In trading, customer experience ( CX ) is the product of the interaction between the organization and the customer during the duration of their relationship. This interaction consists of three parts: customer journeys, brand contact points that interact with customers, and the environment customers experience (including the digital environment) during their experience. A good customer experience means that the individual experience during all contact points matches individual expectations. Gartner emphasized the importance of managing the customer experience.
Customer experience implies customer engagement at different levels - such as rational, emotional, sensory, physical, and spiritual. Customers respond diversely to direct and indirect contact with the company. Direct contact usually occurs when purchases or uses are initiated by the customer. Indirect contacts often involve advertising, news reports, unplanned meetings with sales representatives, recommendation or word of mouth criticism.
Customer experience can be defined as internal and personal responses from customers who may be in line with the company either directly or indirectly. Creating a direct connection in a place where customers buy, use and receive services by customer-directed businesses such as instore or face-to-face contact with customers that can be viewed through interactions with customers through retail staff. We then have an indirect relationship that can take the form of unexpected interactions through company product representatives, certain services or brands and positive recommendations - or even take the form of "criticism, advertising, news, reports" and more along those lines.
The customer experience is created by the contribution not only of customer values ​​but also by the contribution of the company that provides the experience.
All events experienced by customers before and after purchase are part of the customer experience. When a customer does the experience it is seen as personal and unique, and it provides a stimulus to all the sensory, emotional, rational and physical aspects that can help to create an unforgettable experience for consumers they will never forget. The concept of customer experience can be investigated in various types of organizations and industries around the world, but many studies of customer experience in the retail industry have been developed. In the retail industry, both companies and customers play a big role in creating a customer experience.
Video Customer experience
Description
Forbes says that the customer experience is "the cumulative impact of multiple contact points" during customer interaction with the organization. Some companies are known to segment the customer experience into interaction via the web and social media, while others define human interaction such as over-the-phone customer service or face-to-face retail services as a customer experience.
According to Forrester Research (via Fast Company), six disciplines for a great customer experience are strategy, customer understanding, design, measurement, governance and culture. The company's ability to provide a distinctive experience in the eyes of its customers will increase the amount of consumer spending with the company and inspire loyalty to its brand. According to Jessica Sebor, "loyalty today is primarily driven by corporate interaction with its customers and how well it meets their wants and needs."
Wharton Marketing Professor Barbara E. Kahn has developed an evolutionary approach to customer experience as the third of four stages of each company in terms of customer centricity maturity. This progressive phase is:
- Product orientation: Companies only produce goods and offer them the best way.
- Market orientation: Several considerations of customer needs and segmentation arise, developing different mix of marketing mixtures for each.
- Customer experience: Adding two other factors recognizes the importance of providing an emotionally positive experience to customers.
- Authenticity: This is the company's top maturity stage. Products and services emerge from a real, long-term, sustainable, long-term, natural brand spirit with clients and other stakeholders.
In the present time it takes more than just cheap prices and innovative products to survive from the climate and competitiveness of retail businesses. The customer experience involves every point of contact you have with customers and interactions with your business products or services. Customer experience has emerged as an important strategy for all retail businesses facing competition. According to Holbrook & amp; Hirschman studies (1982) customer experience can be defined as all events that customers come into contact with when interacting with a particular business. This experience often affects the customer's emotions. The whole experience occurs when the interaction takes place through the stimulation of goods and services consumed.
The types of experiences seen through a marketing perspective are suggested by Pine & amp; Gilmore (1999) who states that an experience can be unique that may mean different individuals will not have the same level of experience that may not be remembered by the person so it will not be remembered for a certain period of time. Certain types of experience may involve different aspects of the individual such as emotional, physical, intellectual or even spiritual.
The customer experience is the stimulation created by the company for the consumer's senses, this means that certain companies and brands can control the stimuli they have given to the consumer's senses which can then control the consumer reactions generated from the stimulation process, delivering more customer experience as expected by the company.
