8 things to know about customer experience

Customer experience has a great impact on enterprises. This article discusses eight knowledge points about customer experience. If you are interested, you may want to take a look.

1. Three characteristics of experience: holistic, personalized, and contextualized

When we try to understand "experience", we need to understand the three characteristics of "experience": first, experience is holistic; second, experience is personalized; third, experience is contextual. These three key points make it more difficult for us to understand customer "experience", especially for multi-role organizations, which need to achieve a unified understanding of customer experience.

Currently, customer journey orchestration is a very popular method to better understand customer experience. Starting from the customer experience, the external world and the internal world are aligned to achieve value exchange.

2. Customer experience is an important factor affecting customer purchasing decisions

Customer experience (CX) is one of the three major factors that influence customers’ purchasing decisions. Data shows that 84% of consumers believe that customer experience is as important as product and price, and 92% of consumers believe that customer experience has a significant impact on future shopping decisions.

In the era of digital transformation, the touchpoint dividend has exploded, and companies need to uniformly manage customer experience and directly bring performance growth to the company with high-quality customer experience.

3. Three major development stages of customer experience management: single channel/touchpoint optimization, scenario-based creation, and full-journey operation

The 2023 China Customer Journey Orchestration (CJO) Application Guide summarizes the development process of customer experience management into three stages:

Phase 1: Single channel/touchpoint optimization. Enterprises start from the touchpoints of people, goods and places to reduce negative experiences, such as improving product performance and standardizing shopping guide services.

Phase 2: Scenario-based creation: Enterprises start from the perspective of scenarios and use the collaboration of various touchpoints to create a better scenario experience.

Phase 3: Full journey operation. The enterprise starts from the customer operation thinking, runs through the whole journey, conveys the brand concept in each key scene, accumulates the user's recognition of the brand, and brings more word-of-mouth, repeat purchase, additional purchase and other loyal behaviors.

4. Visualize customer experience and explore business growth opportunities

Jim Kalbach mentioned in "Mapping Experiences" that companies can use service blueprints, customer journey maps, experience maps , etc. to visualize customer experience and gain insight into opportunities for improving customer experience and business growth from a systematic perspective.

5. Companies that are good at communicating customer journey experience are more likely to win the market

Drawing a customer journey map can provide companies with insights to design better customer experiences, thereby improving business efficiency.

Jim Kalbach proposed that customer journey maps need to be relevant to the business. Companies must decide whose experiences and which experiences to map, then conduct field research, interpret customer experiences, and finally create the map.

A customer journey map is not just a list of touchpoints, but also a deep insight into customer motivations and attitudes - what motivates customers to buy, how to satisfy customers... and other issues are what customer journey maps need to address. Customer journey maps usually include typical elements such as actions, goals, emotions, pain points, key moments, touchpoints, satisfaction, and opportunities. However, it should be emphasized that maps are only an approximate representation of customer experience, and maps are not experiences.

6. 81.4% of Chinese companies plan to invest in customer journey orchestration

Gartner, an internationally renowned organization, defines Customer Journey Orchestration (CJO) as "orchestrating a series of optimal interactions throughout the customer lifecycle to respond to or stimulate customer feedback." Its essence is the management of customer interaction experience throughout the entire life cycle, emphasizing personalized, omni-channel consistent experience.

By clearly understanding the value of customer experience and having the ability to analyze the customer journey, companies can respond to and predict changes in customer behavior, which will greatly increase their long-term competitive advantage. According to a survey conducted by Sensors Data in August 2023, 81.4% of Chinese companies plan to invest in customer journey orchestration.

7. Four Values ​​of Customer Journey Orchestration

Customer journey orchestration is an important means for enterprises to reshape customer experience. Its value is mainly reflected in the following four aspects:

First, unify cognition and establish a customer-centric business model;

Second, optimize the breakpoints, stuck points, and friction points encountered by customers from a global perspective;

Third, manage the long-tail customer journey and tap into incremental business opportunities;

Fourth, accurately evaluate the input and output of IT systems to save long-term cost investment.

8. Steps of Customer Journey Orchestration — MTAOO

CJO is not just a concept, it is also a customer-centric digital business strategy. When companies examine business issues from the perspective of the overall customer journey, they can more accurately identify customer pain points, and thus optimize and improve them in a targeted manner, thus achieving customer-centric services from beginning to end.

To achieve this goal, we can divide the entire process of customer journey orchestration into five core stages: mapping, embedding, analysis, orchestration, and optimization, which is the MTAOO methodology:

Map: Describe every interaction between the company and its customers in detail, form journey maps by role and business, and accurately show how different customer groups experience the product and their stage migration process.

Track: Identify key touchpoints in the customer journey and integrate data from various channels (such as apps, mini-programs, official accounts, corporate WeChat, and other scenarios) to establish a comprehensive customer touchpoint recording system for the company and complete the construction of an integrated and multi-dimensional data infrastructure.

Analyze: Set key indicators based on different stages of the customer journey, conduct in-depth data analysis, diagnose the consistency of the journey, and identify pain points and potential improvement opportunities.

Orchestrate: Based on data analysis, strategically orchestrate the customer journey according to the value of different customer groups to ensure that the most appropriate content is delivered at the right time and through the right touchpoints, further improving customer experience and value.

Optimize: Keep an eye on changes in key indicators and dynamically adjust customer journey orchestration strategies to ensure that the customer journey is always best guided and optimized.

Author: Sensors Data