To talk about Customer Experience is to talk about disciplines that converge to the extent that most of a company's processes are ultimately aimed at satisfying demand. Without a market there is no company, and this is a fact that cannot be camouflaged or disguised in any way. In a highly competitive environment, anything less than generating an experience based on excellence is a passport to failure, a safe conduct for our clients to explore other corporate latitudes that better meet their needs.
The renowned consultancy firm Gartner has recently published a Customer Experience Decalogue that it develops in depth in one of its thinkcasts or podcasts of the company. It seems appropriate to bring this decalogue to the Spanish-speaking market, as it is included in one of the leading digital magazines in the sector: Customer Experience Matters (CXM).
1. Continuously listen to customers: because this should be the basis of the omnichannel fever. Being present in all possible channels and establishing all possible communication bridges is not only a tactic to make the company's messages possible, but above all to be able to capture the constant information coming from our customers: their complaints and suggestions, their recommendations and their needs. If omni-channel is only for promotion and self-promotion, it is using only a minimal part of its potential. Or rather: it is being under-utilised.
Continuous monitoring of customer feedback: as a complement to the above, no one better than our customers will provide us with insights into where we are failing and where we can improve. They are the ones who have the need we want to cover, and our ability to monitor, measure and plan according to what they tell us will determine our vision of success.
3. Act proactively to anticipate needs: this active and systematic listening can help us not only to correct our activity, but also to establish heatmaps on the possibilities of exploiting new services or products, either as an innovation or as an extension of our own portfolio.
4. Building empathy into corporate processes and policies: as opposed to the commercial tactics of yesteryear, which place the sale at the customer's pain points, the latest approaches aim precisely at detecting the scenarios where a company can empathise with its customers. It is not a matter of "hitting" them where it hurts, but of accompanying them where it "pleases" them.
5. Respecting customer privacy: a point that is increasingly necessary, and which is directly linked to ad hoc legislation in many of the most developed economies. There is a practically unlimited technological capacity to exploit customer data, but customers will increasingly value more and more that we do so not with their acceptance, but with their express and unequivocal consent.
6. Sharing knowledge internally with customers: this is another of the old dogmas of the way we do business, whereby we protect our values from the spying of our competitors. The customer of the digital era wants to be part of our storytelling, to build with us, to move forward with his supplier of goods and services, to become loyal, to be an ambassador of our offer outside and inside the company.
7. Motivate employees to stay engaged: in other words, what do employees say, think and feel when they talk about your company? If the honest answers you can give in this regard are rather negative, you should seriously consider whether you really want to compete in the market. Customers already take it for granted that employees are not going to badmouth your company, but if they feel a real involvement, you probably have one of the most powerful purchasing deciding factors in your hands.
8. Act systematically to improve the Customer Experience: this point can be seen as a summary of the previous ones, and as a vital projection. The Customer Experience is not a goal that is achieved and leaves the future resolved, it is a constant itinerary in which the reward is not to relax thinking that everything has already been done.
9. Take responsibility for improving the Customer Experience: in addition to the above, the customer must feel that the company, with its management at the helm, takes responsibility for what works and also for what does not work. Mistakes must have tangible, visible and "experiential" consequences. Similarly, successes must be part of a company's culture in its relationship with customers.
10. Adapt to the demands and needs of the client in real time: finally, and given that we are talking about a discipline in constant iteration, the growing demand is for each client to feel that they have an appropriate response at each stage of their relationship with the company, to act with the confidence that in the face of any need, inconvenience or desire for involvement, the company will be alert to establish the appropriate synergies.
A decalogue whose application is simple: the price of not taking it on board is to lose competitiveness.
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