As business practices go, we can often get trapped in a "close the deal" sales mindset. The problem with that approach is that it doesn't always equate to loyalty. Winning a customer is one thing, but keeping a customer often means offering a premium brand experience — and that requires a whole different culture.
One of the first steps a leader should take to improve the customer experience is to commit to being a loyalty company, instead of a transaction company. The results are worth it. If you are adept at fostering meaningful connections with your customers, they will stay with you for years. If you are great at this, they will be with you for life.
Consider what I call the four key steps to CX success.
No. 1. Get customers to stay… happy
In a competitive environment, a company's focus is understandably on business success. But that doesn't have to come at the expense of the customer experience. In fact, both are opposite sides of the same coin. A happy customer is a loyal customer, and that will translate to sales.By creating a rewarding bond with the customer, CX can directly contribute to the bottom line.
Not that it's easy. Customers have expectations about the quality and consistency of their experience with a brand. These expectations rise over time, and you must have the ability to exceed them.
That's why it's important to know what your customer expects from your brand. Keep in mind that customers may only interact with you a few times in the span of your relationship. That means you must make sure the experience is as great as it can be, every time.
No. 2. Make it personal
Your customer is not a stranger. You likely have data points on things like their purchase history and other information around their likes, dislikes, and how and where they like to do business with you.
You can use this data in a privacy-safe way to personalize the customer experience — and they will remember and appreciate it. Today's consumers expect companies to anticipate their wants and needs to some degree. In fact, four out of five people say they would share personal data if it made for a better experience, according to a PwC loyalty survey.
I've lived this at Verizon, where we've responsibly leveraged artificial intelligence tools to help manage and organize customer data. Using gen AI, we can lean on relevant information, like which mobile devices a customer owns or what upgrades they're eligible for and deliver it to a service agent at the point of contact. By removing a lot of the cognitive load from our employees, AI not only helps personalize the experience, it frees the agent to do what they do best: work with the customer, build a relationship, and provide a necessary human touch.
AI even helps us predict why customers might be reaching out to us. Armed with that insight, we are ready to offer a feature the customer might be looking for, or content that's relevant to them before the interaction even begins. We can also do away with generic correspondence and marketing material, creating messages and images tailored to the individual — what we call a "segment of me."
No. 3. Don't just plan — act
Paralysis by analysis is not a strategy, especially when you're building a better customer experience. When you're creating new capabilities, services, or apps, you must fight the urge to run endless pilots, never putting anything into production. Yes, perform your due diligence, but do it in the context of a belief system that establishes several goals you're trying to attain that will have a positive impact on your customers.
Do some testing and collect and analyze the data, always with an eye toward enhancing performance and functionality. And then start building — rapidly driving to scale so you can quickly deliver the maximum benefit to customers.
No. 4. Make CX a leadership priority
All too often, the responsibility for the company's customer experience falls on a group of folks that serve as listening posts. Sometimes, it's the "CX department." Other times, it's just random employees with some vague CX responsibilities. The extent of their jobs is to occasionally offer suggestions. That approach isn't very effective. If you really want to bend the curve on customer experience, you need more than a group of people, or a department, that sends messages upstairs. That just isn't going to be enough.
You need a co-ownership model where every department buys into the credo that customer experience is the top priority for the overall brand. The only way that will happen is if the company's leadership makes CX a priority, sharing insights and adhering to a shared set of beliefs and metrics.
Remember, winning the customer is only the first step. Retaining the customer is the priority. Offering a premium customer experience will keep them coming back for more and build the kind of competitive advantage that will endure.