Customer Experience Design (CXD) is all too often loosely thrown around in business, applied to virtually every situation that has to do with improvement within an industry. To me, CXD is the process by which you create a system that governs your customer’s touchpoints with your brand and organization. But, what are its objectives, intricacies, and lastly, ramifications — What happens when it all goes wrong? And why is integrating customer experience design into your product design process so pivotal to product success?
When your brand creates memorable customer experiences, it establishes a competitive advantage unlike anything else. Those that recognize this understand that delivery of CXD is potentially the most important element in product success, — if not more so — than the actual product.
An inferior product can beat out the industry leader off of superior brand touchpoints – it’s VHS vs Beta all over again, and neglect for customer experience equals missing out on exponential growth.
Perception vs’ Reality in Customer Experience Design
80% of businesses state that they provide great customer experience, but, this contrasts with 8% of consumers that actually express brand satisfaction. So what goes wrong? For that, a CX audit is required, and a CX strategy needs to be defined. The “Three D’s” can help with this, they are:
- Designing: the correct incentive for the correctly identified consumer, offered in an enticing environment.
- Delivery: a company’s ability to focus the entire team across various functions to deliver the proposed experience.
- The development: ultimately determines a company’s success, with an emphasis on developing consistency in execution.
Think of CX as a three-pronged process that includes the before, during and after, of a customer’s interaction with a product or brand. Empathy, insight, and perspective are a necessity in working with (rather than for) the customers you plan on interacting with.
This is the customer experience journey:
Discover — See the product you represent in the same light that your customers do. We’ve already talked about how products hold themselves in high regard, but don’t hold themselves to the equivalent standard of their consumers. Any sort of product cognitive dissonance needs to be dispelled as this will lead to customer experience complacency. You can’t expect consumers to be loyal when you wouldn’t be. Simply put, follow the Golden Rule – treating others as you want to be treated, seriously.
Configure — Working from the ground up, your brand’s customer experience journey needs to be fundamentally reshaped. Specifically (and based on the observations and subsequent findings from the previous step), interactions must be broken down into different sections for the company to reform, and transform.
This includes digital transformation, reorientation of company culture, and staying on top of trends and innovation within your field. Hyper-organization and detailed analysis of every aspect of your business is the imperative first step. If you’re in the dark, your customers are too.
Restructure — With organizational factions analyzed, and the power of customer insight at your disposal, it’s time for reorganization. Take what customer experience knowledge you’ve obtained while observing your consumer base and mold it into the fabric of your institution. Where do we excel? Where do we struggle? Where do we currently stand? This stage serves as the culmination in the customer experience journey. It’s what you’ve been working towards, and will lay the foundation for becoming customer-centric. Executive and managerial buy-in across the organization will create allies in executing this.
The customer experience journey isn’t a one-time ordeal, but a continuous process that needs constant reevaluation and augments. Whether it be in digital services or goods, Discover, Configure and Restructure will help you understand your users’ perception of your product, and where resources need to be allocated. The moment you neglect CX is the moment your customers will neglect you.
Customer Service Reality in Numbers
There’s no substitute for data. Here’s a list of relevant studies on customer happiness from around the web, put together by the lovely people at the customer thermometer.
54% of customers have higher expectations for customer service today compared to one year ago. This percentage jumps to 66% for consumers aged from 18 to 34 years old.
Microsoft
Gartner predicts that 89% of businesses are expected to compete mainly on customer experience.
Gartner
Gartner also predicted that by 2019 more than 50% of organizations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations.
Gartner
Worldwide, 67% of people believe that customer service as a whole is improving.
Microsoft
In 2017, 64% of Americans contacted some form of customer service.
Statista
52% of people around the globe believe that companies need to take action on feedback provided by their customers.
Microsoft
Around the globe, 96% of consumers say customer service is an important factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand.
Microsoft
When asking consumers what impacts their level of trust with a company, offering excellent customer service is ranked number one.
Zendesk
A customer experience promoter has a lifetime value to a company that’s 600 to 1,400% that of a detractor.
Bain
34% of companies are implementing “customer journey mapping” into their customer service.
Salesforce
70% of consumers say they have already made a choice to support a company that delivers great customer service.
American Express
Service insight and knowledge is also key to a good experience according to 62% of consumers.
American Express
Americans will pay 17% more to do business with firms with great reputations when it comes to customer service.
