With the rapidly changing marketplace, Customer Experience Management is no longer enough to stand head and shoulders above competitors. A renewed approach is necessary: with Experience Management you work integrally on the basis of 3 pillars to create a customer-oriented, positive organization and promote (sales) growth!
Rapidly changing market
In a rapidly changing world, customers expect information to be easy to find, apps to always work and the car to park on its own without damage. This used to be a luxury. Today they are “hygiene matters. Customers are becoming more demanding and empowered and expressing this through many (online) channels. Companies or institutions that were never in question are now regularly the target of criticism and distrust.
The result is more discerning consumers and unmotivated employees. A consumer who does not just take everything for truth and employees who no longer have a heart for the business. This in turn has a negative impact on the customer experience. Consumer confidence is constantly evolving and subject to developments in the economic climate.
In addition, customer and employee expectations have changed due to the corona pandemic. For example, customers and employees expect to be able to interact with the organization through multiple virtual channels. At any time and through any device. Companies must deliver enhanced digital services to meet these expectations and measure how users experience these services.
New approach in Customer Experience Management
If you want to offer an ultimate experience to your customers, listening to your customers and responding to their changing needs is no longer enough. Developments in the market as well as in your organization affect how customers perceive the organization and experience customer contact.
Thus, employee enthusiasm also counts. After all, they are in direct contact with the customer. Engaged employees ensure more and engaged customers. To achieve this, it is important that the basics of your business are in order. That all processes, financial and operational matters are tightly regulated. Only then can you ensure optimum quality, even exceed your customers’ expectations and promote sales growth.
An example
A hotel has beautiful rooms in a great location for a good price. The staff is friendly and helpful, but the rooms are filthy. That creates a negative customer experience. Customers no longer go to the hotel and write a negative review on review and comparison websites. Sin!
Companies no longer get away with half-assed work. Even if you meet 95% of expectations – a nice room, prime location, good value for money and friendly staff – that 5% can still be a major detriment. This is why it is important as an organization to always strive to have a foundation that is 100% in order!
What is Experience Management?
Experience Management is a relatively young discipline at the intersection of business administration, organizational science, change management, psychology and marketing. This involves listening not only to the customer, but also to employees and the company as a whole to improve the customer experience. It is a renewed approach to tracking, measuring, analyzing and improving people’s interaction with the organization. Those people can be employees, customers, vendors, suppliers and other stakeholders.
Experience Management looks at customer focus and what it delivers from 3 pillars:
- Voice of Customer: listen to customers and implement continuous targeted improvements across all organizational levels
- Voice of Employee: motivate and enthuse employees
- Voice of Business: get the basics right and improve business operations using hard KPIs
The key to bringing customer experience to life and improving it is not just evaluating what is happening, but also using data, such as customer feedback, employee engagement insights and quality metrics that are continuously collected throughout the organization.
What does Experience Management give it?
By listening to the Voice of Customer, Employee and Business, you gain greater insight into KPIs and customer and employee feedback. In this way, the organization can make continuous adjustments to attract and retain more loyal customers. The result is better business results: happy customers generate more sales and happy employees are more engaged and productive. You have fewer failure costs, your acquisition costs go down and the number of complaints decreases. Absenteeism drops and you retain talent through a positive company culture. This is how you work integrally to create a customer-focused, positive organization and promote (revenue) growth!
How do you begin?
First, it is important to get away from the maze of data by measuring processes, quality management and customer and employee feedback in an automated, systematic and continuous way. Then you can learn from the data, make improvements and create more and more focus.
Data collection and analysis
By collecting all data sources into one research platform, you can more easily analyze, categorize and enrich the data. For example, through one-time, periodic and ongoing research.
Additional research
What do customers think of your service? Why do they recommend or not recommend you? How engaged are employees? Enrich the data with research on Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction. By aggregating data, you gain a better understanding of how customers and employees really feel about you.
Insights and actions
By translating research results and collected data into concrete insights and actions, you can learn and improve overall service and operations based on concrete areas of improvement.
Continuous process
Experience Management is an ongoing process. One-time or project-based research is not enough to remain head and shoulders above competitors. To improve the customer experience at every stage of the customer journey, you must continue to collect and analyze data. Only in this way can you create integrally a customer-oriented, positive organization. Experience Management is only successful when it is part of your daily work.