Customer Experience: Definition, Factors and Strategies

A positive customer experience is very important for business continuity. Because, this is an indicator of the success or failure of the services provided by the company. If they get a satisfied shopping experience, of course this will build a sense of customer loyalty to the company itself.

In this article, it can help you find out more about customer experience, starting from its meaning, benefits, goals, to how to improve your business's customer experience. For details, you can find out by reading this article to the end.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience is a customer's personal experience that is subjective as a result of their interaction with your business.

All of these experiences can be obtained directly or indirectly, whether it's due to initiatives from consumers or because of planned strategies such as product appearances, advertisements, or promotions.

So, you could say that customer experience is the customer experience that is obtained while interacting with a product so that it finally creates a reaction.

All of these interactions must create a good impression, so that their customer journey will also be enjoyable.

With a good customer experience, your business or product will also get a good impression from consumers.

This certainly can have a positive impact on increasing sales or even being able to bring in loyal customers.

Why is Customer Experience Important?

Good cutomer experience is important for your business growth. Having a good customer experience can increase loyalty, help you retain customers, and improve your business image.

This is what makes you need to create the best customer experience. Because it can make your business grow.

The Purpose of Customer Experience

The goal of customer experience is to retain business customers so as to create customer loyalty and increase business sales. Basically the purpose of this customer experience aims to:

• Increase customer satisfaction
• Improve business image
• Promotion at no cost from one customer to another
• Get lots of recommendations to use your business products or services

The difference between Customer Experience and Customer Service?

Customer experience and customer service are part of the business. However, both have different roles. Customer experience is customer experience. It refers to the broader customer journey across an organization and includes every interaction between a customer and a business.

Meanwhile, customer service is customer service for assistance and advice given to customers regarding your product or service as needed.

The difference between customer experience and customer service is that customer experience is the sum of all customer journeys with your business. Meanwhile, customer service focuses on human interaction and supports customers directly. 

Characteristics of a Good Customer Experience

After knowing the importance of customer experience for business, below are the characteristics of a good customer experience. You can use some of these as a reference for your business later.

Easy to access the website

The first feature is the ease of accessing the company's website or online store. Imagine when you are going to find out about a product via a website, but it turns out that the site is loading very slowly, or the navigation is confusing. Things like this will make potential customers to be lazy to continue.

Therefore, it is important to improve website performance so that it is more accessible and customers also have a good impression.

Fast and satisfying response

Next is a fast and satisfying response, apart from the ease of accessing the site, speed in responding is crucial in determining the customer experience.

Sellers can respond to customers on social media or websites used. The faster the response is given, the better the impression left. However, don't just make sure the answers you give do answer their questions.

Nice welcome

In addition to a fast response, you can also give a good welcome to every new customer who comes. You can do this greeting in the live chat feature or private chat feature. By giving a welcome greeting, customers will feel welcomed and will feel comfortable in making transactions.

A thank you after the transaction

Acknowledgments can indeed give a good impression, whenever and wherever they are used. Therefore, in this case, you can also say it to the customer when the transaction process is complete.

Giving thanks will certainly make customers feel cared for. If the customer is happy, it is not impossible that in the future they will shop again.

Easy to submit criticism and suggestions

In addition to the things above, the next feature of customer experience is the ease in submitting criticism and suggestions. Customers are usually given the opportunity to submit criticisms and suggestions for the services they get.

Make sure they can convey it easily so they will feel that their opinion is accepted.

CSAT

The customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a universal metric used to assess a customer's recent interaction with the customer service team. CSAT is a basic method for understanding the quality of your service

The assessment parameters range from 1-5 or 1-10. Where the lowest score indicates very dissatisfied, and the highest score indicates very satisfied. A positive response results in a higher CSAT score.

How to Maximize Customer Experience?

There are things you need to pay attention to so that the customer experience gets better. What are they? The following are important factors that must be considered in building a customer experience:

• Accessibility. Ease of customer interaction and access to your product or service.
• Competence. Competencies that can be provided by the company.
• Customer recognition. The feeling felt by the customer that he is valued or recognized by the company.
• Helpfulness. The ease felt by customers in asking for help.
• Personalization. The feeling of comfort felt by customers about the treatment or facilities provided by the company.
• Problem solving. The customer's feelings about the problem the company is capable of solving.
• Promise fulfillment. The feelings felt by customers regarding the promises made by the company.
• Value for time. The customer's feelings regarding the time they have are able to be maximally appreciated by the company.

Strategy to Improve Customer Experience

Now that you know the characteristics, then below are strategies to improve the customer experience, including:

Build a customer obsession culture

Customer obsession is the company's efforts to provide a more consumer experience or put customers first. In a study showed that 60% of businesses that prioritize customers will get higher profits. So, everything that will be done will remain focused on the customer.

Understand the target audience

The next strategy is to understand your business target audience well. Understanding consumers can start from gender, age, hobbies, platforms used, and much more.

One way to get that information is to create a buyer persona. With buyer personas, you can create consumer profiles and pretend they are real.

Define a customer-focused USP

USP or unique selling point is the uniqueness that differentiates your product from competitors. USP will make consumers buy your product compared to competitors'.

So, to help the customer experience, you can define a customer-focused USP. So, it's not just a matter of product features or advantages, you can provide USPs that are more profitable for consumers so they will be more interested.

Specialize on customers

Making customers feel special can also help build a customer experience. There are several things you can do to make them feel special, including the following.

• Give a thank you after the customer has made a transaction.
• Give special vouchers or promos for those who are having a birthday.
• Say a prayer at the end of every telephone conversation with a customer.
• Do a UGC campaign through social media to appreciate customer work.
• If possible, do online meetups to build closeness with customers.

Build good emotions with customers

A good relationship between sellers and customers can increase the percentage of sales. Therefore it is important to build closeness or emotional connection. Treat them well and don't hesitate to get closer personally, as long as it's within a reasonable context.

Improve the quality of customer service

Customer service is one of the factors that greatly influences the customer's customer experience. As previously explained, they will be happier when they get a fast and informative response.

Conclusion

Customer experience is the user experience that is obtained from interactions with businesses.

A good impression on the customer experience is important because it can help increase product sales and customer loyalty. Therefore it is important to apply the strategies above, one of which is to give customers special promos or prices.