American Express
52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience.
Zendesk
90% of customers are influenced by positive reviews when buying a product.
Zendesk
More people read positive reviews of customer service online than negative ones by 6%.
Zendesk
Gartner predicts that by 2019, more than 50% of organizations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations.
Gartner
With 89% of businesses soon to be expected to compete mainly on customer experience, organizations that take customer experience seriously will stand out from the noise and win loyal customers.
Gartner
99% of Customer Experience and Success leaders believe Customer Experience Management has a positive impact on their business.
Lumoa
In 2019, customer experience will continue as a major factor in how companies do business.
Forrester
87% of organizations agree that traditional experiences no longer satisfy customers.
Accenture.
A moderate improvement in CX would impact the revenue of a typical $1 billion company an average of $775 million over three years.
Temkin Group
67% of consumers and 74% of business buyers say they’ll pay more for a great experience.
Salesforce
By 2020, more than 40% of all data analytics projects will relate to an aspect of customer experience.
Gartner
65% of companies measure NPS compared with 44% that measure CSAT and 14% that measure CES.
Lumoa
Organizations that lead in CX outperformed laggards on the S&P 500 index by nearly 80%.
(Watermark Consulting, 2018)
Qualtrics
84% of organizations working to improve CX report an increase in revenue.
Dimension Data
Benchmark Net Promoter Score for companies in the education sector was reported as 69 in April 2018.
NPSBenchmarks
Benchmark Net Promoter Score for financial services companies was indicated to be 49 in January 2019.
NPSBenchmarks
Benchmark Net Promoter Score for the healthcare sector was indicated at 76 in January 2019.
NPSBenchmarks
Benchmark Net Promoter Score for manufacturing companies was recorded at 76 in January 2019.
NPSBenchmarks
Benchmark Net Promoter Score for technology companies was reported to be 60 in January 2019.
NPSBenchmarks
Poor customer service is a leading cause of customer churn.
Attracting a new customer is 6-7 times more expensive than retaining a current one.
Salesforce
Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increase profits by 25% to 95%.
Harvard Business School
Customers who had a very good experience are 3.5x more likely to repurchase and 5x more likely to recommend the company to friends and relatives than if they had a very poor experience.
Temkin
Loyal customers are seven times as likely to test an offering, five times as likely to buy again and four times as likely to refer.
Temkin
95% of customers tell others about a bad experience and 87% share good experiences.
Zendesk
67% of customer churn is preventable if firms resolve issues the first time they occur.
Ameyo
The average American tells 15 people when they’ve had a poor customer service experience.
American Express
Men tell most people (21 people) when they have had a poor customer service experience.
American Express
On average women tell about 10 people when they have had a poor customer service experience.
American Express
33% of customers who abandoned a business relationship last year did so because personalization was lacking.
Accenture
68% of customers believe the key to great customer service is a polite customer service representative.
American Express
48% of consumers expect specialized treatment for being a good customer.
Accenture
89% of consumers have switched to doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience.
Harris Interactive
According to Esteban Kolsky, if a customer is not satisfied, 13% of them will tell to 15 or even more people that they are unhappy. On the other hand, 72% of customers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people.
Kolsky
67% of customers mention bad experiences as a reason for churn, but only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain.
Salesforce
63% of CX professionals use customer feedback to prioritize investment in better products, services and customer experiences.
Oracle
One-third of consumers say they would consider switching companies after just one instance of bad customer service.
American Express
The majority of Americans have decided to not go through with a purchase because of a poor customer service experience.
American Express
79% of consumers who shared complaints about poor customer experience online had their complaints ignored.
Harris Interactive
12% of Americans rate their number one frustration with customer service as “lack of speed.”
Statista
27% of Americans report “lack of effectiveness” as their number one frustration with customer service.
Statista
56% of people around the world have stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service experience.
Microsoft
47% of consumers have made the choice to switch to a different brand due to bad customer service within the last year.
Microsoft
After a bad customer service experience, 39% of customers will avoid a company for two years.
Zendesk
91% of customers who are unhappy with a brand will just leave without complaining.
Salesforce
Millenials – Customer Experience Data
Millennials, people born between 19790 and 2000, are influencing how customer service, support, and experience are evolving today.
Millennials will pay 21% more to do business with companies that excel at customer service.
American Express
Millennials are the only demographic of Americans who tell more people when they have a good customer service experience rather than a bad one.
