The customer should be at the heart of your marketing. To keep your finger on the pulse of ever-changing customer needs, the voice of the customer must be listened to and taken into consideration by everyone from top to bottom.
Is your company looking to develop a leading customer experience programme? Here are 10 key tips to help you out:
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Get buy-in from the top – ensure you have the support of the leadership team to avoid wasted time and resources.
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Make it someone’s sole responsibility – only those organisations with a dedicated customer experience role will see long-term success.
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Build it slowly – take your time to fully understand the journey that customers take. Customer journey mapping can help with this.
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Get a deep initial understanding of your customers – a ‘deep dive’ into every customer in the decision making unit will help identify which touch points are most impactful and which need close monitoring.
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Develop your programme from the ground up – avoid ‘off the shelf’ solutions. Possible questions to ask at this stage include:
- How should we interview customers?
- How frequently?
- Which metrics should we measure?
- Who is responsible for dealing with dissatisfied customers?
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Ensure findings are widely distributed – the voice of the customer must be heard by everyone in the organisation. Real-time reporting can be used as well as infographics and videos to get the message across.
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Do not rely on customer data alone – to benchmark your performance against competitors without bias, a potential customer survey is needed. To improve customer retention, a lost customer survey will also be useful.
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Start with your employees – Align your employee engagement programme with your customer experience programme. Happy, engaged employees deliver a greater customer experience.
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Make customer feedback an internal KPI – everyone should be striving to deliver a better customer experience, from the sales teams through to customer service and beyond.
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Keep it up – don’t let the intensity drop. Monthly and quarterly reporting is crucial. Also make sure that detractors are dealt with quickly and promoters are thanked and rewarded.
