7 tips to provide an unforgettable customer experience

In today’s competitive business world, providing an unforgettable customer experience is important for your company’s success. To satisfy customers, you must create meaningful experiences and go above and beyond their expectations. 

What is customer experience?

Customer experience (CX) is how your customers think and feel about your company during their whole journey. It includes every touchpoint a customer has with your company throughout their lifecycle. By providing exceptional experiences at every stage of the lifecycle – from awareness to advocacy – you can create a strong emotional connection with your customers and increase their loyalty to your brand.

Why is customer experience important?

Customers today have high expectations and are more likely to switch to a competitor if their experience with your brand falls short. It’s therefore imperative that you provide a great customer experience so you stand out from the crowd. Also, customers are more likely to recommend your company to friends and family when they have a positive experience.

A positive customer experience is not just about making customers happy. It’s all about developing a relationship with the customer and earning their trust and loyalty. When a customer feels valued and appreciated, they are more likely to remain loyal to the brand.

With a positive customer experience, you can: 

• Stand out from your competitors
• Increase brand loyalty 
• Improve customer satisfaction 
• Drive customer retention 

How to improve customer experience?

The key to improving customer experience is to leverage customer data to gain a better understanding of your target audience. By collecting customer data, businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers’ behavior, preferred channels, and needs.

This enables you to personalize your marketing messages and tailor products or services to better meet your customers’ expectations. Additionally, customer data can help your company identify areas for improvement and develop targeted strategies to enhance and provide a more seamless customer experience. Overall, leveraging customer data is essential for companies looking to improve their customer experience and build stronger, more loyal customer relationships.

Let’s look at some customer experience best practices you can use in your marketing strategy.

Provide cross-channel journeys

Customers want a connected journey and a seamless experience when they interact with brands. You can meet this goal by expanding the number of channels in your marketing stack and leveraging cross-channel marketing. This involves interacting with customers through every channel in your arsenal, from in-store to social media, email, SMS, apps, and others.

It’s essential to engage customers through various channels so that they can reach you anytime and anywhere. This strategy makes the customer’s experience more personalized and convenient as they can communicate with your brand on their preferred channel.

Use AI and email automation to increase efficiency

You can use AI to hyper-personalize your customers’ journeys. With artificial intelligence, long hours spent sifting through data trying to identify trends are a thing of the past. AI-powered product recommendations can help you recommend best-sellers or other ranges to your customers based on their browsing behavior. This ensures that your customers have access to the right products and content in real time, making purchase decisions easier. 

Automating your email marketing is a valuable tool for improving customer experience and satisfaction. By automating repetitive email tasks, you can save time and look at customer behaviors to trigger timely and relevant communications. You can even use an automated abandoned cart program combined with AI product recommendations to improve your customers’ experience by providing relevant product suggestions. 

Personalize every touchpoint

You can improve customer experience by interacting with your customers in a human and personal way. Send personalized emails to your customers by addressing them by their names from the beginning, whether it’s in the subject line to grab their attention or on apps with push notifications. 

Personalized marketing feels more genuine and allows you to connect with your customer base. A single customer view will allow you to understand your customers, build a stronger relationship with them, and improve their experience. 

Create a seamless purchase journey

A buyer’s purchase journey is the process a customer goes through to purchase a product or service. Companies should provide a seamless purchase journey for a positive customer experience. By keeping the purchase process short and simple, you can reduce barriers to purchase. A four-step process should be followed:

• Logging in or guest checkout
• Shipping details
• Payment details
• Review

Adding integrations like Klarna helps streamline the checkout process. It allows customers to pay in installments, which is a game-changer for companies. Offering this option will increase sales and attract a wider customer base. 

Integrate customer support channels

You can improve customer experience by offering customer support channels. Having a live chat option on your website gives customer service agents a single customer view. This enables them to access customer information in real-time. By doing this, chat agents will understand customers’ needs and preferences quickly.

As a result, chat agents can provide personalized support with instant solutions to questions and concerns tailored to the customer’s specific requirements. Also, quick and efficient customer support removes barriers to purchase, making it easier for customers to convert. 

Include customer surveys

By collecting data via customer surveys, you can identify key areas for improvement and make necessary changes to enhance your customer experience. You can use online surveys to collect feedback and find out what makes your customers happy or what they are dissatisfied with.

This information helps demonstrate to loyal customers that their needs are being heard and addressed. It can also make customers feel connected and have a voice in the future of your brand. You can create surveys yourself or use data from well-respected sites like Trustpilot, Feefo, and G2. 

Implement user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful tool for improving customer experience. UGC is any form of content, including images, videos, and reviews, created by your customers for free. This type of organic content can be leveraged and used in your company’s marketing strategy.

Reviews and star ratings are crucial in helping indecisive customers make their final decision. By featuring reviews and ratings from customers, brands can establish trust and credibility with potential customers. Also, UGC creates an emotional connection with your customers. When customers see their images or stories featured on your website or social media, they’ll trust your products, feel seen and valued.  

Summary

Following these tips will help you deliver a positive customer experience across their entire customer journey and build a loyal customer base. Dotdigital understands the importance of providing an unforgettable customer experience. Our tools are designed to help companies engage with their customers at every touchpoint, provide personalized content, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. If you want to enhance your customer experience, book a demo with us today.