American Express
63% of millennials begin their customer service interactions online.
Microsoft
One in two millennials has complained about a brand on social media.
Microsoft
86% of millennials say they are influenced by negative reviews when purchasing a product or service.
Zendesk
74% of millennials report that their perception of a brand improves when it is clear the company responds to customers’ social media inquiries.
Microsoft
31% of customers report reaching out to a company via Twitter.
Forrester
66% of 18-34-year-olds say their customer service expectations have risen in the last year.
Microsoft
More than 65% of customers aged 18-44 use mobile to seek for service more than once a month.
SoftwareAdvice
65% of people aged 18-34 believe social media is an effective channel for customer service, while 75% of people aged 55 and over do not.
Microsoft
Customer Communications
Businesses need to deliver consistent and integrative customer service across all channels, email, social, websites, live chat, SMS, mobile and landline telephones.
According to the Aberdeen group businesses that provide consistent customer service quality across multiple channels will retain 89% of their customers whereas companies that lack omnichannel customer service are only able to retain around 33% of their customers.
About one in three people (30%) say the most important aspect of customer service is speaking with a knowledgeable and friendly agent.
Microsoft
57% of customers would rather contact companies via digital media such as email or social media rather than use voice-based customer support.
Ameyo
Friendly employees or customer service representatives are what makes a memorable experience that causes consumers to stick with a brand, for 73% of customers.
Harris Interactive
For more complicated interactions, such as payment disputes, 40% of customers prefer talking to a real person over the phone.
American Express
23% of consumers seek out a face to face interaction for complicated customer service issues like troubleshooting.
American Express
88% of consumers are influenced by online customer service reviews when making a buying decision.
Zendesk
Nearly 1/3 of customers report sending a mobile/SMS message to the company requesting assistance.
Forrester
68% of consumers say it increases their perception of a brand when companies send them proactive customer service notifications.
Microsoft
90% of consumers expect an online portal for customer service.
Microsoft
Globally, only 5% of customer service interactions begin with a face to face meeting.
Microsoft
54% of customers used email customer service channels making it the most commonly used digital customer service channel.
Forrester
9 in 10 consumers want absolute omnichannel service – they expect a seamless experience when moving from one communication method to another, such as phone to text or chat to phone.
NICE inContact
84% of companies, who claim to be customer-centric focus first on the mobile customer experience.
Visioncritical
By 2019, mobile search will generate 27.8 billion more queries than desktop search.
Mobile marketer
90% of customers say they have had poor experience seeking customer support on mobile.
Software Advice
75% of people complete surveys on their mobile.
IMImobile
48% of consumers expect a response to social media questions and complaints within 24 hours.
Statista
Globally, 18% of customers expect a response from a company’s social media within one hour.
Statista
One-third of Americans have used social media to complain about a brand or its customer service.
Microsoft
Automation is paving new roads in CXD Self Service
A report by Aspect Software indicates 73% of customers want to solve product or service issues on their own
Aspect Software
According to a Radial and CFI Group survey, 55% of customers are likely to use Visual IVR when given the option.
Zappix
50% of customers think it’s important to solve product or service issues themselves
Zendesk
70% of customers expect a company’s website to include a self-service application.
Steven Van Belleghem
63% of customers are happy to be served by a chatbot if there is an option to escalate the conversation to a human.
Forrester
It’s estimated that by 2020, 85% of customer service interactions will be automated.
Ameyo
Over 60% of US consumers prefer an automated self-service, such as a website or mobile app, for simple customer service tasks.
American Express
30% of US consumers rate chatbot interactions as “very effective” in dealing with customer service issues.
Microsoft
77% of consumers report having used a self-service support portal.
Microsoft
Over half of consumers say that the main reason they cannot resolve an issue on their own is that there is too little information online.
Microsoft
Only 12% of Americans say they cannot find the information they need in self-service portals.
Microsoft
By 2021, 15% of all customer service interactions will be completely handled by AI, an increase of 400% from 2017.
Gartner
8% of CX professionals said that although their companies embrace digital, they don’t think they’ll keep pace with the speed of technology change.
Oracle
31% of organizations have already invested in technology like AI to outpace the competition.
Accenture
76% of collaboration leaders are investing or expanding their emerging technology investment.
Accenture
26% of companies leading financially use CX technologies, compared to 7% of laggards.
Bain