Kotler et al. 2013, (p.Ã, 283) says that the customer experience is about, "Adding value to customers who buy products and services through customer participation and connections, by managing all aspects of the meeting". The meeting included a point of contact. Businesses can create and modify contact points to suit their customers who change/improve the customer experience. Creating experience for customers can lead to greater brand loyalty and recognition in the form of logos, colors, smells, touches, flavors, etc.
Maps Customer experience
Development
There are many aspects related to the customer experience. Customer service, the brand's ethical ideals and the shopping environment are examples that affect the customer experience. Understanding and effectively developing a positive customer experience has become a staple in business and brands to combat increasing competition (Youjani, 2015). Many consumers are well informed, they can easily compare two similar products or services simultaneously. Therefore, consumers look for experiences that can fulfill their intentions (Ali, 2015). Brands that can deliver this gain a competitive edge over their competitors. A study by Ali (2015) found that developing a culture of positive behavior creates greater competitive advantage over the long term. He saw the customer experience at the resort hotel and found that providing the best hotel services was not enough. To optimize the customer experience, management should also consider peace of mind and relaxation, recognition and escape, engagement, and hedonic. The overall customer experience should be considered. The development of a positive customer experience is important because it increases the likelihood of customers making sustainable purchases and developing brand loyalty (Kim & Yu; 2016). Brand loyalty can turn customers into advocates, resulting in long-term relationships between both parties (Ren, Wang & Lin, 2016). It promotes word of mouth and turns customers into contact points for brands. Prospective customers can develop opinions through the experience of others. Men and women alike respond differently to brands and therefore, will experience the same brand differently. Men respond effectively to relational, behavioral and cognitive experiences while women respond more to behavioral, cognitive and effective experiences in relation to branded applications. If a female consumer is a target market, an app ad focused on product emotions will provide an effective customer experience (Kim & amp; Yu, 2016).
Currently, retail stores tend to be in shopping areas such as malls or shopping districts. Very few operate in only areas (Tynan, McKechnie & Hartly, 2014). The customer experience is not limited to purchases only. This includes all activities that can affect a customer's experience with a brand (youjany, 2015). Therefore, the shopping center's reputation that the store is located will affect the brand customer's experience. This is an example of a shopping environment that affects a customer's experience. A study by Hart, Stachow and Cadogan (2013) found that consumer opinions about the city center may influence the opinion of retail stores that operate both negatively and positively. They share an example of a downtown management team that develops synergy between the surrounding location and the retail store. Locations tied to historical riches can provide local cities and businesses the opportunity to connect at a deeper level with their customers. They suggest that city center management and retail outlets should work together to develop an effective customer experience. This will result in all stores benefiting from customer retention and loyalty.
Another effective way to develop a customer experience is to actively engage customers with an activity. The human and physical components of an experience are very important (Ren, Wang & Lin, 201 6). Customers can remember active, hands-on experience far more effectively and accurately than passive activities. Participants in a study can recount the previous luxury driving experience because of their high involvement. However, this can also have a negative effect on the customer experience. Just as active, immediate experience can greatly develop value creation, it can also greatly facilitate the destruction of values ​​(Tynan, McKechnie & Hartly, 2014). This is related to customer satisfaction over their experience. By understanding what is causing the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the customer experience, management can apply changes in their approach appropriately (Ren, Wang & Lin, 2016). A study of customer experience at budget hotels revealed interesting results. Customer satisfaction is strongly influenced by real and sensory dimensions. This includes cleanliness, shower comfort and room temperature, just to name a few. Because budget hotels are cheap, customers expect basic elements to be satisfactory and luxury elements become non-existent. If this dimension does not reach the appropriate standard, satisfaction will decrease, resulting in a negative experience (Ren, Wang & Lin, 20 16). These dimensions also relate to the above statement of how participants are able to recall their luxurious driving experience. Fancy driving shows a real and sensory dimension, therefore, it is not surprising that this experience is memorable. Changes in corporate culture are an effective way to improve customer experience on a large scale. DHL freight, a road transport solutions company, decided to prioritize customer experience. Across organizations based in multiple locations, they implement these changes. These changes include vision and objective evaluation and increased customer interaction. It improves customer perceptions, changes the mindset of employees, and improves customer dialogue. Customer experience can only be changed when a business's top priority.
