing on the customer’s journey, and identifying problems within it, can help create a better customer experience. Additionally, this allows your teams to brainstorm ideas to improve business relationships, reduce friction, and increase growth. 
At Customer Perceptions, we have over 25 years of experience in providing market research solutions to enhance our clients’ customer experience, gain insights into their competitors, increase their customer retention, monitor their standards, and increase their sales and revenue. Contact us today for a reliable solution to improving your business operations and customer experience strategies.

3 Reasons Why Customer Experience Increases Sales

3 Reasons Why Customer Experience Increases Sales

Do you remember a time when, from the second you walked into a store, you were greeted by friendly staff, a welcoming atmosphere, and the entire experience left you feeling great? You likely left the store with a huge smile on your face, itching to tell your friends and family about the amazing experience you had and thinking that you need to go back to that store. 

Now think back to when you had a terrible experience trying to buy something or order a service. The anger and frustration made your blood boil, and you swore to yourself that you would never use that business again. 

These two feelings show the importance of Customer Experience (CX). CX is the result of every interaction a customer has had with your business and the impression your brand leaves in their mind. The entire customer journey determines whether they will return to your business or not, which is why a customer-centric CX strategy is vital to the success of your business. 

This blog will discuss three reasons why customer experience is essential to your business success and how a positive CX will drive sales and increase your revenue. 

Customer Retention is More Profitable Than Generating New Customers

The business world has a lot of controversy regarding which is better, customer retention or acquisition. However, the fact of the matter is that customer acquisition, while rewarding, can be highly time-consuming and expensive. 

As a business, building loyalty and a positive association with a new customer takes time and money. In contrast, the costs associated with repeat business are considerably lower, from both a sales and a marketing standpoint. With repeat business, your ad spend is lower because you have already built a connection with these customers, so you have a better chance of making a sale. The book Marketing Metrics explains that the sales conversion rate for an existing customer sits at around 60 – 70%, whereas an entirely new prospect has a conversion rate of only 5-20%.

It is vital to build a CX strategy that is centred around long-term customer loyalty. Repeat customers are statistically far more likely to make a purchase when they visit your business. They are also generally willing to spend much more because they are satisfied with their customer experiences and know the level of quality and service they will receive. 

Customer Experience is Free Word-of-Mouth Marketing

The impression that your customers have of your business is now far more likely to be shared thanks to the help of social media platforms and the internet. If your customer experience is positive, loyal customers will become advocates for your business and share their experiences with others, helping attract new customers at no extra cost to you. When your customers share their positive experiences, it piques the curiosity of others, so people are encouraged to interact with your brand to see the top-notch service for themselves. 

While a negative online review can deter prospective customers, positive online reviews strengthen the online presence of your business, increasing the visibility of your brand and attracting new clientele.

A Better Customer Experience Sets Your Brand Apart from Your Competitors

When your business provides a customer experience that exceeds expectations, you take your customers on a journey that breeds an emotional connection and loyalty. You won’t need to ‘remind’ customers why they should use your services or buy your products because they will already know. 

A review conducted by SuperOffice determined that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for better customer service. So even if your competitors may have lower prices, if your customer experience surpasses theirs, customers will be more likely to use your business. When developing your CX strategy, consider rewards programs like coupons, free shipping offers, and lower prices for repeat customers, especially if your company operates in the e-commerce sector. It will set your brand apart and increase the positive perception of your business even more. 
Customer Experience is a foundational element of the success of your business. If you need assistance improving your strategy or are curious about how you can improve your customer experience, contact Customer Perceptions today or visit our website to view our list of expert services.

The Different Types of Mystery Shopping Explained

mysteryshopping

The use of a mystery shopping program in your business is a fantastic way to evaluate how your company operates, from customer service to employee performance. Also known as secret shopping, mystery shopping is a market research tool used to identify problem areas in your business and improve customer loyalty. 

A professional shopper (usually an independent contractor from a mystery shopping agency) will pretend to be an average customer and evaluate the quality of service they receive. The entire process is done anonymously by trained professionals, so no one will know who the mystery shopper is. Therefore, businesses will be provided with professional, unbiased feedback on whether their strategies are working and any problem areas so they can be rectified. 

In-Person Mystery Shops

In-person mystery shopping is the most common type of mystery shopping service used by businesses. As a part of this service, a mystery shopper will anonymously visit a business pretending to be a regular customer and evaluate the business performance and customer journey following a predetermined set of guidelines. 

With in-person mystery shopping, the goal is to conduct the evaluation without raising suspicion from the staff in order to obtain the most accurate information possible. If the staff aren’t aware that someone is evaluating them, they are more likely to act how they would on a daily basis. The secret shopper will have an all-around experience of the customer journey in your store. The visit can vary in length depending on the type of indicators, mystery shopping purpose, or the type of evaluated sphere. 

