A good and comprehensive CX program is a mark of your dedication to the clientele. While nailing customer experience is a challenging task like getting hold of the golden snitch, having a program in place will ensure you have a clearly thought-out strategy to achieve it. It will create the pathway to create happier and loyal clients, and the rewards will keep coming from there.
So, what does a CX program entail, and why is it crucial for brands at present? Let’s get into it!
What is a CX Program?
A CX program is a strategic initiative centered on placing the customer at the heart of all business operations. It involves the planning, designing, and execution of a customer-centric framework tailored to your brand. With CX, you devote the entire focus to your customers and invest in understanding their behavior, adapting to their needs, and improving their satisfaction.
A CX program aims to improve every touchpoint in the buying journey to ensure customers receive a seamless and rewarding experience. In this regard, every aspect from the moment the customer comes into contact with the brand until the post-purchase stage is refined and improved to meet customer needs and expectations. A CX program quintessentially needs a comprehensive customer journey map and a thorough understanding of your targeted audience.
If you wish to organize your Customer Experience efforts better or just get an overview of the current status, here you can find a free customer journey map template that helps you to get a bird’s eye view as well as helps with deciding on the next best steps.
Why You Should Build a CX Program
A CX program captures the entire customer lifecycle and focuses on optimizing interactions, processes, products, and services to ensure consistent and positive experiences at every stage of the customer journey. Essentially, everything is geared towards offering customers exceptional service. Such an all-encompassing program with a holistic customer focus is beneficial for brands in many ways.
Firstly, it fosters a conducive environment for customers to shop in, whether it’s digital or in-store. Then, it also improves integration between different units in the business and allows customers to enjoy a seamless service. Clients will find the transition from one touchpoint to the other consistent and effortless. It will improve their satisfaction and increase the chance of upsells and impulsive purchases. The reliability will also foster loyalty towards the brand. Customers will also advocate for the brand and engage in word-of-mouth marketing.
Nowadays, it has become significantly easier to link your CX data with transactional data (e.g. emotions your business evokes with shopping cart size). By doing this, you can even see directly how happier customers spend more – you can see an ROI of your experience optimization efforts.
How CX Programs Improve Decision-Making
Effective CX programs are powered by consistent data collection and analysis to capture valuable insights about purchasing behavior, market trends, and consumer expectations. It will also help in identifying blindspots and pain points that customers face during the buying journey. The critical information gathered can be distributed to the relevant units to optimize the business operations and elevate the customer experience further.
More importantly, these insights guide decision-making, helping businesses identify areas for improvement, prioritize initiatives, and personalize interactions to create meaningful connections. They ensure that any strategic move from the brand is aligned with the targeted audience and its needs.
Therefore, holistic CX programs eliminate assumptions and skewed perspectives that may lead to inaccurate or short-sighted initiatives that can prove costly for the business. With a customer-first approach, they strengthen the revenue stream and profitability of the business.
Feedbackly’s data shows that customers who feel the emotions of joy, trust, or enthusiasm are likelier to make a purchase and return – there is an 80% correlation between the Emotional Value Index (EVI®) score and conversion to purchase. So, the happier are your customers, the more they purchase!
Why CX Programs Need Cross-Functional Collaboration
CX is explicitly or implicitly tied to every functional unit or department in the company. So, a successful CX program is one that involves collaboration across various departments and unifies them under the common goal of delivering a good experience to the clientele. It will break down silos and improve communication and coordination between teams.
So, it’s paramount that the CX team gets other departments, such as marketing, sales, customer support, and product development on board with their goals and work together to align strategies, share insights, and collectively drive improvements. Another outcome of such collaboration is that all employees in the organization understand the inevitable importance of CX to their career, as it affects everything from profitability to work culture to brand image.
Here is a great case study of Stockmann that has Emotional Experience as one of the core pillars of their company strategy, and it is even considered in their employee bonus program!
Would like to learn more about building a successful CX Program?
If you still don’t have a CX program in place or are looking for expert advice on improving your current program, here is a free webinar by Jaakko Männistö on building a successful CX program with 7 steps that will definitely help your brand. Jaakko Männistö is an award-winning CX professional and the founder of Feedbackly.
