Nailing down a successful customer experience strategy is key to business success, especially given the current global climate. A well-thought-out and executed customer experience strategy will improve customer satisfaction, increase brand loyalty, generate word-of-mouth and maximise revenue and profits, both now and in the future. Great customer experiences result in happy customers, and happy customers remain loyal through the good times and the bad.

But where do you start with your customer experience strategy? Even if you have an existing strategy, does it align with the new paradigms? Understanding the Customer Experience is even more important in light of recent events. As supply chains and logistics challenges change business processes rapidly, the customer experience is ever more important. These experiences could either make or break the future relationship with existing and prospective customers.

Many organizations already have customer experience strategies in place, but are they reflective of what your customers are actually NOW experiencing with your brand? For example, are you as a retailer focused on how the delivery/pick-up or the online ordering experience was, as opposed to the in-store experience that customers used to have? Are you exploring how the impact of changing supply chains, increasing omni-channel consumption and delivery methods is impacting the customer and user experience of your brand?

Understanding the new buyer, shopper and customer journey will be key for the future success of brands. There have been a number of articles that talk about how innovation comes from adversity; how the new reality is forcing people to try something new and different. In many instances, this trial process and period will lead to increasing adoption of new processes and consumption patterns, as the world adjusts to a new normal.  

Consequently, the experiences that every single one of us have had will reshape our commitments to the brands we choose to do business with. We need to question if, once we are through this, we as organisations and consumers will go back to the “old ways”, or if there will be new dynamics that we need to understand. One thing is clear, we are now in an ever-shifting environment, where the uncertainty means that we need to be able to adjust and pivot as macro-effects impact our consumers’ consumption patterns and focuses.

As many organizations take a “pause” in operations, it is paramount for brands to UNDERSTAND their customer; not just continually measure a potentially out-of-date experience. The necessity to listen to their customers, show empathy and explore customers’ new reality, means that organisations need to review the programs they have in place:

• Are brands measuring the ACTUAL customer experience, or what was previously the modus operandi?
• Are brands leading with empathy and integrity, or are they thinly-veiled platitudes?
• Are brands getting to the core of the experience (and new experiences to come)?
• Are brands enabling agile solutions for future states?

One thing is for certain; nobody knows for how long this global catastrophe will last. What is for certain is that we have entered a new era that results in us having to rethink how we engage and understand our customers, and become more agile and nimble in the processes and approaches we take to gaining that understanding, regardless of what the future holds.

I hope you have found the above information useful. If you would like to know more about customer experience strategy, or have any questions regarding the above, feel free to reach out to us at any time. Contact hx@potentiate.com.

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