In-person mystery shopping is most commonly used by retail stores, the hospitality industry, restaurants, and financial institutions. 

Phone Call Mystery Shops

Next on the list is Phone Call Mystery Shopping. Just as audits of performance and customer experience should be conducted in-store, monitoring the telephonic performance of your employees is just as important. Phone Call Mystery Shopping is especially useful for companies that utilise call centres or where customers can receive service telephonically. 

The mystery shopper will call your company to assess the level of service they receive. During the call, the secret shopper will determine the following points (among others) to determine the performance of your business telephonically: 

  • Is it easy or difficult to contact your business?
  • How long did it take for the phone to be answered?
  • The employee’s greeting.
  • The employee’s competence and product knowledge.
  • The employee’s telephone manner and professionalism.
  • The employee’s willingness to help.
  • Whether the customer’s problem was solved on the call or not. 

Typical telephone mystery shops include everything from completing remote transactions to simply asking for additional information. Phone-based mystery shopping is most commonly used by businesses in the following industries: Hospitality, travel, call centres, communication, consulting, insurance, sales, financial services, communication, and healthcare. 

Website Mystery Shops

A strong online presence is crucial to the success of your business in the digital age. Most people carry their phones everywhere, search for businesses nearby, and look at online reviews that can either make or break your business image. In addition, the evolution of e-commerce and e-business has made mystery shopping just as important for online retailers as it is for on-site establishments. 

Website Mystery Shops, also known as virtual mystery shops or internet mystery shopping, see the secret shopper engage with your business online. The secret shopper will assess how responsive your business is online, whether your website is easy to navigate, your employee’s competencies and product knowledge, and how your employees interact with customers on social media and through the website. 

This type of mystery shopping is most commonly used by businesses in the following sectors: e-commerce, travel, insurance, automotive, real estate, and telecommunications. 

Hybrid Mystery Shops

Also referred to as multiple touchpoints or mixed-type mystery shopping, the hybrid service is typically used by larger businesses that need several mystery shopping evaluations. Using in-person, telephonic, and online mystery shoppers ensures you have accurate information and actionable insights into all aspects of your business. 

Hybrid mystery shopping is a fantastic way to assess the entire customer journey across all spheres of your business to better understand the customer’s overall experience from start to finish. 

The type of mystery shopping that best suits your business is dependent on your industry and business model, but if you need help choosing a mystery shopping service that offers the most benefit for your specific needs, contact Customer Perceptions today.

How Mystery Shopping Can Benefit Your Business

How mystery shopping can benefit your business

From the outside looking in, one may think that the more customers a company has, the higher its profits. However, this is not necessarily the case. Anyone with retail experience will tell you that building a network of loyal, repeat customers is the cornerstone to the success of your business. 

Suppose your customer service, staff performance, or customer experience is not up to par. In that case, customers won’t return to your business, word of mouth will spread, and you will eventually lose income. As a business owner or executive, rectifying any problem areas in how your business is run can only be done after the problems have been identified. This is where mystery shopping programs come in. 

Many businesses, especially in the retail and hospitality industries, aim to identify problem areas in their business performance by using mystery shopping agencies. Mystery shopping is a process whereby an independent person is hired, through an agency, to masquerade as a customer and perform an evaluation of your business to determine customer satisfaction and service quality. The hired mystery shopper will be an anonymous consumer and have no connection to you or any of your staff. This is to ensure that all reports remain unbiased. 

The mystery shoppers will visit your business and rate their experience in an unbiased, professional, and thorough manner. They will complete a detailed report of the entire customer journey to their superiors, who will share the information with you so you will be aware of how customers perceive your company’s service and their experience as a whole. 

Here are some of the benefits of hiring a mystery shopper to evaluate your business: 

Get Valuable Feedback from a Customer’s Perspective

Mystery shoppers are trained professionals, so when they visit your business as a customer, they will take note of every aspect of the customer journey from start to finish. No matter how big or small an issue may be, it will be noted. This is a lot more effective than waiting for reports from your management or waiting until an actual customer brings forward a complaint. 

This attention to detail and knowledge of the retail sector will help your business pinpoint specific areas for improvement that may have been flying under the radar. When you know how your customer experience, satisfaction, and brand perception are seen from a customer’s point of view, you can make the necessary changes to improve customer retention. Not only can this improve your customer loyalty, but the improvement in your business image can attract new customers.  

Gives You Insight Into Staff Performance and Internal Procedures

Even if your employees are fully proficient in the business’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), sometimes the top-down approach to company standards and procedures still doesn’t have the desired effect at a store level. Even if your management department provides reports on business operations and staff behaviour, personal biases may hinder their ability to see problem areas (whether intentional or not).

