The ultimate guide to customer experience. Learn everything you need to know about CX, from mapping your customer journey to leveraging live chat, step-by-step.
You may think you get it when it comes to creating a great customer experience. How hard can it be? Deliver a great product on time and all good -- right right? Wrong. Oh so wrong.
That’s why I’m writing this guide so you understand the ins and outs of customer experience: what it is, why it’s important, and how to nail it each and every time.
The Ultimate Guide to Customer Experience is a great resource for business owners, tech start-ups, direct-to-consumer companies, and anyone else who’s looking to learn more about customer experience (CX).
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience (known as CX for short) is a customer's overall perception of a brand or company.
Every time a customer has an interaction with a brand, they’re looking for value. They’ll see a social media post, read a blog, have a chat with a live agent, and wonder, “Does this feel helpful? Is it good? Bad? Do I really care?”
The result of a customer’s multiple interactions is CX: how a customer feels about a brand after encountering them in different touch-points during the customer journey.
Long story short, CX is the customer's total perception of a brand.
Are you doing anything to manage your customer’s perception of you? It’s something you should think about, because truth be told, your customer's view of you determines whether your business will grow...or fall short.
If you’re new to the concept of CX, it may seem overwhelming to think about all of your different customers and how each of them feels about you. But, if you take the time to think about your CX and strategically plan around it, you can develop a great experience that increases customer loyalty, generates sales, and ultimately grows your business.
Why is CX important?
CX affects your bottom line. If your customer is happy, they’re more likely to come back, spread the word, and grow your sales.
On the other hand, if your customer is unhappy, whoa nelly, watch out. You’ll get hit with bad reviews and they’ll talk smack in online forums and even in your ads. You will definitely see an increase in returns and demands for discounts and freebies to compensate for the bad experience. All of this is terrible for your business and customers trusting you.
There are several benefits to having a strong customer experience strategy.
- It generates brand awareness and gives your company a leg up on the competition.
- It increases customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth publicity.
- In turn, happy customers create positive reviews, new leads, and sales.
Learn CX Strategies That Get Real Results
Although the term “customer experience” has been coined a buzzword by some, it’s a pretty simple concept that’s been proven to work: focus on keeping the customer happy.
People have been doing this for years and years. Now, we’re doing it in a new environment, with new tools.
At Ravience, we want to give you all the tools you need to succeed, no matter what business you’re in (or where you are in your business journey). Whether you’re a tech start-up dipping your toes into CX or an established direct-to-consumer company who wants to step up their game, we’re here to provide you with easy-to-follow instructions on how to use customer experience to grow your business.
As you’ll see in this guide, creating great CX is easy when you tackle each part of the process step by step. The Ultimate Guide to Customer Experience has nine chapters that will walk you through all the information you need to know in order to create and maintain successful CX.
About The Ultimate Guide to Customer Experience
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be difficult to execute. This guide is meant to provide key information and easy actions you can take to create a strong CX foundation. We’ll go over how to map out the customer journey, create a content marketing strategy, and leverage chat and email transcripts to drive business growth.
If you follow the steps in each of these chapters, you can create a CX strategy that:
- generates brand awareness
- acquires new customers
- increases returning sales from customers you already have
- turns your loyal customers into raving fans
What You’ll Learn
Each chapter will include the WHY behind that specific part of the CX, along with action items that you can use to walk your business through the same steps.
Create a customer experience strategy, map your customer journey, create a content marketing strategy, learn how to leverage live chat to generate sales, and pull data that can help you continuously improve.
Chapter 1: Your Customer Experience Strategy
In order to build something that will last, you need a strong foundation. This chapter will cover the steps you need to take to create a strong and sturdy CX strategy, starting with your vision and goals.
At the end of this chapter, you’ll have the tools you need to gain a clear vision of your messaging, goals, voice, target audience, and overall CX. You’ll learn how to create a consistent customer experience, and you’ll use it as the groundwork for your excellent CX that keeps customers coming back time and time again.
Learn the seven steps for developing a strong customer experience strategy.
Chapter 2: Developing a Customer Experience Journey Map
You can’t create a strong CX without knowing where your customer has been and where they’re going.
In this chapter, you’ll walk step-by-step through the CX journey mapping process. By the end, you’ll be able to create a basic customer experience journey map, complete with your customer’s touchpoints, stages in their journey, and hurdles you’ll help them overcome.
Learn the five steps for developing a customer experience journey map.
Chapter 3: Creating a Content Marketing Strategy
Draw in new leads with a strong content marketing strategy, one of the first pieces in the CX puzzle.
Don’t be overwhelmed by content creation—We’ll equip you with content hacks and key information about why content is important, how you can create a strong content strategy, and how this effort will pay off for you in the long run.
Learn the four steps for creating a strong content marketing strategy.
Chapter 4: Building a Live Chat Conversion Strategy
If you’re not using live chat to generate revenue, you’re leaving money on the table.
A live chat conversion strategy gives you the ability to leverage real-time conversations and solve customer’s problems, answer customer’s questions, and give potential customers the little nudge they need to take action.
Learn why live chat is a huge opportunity many businesses overlook, and how you can leverage it to generate sales and increase customer loyalty -- here.
Chapter 5: Developing a Customer Support Approach
At the end of the day, you want to provide value to your customers.
Your goal is to solve their problem, and to teach them that they can trust you to solve their problems. How do you do this? With solid customer support.
Here, you'll learn about the common mistakes made with live chat, how to avoid them, and five ways to create a customer-obsessed reputation.
Chapter 6: Crafting an SMS Text Messaging Strategy
Customers receive an average of 65 notifications a day. When you send out a text, it really has to hold value in order to break through the noise.
Learn the six steps for providing value with your SMS messaging strategy (and the Golden Rule of Texting) here.
Chapter 7: Developing a Proactive Customer Success Plan
A proactive customer success plan is a great way to plan for your customers needs and take action so that you solve their problems before they take place.
When you think about your proactive customer success plan, make sure to factor in key points (like proactive chats) where you can give each customer the unique information they need, before they have to ask you for it.
Learn the three steps for developing a proactive customer success plan.
Chapter 8: Leveraging Chat and Email Transcripts to Drive Growth
Having a direct line with your customers means that you have a connection with your audience that few brands have been able to have before.
You have data. Use it to grow!
Learn the six steps for drawing insights from your chats (and which chat metrics really matter).
Chapter 9: Applying Website and Customer Service Metrics to Your Customer Experience
You can use your website analytics and various customer service metrics to find trends, understand more about your customers, and keep your CX ahead of the curve.
Learn four tactics you can use to continuously improve your CX.
Chapter 10: What’s Next?
What you’ve learned in The Ultimate Guide to Customer Experience is everything you need to create and maintain a successful CX strategy.
Go more in-depth with tools that can help you kick your business’ CX into high gear.
Here’s the next step...
Ready to get started?
Schedule a consult to learn more about CX outsourcing with Ravience.
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