Customers now live in an experience economy where being just “good” is the starting point of their journey and not the total differentiator. Ever thought about why CX has recently become the hot topic of discussion? Why have all of a sudden businesses have started investing in customer experience programs?

The simple answer is that when a customer is happy, they don’t feel shy about telling the world about their experiences. According to a recent survey, a quarter of customers said that they would tell more than 10 people about a positive interaction they’d had with a brand. Furthermore, 30 percent of customers would post about their positive experiences on social media.

Customer experience has always been kind of a thing that only bigger businesses talked about and honestly did very little about. On the other hand, Customer Experience as we can see now is a buzzing topic of discussion in marketing departments and in the US marketplace, but in the past, it wasn’t a particularly buzzy concept among customers themselves. But now the times are a little different, today the most successful business offers the best CX, that’s their secret ingredient for success. Businesses need to now treat CX as the new business frontier. This means it’s a whole new topic to be discussed, thought about, and altogether be prioritized on a whole new level. CX has changed a lot over the last couple of years, product alone is no longer the only focus, instead, it’s the experience that the customer gets or receives with the product or while making the purchase now takes the lead.

So, what are the benefits that a business gets if they focus on improving CX? Let’s take a look at them below:

• CX helps drive revenue and add to the customer lifetime value
• Improves and increases overall brand value
• Helps boost customer loyalty and advocacy
• CX helps businesses to stay connected with the customers to get access to insights for future strategies

It is not that difficult to understand the process of CX let’s take an example: when you make a purchase from a small business, and after receiving it while unboxing the order it’s the packaging and small gifts that they send along and other little surprises like a promo code or even a thank you that sets the tone for CX. The point is that the unboxing was an experience and yet, the process of shopping is where the brand makes its first and lasting impression.

It summarises the digital shopping experience and how customer preferences have now changed from getting just the product on time to also expecting to get it in good packaging and some perks along with it. CX is an ever-evolving concept now. Customer expectations are subject to change with every passing season, every passing day. It is something that needs to be kept in check by stakeholders. A proper CX program should be implemented across the organization in order to get the best results. Every employee should be onboard with the idea of improving the customer experience. Every effort counts.

The future of CX involves a lot of market research and a proper management team all on board to execute the ideas collected through all the market research and from the data collected through customer feedback forms and to match the future requirements for CX now everything must be robust and intuitive that can inspire consumers to choose your brand over and over again leaving behind all your competitors.

The future of customer experience is to act as a differentiator: since we can all experience a rise in digital experiences and a rise in customer expectations, CX is now a component found in almost all the business strategies across all relevant industries. However, the goal and approach of CX strategies shouldn’t be the same. It should be according to business type and requirements. For Example, Smaller businesses should focus on bringing their individuality and unique personality on the desk for the experiences they create through all the digital channels. This will make CX become more of a differentiator for the businesses, and this trend will be driven from the bottom to the top.

The future of CX is Personalization, we need to understand one thing here quite clearly that when we talk about experiences that originated through digital channels, it shouldn’t be all about automation. This is not a sustainable strategy. A personalized experience is not the result of automating all the steps taken by a customer, it's about the steps taken by a business to actively choose what to automate. It is important to note that businesses must first completely understand this fact; how to use automation to help both the customer and for the teams that interact with these customers on a daily basis. Personalized services that are focused on what customers value, can be a way to understand and shorten the route to valued customer engagement. For Example, you must have heard about amazon go services in the US. Well, Amazon, since the time of its inception has been pushing its limits to evolve and introduce newer more convenient options for its customers. With Amazon Go, you don’t need to spend twenty minutes queueing and getting frustrated that you’re going to miss the start of your yoga class. As soon as you pick and take a product out of the store, your Amazon account (and the card linked to this account) will be charged. Instead of using baskets and carts, shoppers simply walk around with their bags and load the products they need. Of course, this isn’t much of a surprise; carts and baskets wouldn’t make sense considering there’s no checkout. Isn’t that cool? There is still speculation about how different metrics will be measured, but so far it looks good in terms of CX. No more waiting in lines and competing over the availability of products.

So, to conclude, Customer Experience is a concept when executed right, can create a culture that can turn into an exciting transformation. Leaders and stakeholders who understand the crucial nature of Customer Experience will be best positioned to use it to the best of their advantage.

At DT we believe that to build a sustainable relationship with a customer, we must value their feedback. We believe in building a situation-based and feedback-centric client engagement plan that will not only help businesses to leverage the data collected abundantly but also if done right this can turn into a long-lasting opportunity to keep your customers intact and keep the revenue bar up and running.

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