The unbiased perspective of a professional shopper can provide you with actionable insights into your employee integrity and whether your operational procedures are working. Not only will this show you areas where further training or action may be needed, but the mystery shopper can also give you the following valuable insights: 

  • Are your current operational procedures working at a store level?
  • How do your employees handle customer complaints?
  • Are your sales representatives selling actively or passively?
  • Does your staff have relevant product knowledge?
  • Did your team acknowledge the customer when they walked in? (Smiling, greeting, or offering help; Or was the customer ignored?) 
  • Are employees presentable and abiding by the company dress code, if there is one?
  • How do employees act when there isn’t a manager around? 
  • Are legal requirements and professional standards being met?
  • Are your staff members on their cellphones in front of customers? 
  • Suggestions and recommendations for improvement. 

Valuable Research into Your Competitors 

Competitiveness is rife in the retail industry. If you know how your competition performs, what they’re doing, their business values, how they treat their customers, or how their layout works, you can see where you rank in comparison and how to improve. This will provide you with the competitive advantage your store may need to provide better customer service and put your store steps above your competitors. 

Mystery shopping combines qualitative and quantitative market research, using professionals trained to evaluate an experience in a storefront environment. This doesn’t just help businesses like retail stores, but any company that offers some level of customer service. Contact Customer Perceptions today if you are located in Ireland or the UK and want to know more about mystery shopping or other ways you can improve your business performance.

Supermarket Superheroes

Supermarket Superhero infographic

By Linda Martin, Client Account Manager

An Industry Excelling

Over the past year, Irish supermarkets have faced the demands of providing superior customer service, whilst operating as an essential business through a pandemic. They have dealt with and overcome the significant challenges of delivery restrictions, panic buying and purchase limits, along with implementing new processes to make their customers feel safe in stores. 

Now, as we see restrictions begin to ease, we asked consumers to tell us how they feel about their local supermarkets. During the month of May, we conducted a nationwide survey to gauge consumer attitudes towards the customer service in stores, shopping preferences, change in shopping habits over the last 12 months and their experience of online shopping solutions.

Where are Irish Consumers Shopping?

We asked our consumers where they complete their main grocery shopping and Aldi came back as a clear favourite, with 32% of the vote. This was closely followed by Lidl at 23% and Tesco at 20%. In fourth place were Dunnes Stores on 14% and Supervalu at 8%.

The majority of Irish consumers we surveyed reported that they are making frequent trips to their supermarket, with 51% going 2-3 times per week, while 32% go at least once per week… So what factors are important when choosing where to shop and why they should remain a loyal customer to the brand?

Price and value for money (92%) and product range (73%) were rated as the top factors that consumers consider when choosing a location. Consumers are also looking at the availability of special offers in store (57%) and the location of the premises (46%). 94% of Irish supermarkets are offering free parking to their customers, a factor which cannot be overlooked when consumers are considering where to shop. Loyalty cards also influence the decision on where to shop for some 24% of consumers.

With the range of choice, service, and value on offer, are retailers doing enough to keep their customers returning as loyal shoppers with the brand? 33% of consumers in our survey confirmed that they have switched retailers in the last 12 months, but why are they switching? “Money offer vouchers”, “shorter queues” and “better product variety” are just some of the most commonly cited reasons that encourage consumers to move away from their regular supermarkets. In addition, “click & collect charges” and “special offers” also play a key role in the decision.

E-Commerce

With the rise in e-commerce services being offered by Irish retailers, why do 86% of Irish consumers still prefer to shop in store as opposed to availing of delivery? According to our research, only 10% of customers regularly use their local supermarkets online delivery service and similarly, only 7% of customers are using Click and Collect. Up to 93% of customers say that they find the online systems clear and easy to navigate, yet their preference still remains to travel to the supermarket and complete their shopping in person. When asked why consumers are being discouraged from using their stores delivery service, the main response is that they prefer to pick the freshest products themselves in store. Alternative product options or substitutions being placed in the delivery, is another factor that comes into consideration.

89% of customers are aware of an additional charge for the delivery service and 36% were happy with the availability of delivery dates and times. With the increase in the number of retailers now offering Click & Collect services, how do consumers rate the availability of products and the collection process? 45% say that their main grocery store offers a collection service and 44% of customers have previously availed of the service. Of the customers that regularly use the service, 75% have easily located the designated parking spot at the store. We were keen to find out how consumers feel about Click & Collect services and while some say they are “very happy with the service” and “all items received are of good quality and in date”, others have had a different experience, commenting that there were damaged goods in their orders, or replacement items and short-dated stock included.