Management
Customer experience management (CEM or CXM) is a process that companies use to monitor and track all interactions with customers during their relationship. This involves building strategies for individual customer needs. According to Jeananne Rae, the company realizes that "building a great consumer experience is a complex enterprise, involving strategy, technology integration, orchestrating business models, brand management and CEO commitments."
According to Bernd Schmitt, "the term 'Customer Experience Management' represents the discipline, methodology, and/or process used to manage comprehensively across customers' channels, interactions, and cross-customer transactions with companies, products, brands or services." Harvard Business Review blogger Adam Richardson says that a company must define and understand all dimensions of customer experience to have long-term success.
Although 80% of companies claim that they offer "exceptional customer experience," according to author James Allen, this contrasts with 8% of customers who express satisfaction with their experience. Allen insists that for companies to meet the demands of providing exceptional customer experience, they must be able to implement "Three D":
- designing the right incentives for properly identified consumers, offered in an exciting environment
- delivery: the company's ability to focus the entire team on various functions to provide the proposed experience
- development ultimately determines the company's success, with its emphasis on developing consistency in execution
CEM has been recognized as the future of customer service and the sales industry. Companies use this approach to anticipate customer needs and adopt customer mindsets.
CEM describes business strategies designed to manage the customer experience and provide benefits for both resellers and customers. CEM can be monitored through surveys, targeted studies, observational research, or "customer voice" research. It captures the customer's instant response to its encounter with a brand or company.
The goal of CEM is to optimize the customer experience through gaining current customer loyalty in a multi-channel environment and ensuring they are completely satisfied. This is also to create their current customer supporters with potential customers as a form of word of mouth marketing.
Utilizing the environment including using visual, display and interactivity to connect with customers and create experience (Kotler, et al., 2013, p.Ã, 283). CEM can be associated with customer trip mapping; design tools used to track the movement of customers through various points of contact with the business concerned. It maps the first meeting people may have with the brand and shows different routes people can take through different channels or marketing (eg, online, television, magazines, newspapers). Integrated marketing communications (IMC) are also used to manage customer experience; IMC is about sending a consistent message among all platforms; These platforms include: Advertising, personal sales, public relations, direct marketing, and sales promotion (Kotler et al., 2013, p.Ã, 495).
CEM plays an important role in research and shows that academia can not be applied and used as a practice behind it. It should be noted that there is no set of specific rules or steps to follow because companies (in their various industries) will have different strategies. Therefore, development to the conceptual and theoretical aspects is required. This can be seen through different scientific studies. The reason behind CEM's increased interest is very significant is because businesses seek competitive differentiation. Businesses want to be more profitable and see this as a means to do it. Therefore why businesses want to offer a better experience to their customers and want to manage this process efficiently. To get success as a business customer needs to be understood. To fully utilize the model used in practice, academic research conducted can help the practical aspects. This together with recognizing previous customer experiences can help manage future experiences.
Good customer satisfaction indicator is Net Promoter Score (NPS). This shows the value of ten if the customer will recommend the business to others. With a score of nine and ten people this is called a protractor and would recommend another for a given product but at the other end of the spectrum is a critic, those giving a score of zero up to six. Reduce critics from the protractors to give advocacy calculations. Higher scores tend to be more successful and provide a better customer experience.
Not all aspects of CEM can be controlled by the business (eg other people and the influence they have). In addition, there is not much important information to support the CEM claims in terms of academic research.
