What is Customer Experience (CX)?
As defined by Gartner, Customer Experience (CX) is the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and; thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. The better the customer’s experiences, the higher the effectiveness of the CX design (DeMere, 2017).
Having an effective CX design is very important in the business world as – according to Econsultancy.com’s 2015 Digital Trends Report – CX is one of the most leading ways marketers pursue in order to stand out and differentiate their company/brand amongst the rest (Rajeck, 2015). That is why business experts and marketers are racing to find great and innovative strategies to get the upper hand in CX within the industry. That said, in order to improve CX, an organization, first, needs to understand the ‘customer journey’ – the experience customers go through during their interactions with the company/brand (Rajeck, 2015)
Innovation in CX and Customer Journey
Innovation plays a vital role in the enhancement of CX. This is because as the world rapidly grows with the advancement of technology, the ways of marketing have gone digital; and caused the interaction between customers and company/brand to change dramatically. New strategies are needed to improve a company’s CX through product and process innovation within the customer journey.
However, understanding how the customer journey flows – based on different customer channels and touchpoints – is a crucial start when developing an effective CX design. It will help companies get a better understanding of the true customer needs and expectations. This strategy will give an idea of how to innovate their company/brand to meet them such as combining emotional innovation, process innovation, and functional innovation into an integrated model of people, process, product and service improvement.
An example of an innovation-eque change in CX is the improvement of the customer journey’s marketing framework. During the early times of CX, “Customer Funnel” was once a popular marketing framework adopted widely. However, since it is too simplistic and linear compared to how customers are interacting with companies/brands in this digital era, a new marketing framework was introduced; the ‘Infinite Loop’. It is a marketing strategy that can handle ongoing customer experience following the digital trends through stages like ‘Discover’, ‘Decide’, ‘Buy’, ‘Onboard’, ‘Master’, and ‘Renew’ – in accordance with the Director of Content Marketing and Social Media at Autodesk, Dusty DiMercurio’s, own Infinite Loop Framework as an example (Papandrea, 2018).
Measuring the Effectiveness of Customer Experience (CX) Strategy
In order to see whether the CX design is effective or not in the effort to gain more customer insights, increase customers’ satisfaction and meet expectations, business experts and marketers use the Voice-of-Customer (VOC) programme to capture, analyze and report on customers’ feedback associated with the company and/or its brand. Within the VOC programme, there are three popular metrics used to collect structured data and measure customer experience and satisfaction:
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
The NPS is a metric used by asking customers the question “How likely is it that you would recommend this company/product/service to a friend or colleague?” This metric involves a 10-scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely). Respondents are classified into three titles; those who rated 0-6 are called the “Detractors” (unhappy experience), 7-8 are called “Passives” (neutral experience), and 9-10 are called “Promoters” (excellent experience). The way to gain the NPS score is by removing the Passives’ responses, and then subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. NPS is one of the most common tool used to measure the long-term customer loyalty standard of the company/brand. It is easy to understand and provides instant information or data
2. Customer Effort Score (CES)
CES is a metric used by asking customers the question “How much effort did you have to expend to handle your request?” This metric mostly uses a seven-scale of options from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The most popular way to calculate the CES is by dividing the total CES score of all responses with the total number of respondents. This tool is a transactional, short-term metric, utilized to measure the level of effort required by the customer during certain interaction with the company/brand. It is a user-friendly scoring metric that produce actionable data so that quick improvements can be done.
3. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
CSAT is a metric used by asking customers the question “How would you rate your overall satisfaction?” This scoring metric commonly uses the five-point scale options from 1 (very unsatisfied), to 5 (very satisfied). Normally, it is calculated by dividing the percentage of the 4-5 responses with the total number of responses before obtaining the percentage of satisfied customers. Like CES, CSAT is also a short-term satisfaction metric in which it calculates how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction or event. It is an easy and simple tool to gain rich insight on customers’ immediate perspective.
Customer Experience Management (CXM) Design & Innovation Masterclass
Find CX interesting and want to know more? We, at Innoverce365, would like to invite you to our Customer Experience Management (CXM) Design & Innovation Masterclass! Join us in our two-day workshop and experience fun and exciting ways to gain a deep understanding of Customer Experience. Learn how to get into the hearts, minds and emotions of your customers through our hands-on activities like gamifications, situational role-plays, group discussions and more!
By: Aizatul Aisyah Binti Mohd Idris
SOURCES
DeMere, N. E. (2017, May 14). 8 innovative ways to use CX metrics to create unbeatable customer experience. Retrieved from Wootric.com: https://www.wootric.com/blog/cx-metrics-8-innovative-ways-to-create-unbeatable-customer-experience/
Measuring customer experience – The CX metrics to think about. (2020). Retrieved from Qualtrics.com: https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/customer/customer-experience-measurement-metrics/
Papandrea, D. (2018, Jully 16). “The customer journey is an infinite loop” – Autodesk’s Dusty DiMercurio. Retrieved from Newscred.com: https://insights.newscred.com/customer-journey-infinite-loop/
Rajeck, J. (2015, November 10). So what exactly does customer experience (CX) mean? Retrieved from Econsultancy.com: https://econsultancy.com/customer-experience-cx-meaning/
Staffaroni, S. (2019, September 24). NPS, CES,CSAT: Which one is the best metric? Retrieved from Business 2 Community: https://www.business2community.com/strategy/nps-ces-csat-which-one-is-the-best-metric-02242935