Covid Regulations

Over the past 12 months, retailers have worked tirelessly to adapt their services to ensure a safe shopping environment for their customers. We asked shoppers to weigh in on the Covid-19 precautions put in place in their regular supermarkets and more importantly do they feel safe while shopping in store. All supermarkets we researched have protective measures in place, such as sanitiser (97%), floor markings (89%), covid-19 signage (88%), Perspex screens (93%) and sanitising stations for trolleys (84%). Customers are observant of social distancing measures in place, with 86% agreeing that staff are respectful of guidelines and 72% feel that numbers are being monitored sufficiently instore. However, all factors considered, 91% of consumers say that they feel safe in their main regular grocery store.

This report outlines current sentiment among Irish consumers regarding supermarkets, their products, services, and solutions.

A total of 270 consumers were surveyed across Ireland.

Report published: May 2021

Six Ways to WOW! Your Customers!

Wow Customers!

We’ve been talking to some of your potential customers, (because that’s our job!). We asked them to recount a time when they were wowed by a hospitality experience, and to explain exactly why – to identify the individual elements of the experience that contributed to them being blown away by an establishment. We called it the WOW! factor, and we’ve dissected the information we were given to try and understand exactly what a WOW! factor consists of, and to figure out how to build them every time! We got 93 responses to our query, and we broke them down based on their importance – how many people specifically mentioned each factor. Take a look at this information, it comes directly from hospitality customers, and it’s the anatomy of a WOW!

  1. Complimentary elements. Free stuff!

This might surprise you, but while it did inevitably merit a mention in the poll, it didn’t feature as anything like the most important factor. In fact it tied with our next category for least important. Customers certainly like it when they get something for nothing, but it’s really not a deciding factor for them. Also, while we had one respondent relate the extravagant story of hotel upgrades when the staff discovered her future-husband was proposing, for the most part people were mentioning things like loyalty cards that entitled them to a free coffee after so many purchases. Little things can go a long way, because ultimately this isn’t what most people are looking for. It’s a nice-to-have for customers, not a must-have.

  1. Facilities.

Tied for bottom in importance with complimentary elements was facilities. That should probably be a relief, since facilities can be expensive to change. Parking, for example, was mentioned once or twice, but can be something largely out of your hands – the space you have around your business isn’t something you can realistically change. What is within your power to change – and made up most of the comments about facilities, by the way – was cleanliness. With some staff diligence it’s simple to implement and it’s important to people, especially in the hospitality sector. Chances are, in this sector, people are coming to you for food. Seeing evidence of a real commitment to cleanliness puts your customers’ minds at ease.

  1. Price.

It might be surprising that out of 93 respondents, only 28 specifically mentioned price as a factor in their WOW! experience. Now, we’re not saying value for money isn’t important to people – after all, even in this poll almost a third of respondents mentioned price specifically, and that’s a significant percentage – but in terms of what blows customers away, it’s not as important as you might suspect. There’s also a distinction to be made about what factors initially draw a customer to your business – the WOW! factor is very much about drawing people back to your business a second time, and in a survey about trying out a new restaurant price might have featured more highly. BUT! With those provisos in place, and in terms of wowing customers, it seems like people are willing to pay for experiences they find to be exceptional, which should be encouraging!

  1. Atmosphere.

We’re getting into the more important factors now, with about a third of people citing atmosphere as a crucial factor in their food and beverage experience. Like facilities, this is an element that in certain ways it might be difficult or expensive to do anything about – a few of our respondents mentioned things like mountain and sea views or medieval castles – obviously difficult to organise if you’ve got a small town-centre café. What should be encouraging, though, is that for the most part, when they talked about this category, respondents mentioned a “welcoming” atmosphere. That’s something well within the reach of any establishment to achieve – a little attention and a polite, warm attitude from staff might save you having to find a castle to stick on the premises!

  1. Food and Beverage Quality.

This one almost goes without saying. It was the second most important factor for respondents to our poll. Food and drink is the lifeblood of the hospitality industry, it’s ultimately what gets your customers’ bums onto your seats, and it seems that it features heavily in terms of what wows a customer too, so take care and invest in it. There are some ancillary elements to food and bev that might be easy to overlook – presentation was important to people, but also staff knowledge about the menu – when a customer asks a question about an item, they shouldn’t be met with a blank stare. Ideally, they should be met with a confident understanding of the product.

  1. Staff/Service.

72 out of 93 respondents specifically mentioned this factor, making it the most-mentioned factor in creating a WOW! experience in our poll. More than three quarters of our respondents felt it was worth specifically mentioning, but if you read over the other factors, you’ll see how many of them rely in some measure on your staff. Certainly, it’s possible to argue that of the six factors we identified, four of them rest on staff behaviours and competencies (the cleanliness of your facilities, the welcoming atmosphere, etc.). It’s a striking reminder of just how valuable an asset your staff is, and should give pause for thought – how well-trained are your staff? Do they need more guidance in the performance of their duties? Answer these questions well, address the issues that they raise, and our poll suggests you’ll have spent your time and effort well.

Ultimately, as turns out, it’s people who WOW! people.