Managing communications
The classic linear communication model includes having one sender or source sending messages through the media (television, magazine) then to the recipient. The classic linear model is a form of mass marketing that targets a large number of people where few become subscribers; this is a form of non-personal communication (Dahlen, et al., 2010, p.Ã, 39). The customized model shows the source of sending messages either to the media or directly to the opinion leader/s and/or former opinion (Model, actress, reliable source, trusted public figure, YouTuber/reviewer), who sends the translated message to the recipient (Dahlen et al., 2010, p.Ã, 39). A customized model is a form of interpersonal communication where feedback is almost instantaneous with receiving messages. The customized model means that there are more marketing platforms with the use of social media, connecting people with more point of contact. Marketers use digital experience to improve customer experience (Dahlen et al. 2010, p.Ã, 40). Improving the digital experience affects changes to CEM, customer travel maps, and IMC. Customized models enable marketers to communicate messages specifically designed for 'followers' of opinion leaders or particular opinions, send personalized messages and create digital experiences.
Persuasion Technique
Persuasion techniques are used when trying to send a message for an experience to occur. Marcom Projects (2007) came up with five minds shaping to show how people see things. The five mind-seters of persuasion include:
- Frames - show only what they want to see (paid ad post)
- Settings and contexts of surrounding objects for sale
- Filters - previous beliefs that form thoughts after interactions
- Social influence - how other people's behavior affects us
- Trust (placebo effect) - hope
The constructing mind can be seen through the use of a customized communication model, it allows the source/sender to create perceptions for the recipient (Dahlen, Lange, & Smith, 2010, p.Ã, 39). The shaping mind can take two routes for persuasion:
- Middle route, this route requires a thought process to take place, the content of the message is important. People think thoroughly about their reaction/reply. This can be seen in home purchases, internet providers, insurance companies.
- Peripheral route, does not require much thought, brains make connections. Marketers use recognizable gestures such as logos, colors, and sounds. This type of marketing is used when decisions about something as simple as choosing a drink, food (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981).
Marketers can use the process of human thinking and target this to create greater experience; they can do so by making the process simpler and making interactive steps to help the process (Campbell & Kirmani, 2000).
Customer relationship management
According to Das (2007), customer relationship management (CRM) is "the establishment, development, maintenance and optimization of mutually beneficial long-term relationships between consumers and organizations". The official definition of CRM by the Customer Relationship Management Research Center is "a strategy used to learn more about customer needs and behaviors to develop stronger relationships with them". The goal of this strategy is to change the approach to customers and enhance the experience for consumers by making suppliers more aware of the habits and frequency of their purchases.
Company Analysis D4 is an audit tool that considers four aspects of strategy, people, technology and processes in the design of CRM strategy. This analysis includes four main steps.
- "Determine the customer relationship management process that is within the company.
- Determine the perception of how a company manages its customer relationships, both internally and externally.
- Designing an ideal customer relationship management solution relative to a company or industry.
- Provide strategies for implementation of recommendations based on findings ".
Digital customer travel
In the classical marketing model, marketing is considered a funnel: at the beginning of the process (in the "awareness" stage) there are many branches competing for customer attention, and this amount is reduced through different purchasing phases. Marketing is the act of "pushing" the brand through multiple contact points (eg via TV commercials).
In the digital age, there are many points of contact from new types of digital media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) and other Internet platforms, such as forums, blogs, etc.
As a result, this process has become a kind of "journey":
- The number of brands is not reduced during the evaluation and purchase of the product.
- Brands that are not taken into account in the "awareness" stage can be added during the evaluation phase or even purchase
- After the post-purchase phase, there is a return to the first step in the process, thus feeding the brand awareness.
With respect to customers and sales-related channels, this is multichannel. Due to the growth and importance of social media and digital progress, these aspects need to be understood by businesses to be successful in this customer journey era. With tools like Facebook and Twitter having such advantages, there is a constant stream of data that needs to be analyzed to understand this journey. Business flexibility and responsiveness are critical in an ever-changing digital customer environment, as customers are always connected to their business and products. Customers are now instant product experts for digital outlets and forming their own opinions on how and where to consume products and services. Businesses use customer value and make plans to gain competitive advantage. Businesses use customer knowledge to guide customers' travels to their products and services.
