Customer experience is everything. The digital-first world offers huge opportunities, but to truly transform your customer experience, you need strategic thinking, a limitless approach and strong partnerships.
Give customers what they’re looking for, when they’re looking for it, and they’ll buy. Then buy some more. Then tell their family and friends, and return time after time because it’s just so easy. We all work towards this every day but, for most businesses, creating an Amazon-like experience feels out of reach.
It doesn’t have to feel that way. In this guide, we share the knowledge, processes and technology that enable businesses of all sizes to create meaningful, value-adding customer experiences.
Moreover, you don’t have to do it alone. The right partners are critical, enabling even modest marketing teams to achieve best-in-class customer experiences compared to their competition.
According to Forbes, 96% of customers would walk away if you delivered a bad customer experience.
Pushing the boundaries
The pandemic proved that we could still feel connected to the outside world without setting foot outside the door. From our socially distanced settings, we purchased online like never before, setting a high bar for the businesses that survived.
Now, customers expect to feel highly connected to brands before they part with their hard earned pennies. This goes for a whole new generation of shoppers; not just the Gen Z natives. The landscape is dispersed and highly competitive. According to Forbes, 96% of customers would walk away after a single bad customer experience.
For marketers, one thing’s for sure: we can’t look to the past, but should instead turn our focus towards today’s norm and embrace our new understanding of consumers.
Digital transformation
Digital transformation is not new. Businesses have been digitally transforming for years. Pre-pandemic, we routinely enjoyed online banking, hotel booking and shopping. But online yoga? Not so much.
What’s different now?
It’s no longer enough to transform paper processes – it’s about making people feel part of brands, long before they buy. To do that, a smooth, connected customer experience is essential. Sales are still critical. But we now need to recognise the value of a highly engaged funnel so that it’s your business that comes to mind when customers have a need.
The bottom line is, if a piece of the journey isn’t working in a customer’s favour, or the tech behind your business is disconnected, you’ll risk delivering a below average customer experience and they’ll go elsewhere.
What does it mean to you?
As a marketer, the pressure is on to deliver a frictionless customer experience (CX).
Most of us have already begun the journey – in fact, a recent survey confirmed that as many as 99% of marketers changed their digital CX strategy in the months following the pandemic. The challenge is in understanding how to leverage the CX opportunity and apply it to your business. You see your competitors offering seamless services – and can relate and aspire to those expectations – but how are you going to get there while delivering a return on investment?
Ultimately, it’s not just about technology – it’s about creative thinking. While technology works hand-in-hand with the execution of the customer journey, it’s also just as important to focus on the quality of the thinking behind it. In this paper, we’ll demonstrate how a business of any size can deliver a CX akin to any Silicon-Valley startup.
