Creating and implementing a strong customer experience management strategy can make all the difference when it comes to business growth and success.

Find out exactly what you need to consider when it comes to your customer experience management in this article.

What is customer experience management?

If you’re just launching your business, or even if you’ve been in business for a while, you may have heard the term customer experience management but not be 100 percent sure what it means.

Often referred to as CXM or CEM, customer experience management is, first of all, the process of analyzing your customer’s habits.

Once you understand their habits, you can put in place strategic plans that improve all customer interactions to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Managing your customers’ experiences with your brand helps you offer the best shopping experience and keeps your customers coming back for more.  

This experience doesn’t just take place on your website, but on every channel where customers interact with your business.

The customer experience you offer needs to be seamless across all channels and platforms. Your customers are looking for an effortless shopping experience, and strong CXM can help you provide exactly that.

How to get started – creating a customer experience management strategy.

A strong CXM strategy can make the difference between a successful business and one that falls at the first hurdle. Of course, aiming for a world-class customer experience is the goal, but how can you get there? Covering each of the points below is a great starting point.

Convenience

Making sure your customer journey is as seamless as possible is vital. According to the National Research Federation, 97 percent of shoppers have abandoned their purchase because the process is too difficult, so creating an easy-to-use shopping experience makes a huge difference. The top three things to consider when ensuring convenience are:

1. Offering guest check-out options
2. Optimizing for cross-device shopping
3. Storing shipping details for future purchases.
   

76% of shoppers prioritize convenience when selecting a retailer to purchase from, according to our research, so getting this stage right is arguably one of the most critical areas of your CXM strategy. Additionally, 46% of shoppers are willing to pay more for an item if their experience is fast and convenient.

Manage Selling Channels with Software.

To be where your customers are shopping while managing experiences that meet and even exceed customer expectations, you need to make sure you’re managing your sales channels effectively. You need to make sure your inventory, order management, and shipping process are well controlled.

If the thought of managing inventory and orders over multiple channels sounds a little overwhelming, Linnworks can help you optimize and integrate every selling opportunity across all selling platforms. For example, if a customer orders your product through a marketplace, but you don’t have any stock available, then the experience of that customer is going to be negative.

Flexible Payments and Frictionless Deliveries

Adding flexible payment options like buy now, pay later can help reduce cart abandonment rates. In addition, especially in the current economic climate, offering flexible payments like Klarna can improve checkout completion by 30 percent, as highlighted by Shopify.

Delivery options are also important to customers, with many choosing free delivery, even with a longer wait time. Customers also want the option of buying online and picking up in-store.

Transparency about delivery times and costs is essential when considering your customer experience too. Making sure that your returns process is as easy as possible also makes a huge difference. Consider things like including a pre-paid returns label to streamline this process even further.

Understand Your Customers

Knowing your customers’ habits is a vital part of your CXM strategy. Do you know where they make their purchasing decisions on your website?

Creating a customer journey map can help you visualize exactly which steps your customer will go through when they engage with your company. You can have maps for different pathways, including someone signing up for a newsletter or purchasing an item. With an average of 7.6 touchpoints for the average ecommerce purchase, according to research from Dentsu, knowing how and where your customers are connecting with your brand at what point on their journey is essential.

According to Dentsu, 90% of ecommerce marketers say they struggle to connect more than three channels, so getting your customer journey map right can make a huge difference. You can start with a very basic map that covers the standard sales funnel of awareness →research→purchase and then adds details that may include your engagement with customers, including their actions, emotions, pain points, and your solutions for these.

Incorporate feedback into your CXM.

Once your CXM strategy is in place, it’s a great idea to use customer feedback to adapt and improve it continually. Start analyzing the patterns in reviews leftover all channels, including:

• Online reviews
• Social media
• Emails
• Contact forms
• Phone or chat conversations  

These patterns will often help inform you where improvements can be made. For example, if you’re getting reviews across all channels that your returns process is challenging to understand, you know that’s an area to improve.

Post-purchase experience.

Don’t forget your customers after they’ve made their purchase. Optimizing your customer post-purchase experience can be the difference between building brand loyalty leading to repeat purchases and your customers heading elsewhere.

As soon as your customer clicks that ‘buy now’ button, their post-purchase experience begins, and it’s your responsibility to make sure this is carried out in the best way possible. Examples of a solid post-purchase experience pathway include things like:

• Confirmation email
• Package tracking details and updates
• Regular updates
• Details of loyalty programs
• Clearly defined returns process
• Opportunities to sign up for newsletters

Your ultimate goal when creating a solid CXM strategy is to nurture brand loyalty and improve the lifetime value (LTV) of each and every customer. Making sure that the post-purchase experience is included within your strategy is an essential part of this.

Review, review, review.

Once you’ve created and started to implement your CXM strategy, make sure you revisit it frequently. Keep an eye on your original goals, monitor reviews, and check which areas you could adjust to improve your CXM even more.

Make sure you offer an easy and seamless shopping experience across all channels, with the end goal of not only meeting but exceeding your customer’s needs at every stage of their journey.