Due to a shift in customer experience, in 2014, Wolny & amp; Charoensuksai highlights three behaviors that show how decisions can be made in this digital journey. Zero Moment of truth is the customer's first interaction with respect to the service or product. It currently affects consumer choice to explore the product further or not at all. These moments can happen on any digital device. Showrooming highlights how consumers will see the product in a physical store but then decides to get out of the store empty-handed and buy online. This consumer decision may be due to the ability to compare multiple prices online. At the opposite end of the spectrum is webrooming. Consumers will research about online products in terms of quality and price but then decide to buy in store. These three channels need to be understood by businesses because customers expect businesses readily available to meet their customers' specific needs and buying behavior.
Customer trip mapping
The customer travel map for service design was first introduced through the high speed rail project Acela IDEO (1999). It then became one of the most widely used tools for service design and has been used as a tool for visualizing intangible services. The customer's travel map shows the customer experience story. It not only identifies the key interactions that the customer has with the organization, but also brings the feelings, motivations, and user questions for each point of contact. Finally, customer travel maps have a goal to teach more organizations about their customers. To map an important customer trip to consider enterprise customers (buyer persona), customer travel timeframes, channels (phone, email, in-app messages, social media, forums, recommendations), first action (acknowledgment of issues) and final actions (recommendations or renewals subscription, fi).
Customer trip maps take into account people's mental models (how things should behave), interaction flow and possible contact points. They can combine user profiles, scenarios, and user flows; and reflects the mindset, process, considerations, pathways, and experiences experienced by people in their daily lives.
Benefits
Mapping a customer's journey helps an organization understand how prospects and customers use different channels and point of contact, how the organization's perception and how the organization wants its customer and prospect experience. Understanding the latter, it is possible to design an optimal experience that meets the expectations of the major customer groups, achieves competitive advantage and supports the achievement of desired customer experience objectives.
Retail environment
The environmental factors of retail include social features, design, and atmosphere. This can generate increased pleasure while shopping, resulting in a positive customer experience and most likely the possibility of customers visiting the store in the future. The same retail environment can produce results and emotions, depending on what the customer is looking for. For example, a solid retail environment may appeal to entertainment-seeking consumers, but it creates the impression of inattentive and frustrated customer service to consumers who may need help finding a particular product to meet their immediate needs.
Environmental stimuli such as lighting and music, can influence consumers' decisions to stay longer in the store, increasing the chances of purchasing. For example, a retail store may have dim lights and soothing music that can cause consumers to experience the store as relaxed and soothing.
Consumers today are consistently connected through the development of technological innovation in the retail environment. This has led to an increase in the use of a digital experience led in the course of their purchases both within the store and online that inspire and influence the sales process. For example, Rebecca Minkoff has installed a smart mirror in their fitting room that allows customers to find products that can complement what they try. These mirrors also have an additional feature, a self-checkout system where customers place items on an RFID-powered table, this sends the product to the iPad which is then used for checkout.
The external and internal variables in the retail environment can also influence the consumer's decision to visit the store. External variables include window display such as posters and nameplate, or product exposure that can be seen by consumers from outside the store. Internal variables include flooring, decoration and design. The attributes of the retail environment can encourage or prevent consumers from approaching the store.
Sales experience
Sales experience is part of the customer experience. While the customer experience includes the sum of all interactions between the organization and the customer throughout the relationship, the sales experience is focused exclusively on the interactions that occur during the sales process and up to the point that the customer decides to buy.
The customer experience is likely to be owned by the Marketing function within an organization and therefore has little control or focus on what happens before the customer decides to buy.
Sales experience is related to the buyer's journey up to and including the point where the buyer makes the purchase decision.
See also
- Customer knowledge
- Customer Success
- Economic experience
- Customer Data Platform
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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