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Customer Experience

CMO’s are in a unique position to own, understand, and implement customer experience not just as a marketing function but as a fundamental component of every aspect of a business. As a CMO you’ve known for years the importance of cultivating customer relationships and building a brand customers trust. Now, with customers demanding an even more consistent and comprehensive customer experience, you can connect marketing and branding activities not just to leads generated but also to higher sales conversion rates, greater customer retention and higher numbers of brand advocates.

Start at the beginning of this post for CX beginners and go to the end for specific CX measurement and implementation strategies.

What is the customer experience?

The customer experience is the summation of every interaction a customer has with an organization. These interactions span well beyond a conversation with a customer support rep or account manager. Every interaction with your company from the website to the product to your employees impacts a customer’s experience with and perception of your company.

Your product or services should inspire or wow your customers. And then, should issues or questions arise, you should feel confident in your customer support representatives to offer applicable solutions, and provide a memorable customer experience.

Why customer experience matters

Today’s customers expect a personalized customer experience — 33% of consumers who abandoned a business last year left because their experience wasn’t personalized. Another survey found 81% of marketers expect to be competing mostly on the basis of CX within the next two years.

CMOs who focus on developing a comprehensive customer experience program now will find themselves at a significant strategic advantage over those who wait to recognize the importance of delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Customer experience vs customer service

A customer considers the whole picture when thinking about what your business offers and so should you.

Both customer service and customer experience are important pieces in making your business a success. But you shouldn’t draw a hard line between the two. There’s quite a bit of overlap between how a customer uses a product or service and how they interact with the people supporting it. So, you’ll want to approach customer experience strategy and customer support as mostly one-in-the-same.

Customer experience

Customer experience (also known as CX), encapsulates the broader customer journey that people have across your organization, involving every interaction with your customers and your business including customer-facing services.

However, more importantly, it highlights and showcases how the customer experiences your product or service, their interactions with self-service support, their experience in-store, customer service and much more.

Customer service

Customer service is the human part of the customer journey — it’s the assistance and advice given to a customer regarding any of your products or services.

It requires your customer-facing team to have a unique set of skills including patience, product knowledge, and perseverance so they can give the assistance any and all customers need, regardless of where they’re at in the customer journey.

So, what’s the difference between the two?

Customer experience involves the entire journey — from initial queries to purchase, as well as customer service. Customer service offers limited insight into what the customer wants and needs, whereas the customer experience covers a holistic overview. Keep in mind, understanding customer experience often involves analyzing data from teams who aren’t customer-facing but do contribute to a customer’s experience with your product or service.

How to measure customer experience

Customer experience is very important for sustained growth. You need to provide a positive customer experience in order to:

In today’s market, the customer (not the seller or service provider) is the one with the power. Thanks in part to the rise of the internet, your customers have more options than ever before and it’s very easy to switch their loyalty to a competitor.

Customers also have a great deal of power when it comes to influencing your business’ reputation through online reviews and social media. For that reason, customers are your best resource for growing brand awareness in a positive way if you’re delivering a great customer experience.

To that end, you’ll want to measure the customer experience via the following metrics:

What is customer experience management?

Customer experience management, or CEM, is a strategy used to track, oversee and organize all customer interactions. CEM helps a business focus on the needs of its customers, so your business can connect the dots within the customer experience — and give folks the customer experience they expect, want and deserve.

CEM software can be easily leveraged to bridge the gap between touchpoints or journey steps. And it can be used to automatically collect and analyze customer feedback for you to use, so you can easily and tactfully improve your client experience. A good CEM system delivers deep insights replete with an analytical dashboard, reporting options and other specialized integrations with your customer relationship management software.

11 customer experience strategies

To help you get on your way to creating and nurturing an effective and successful consumer experience strategy, we compiled eleven of the most important and relevant tactics.

So, what are you waiting for?

1.) Understand your audience and create buyer personas

In order to offer a great customer experience, you need to know a lot about your customers. You should know who they are, and what their motivations are — which is where creating buyer personas comes into play. Work hand-in-hand with your support and sales teams to identify customer personas as well as personality attributes.

From there, you can utilize these personas within your marketing and creative efforts, in turn empowering you to cast a wider, more accurate net. Plus it helps you gain a clearer understanding of your customers’ needs and enables your outreach efforts to be personalized to real people with relatable hurdles or experiences.

Spotify is a great example of using data to create a memorable customer experience with their clever, tongue-in-cheek marketing that draws from their users more unusual listening habits. Check out their 2018 advertising campaign — Spotify leveraged metrics and user statistics to create compelling marketing copy that represented actual Spotify users, cultivating a sense of familiarity and building rapport.

2.) Evaluate CX based on your brand’s mission and values

A successful CX strategy starts with creating alignment between your company’s stated value proposition and values and the customer’s perception of your business based on their experience with your company. What gaps are there between customer expectations and experience in your business? Are your internal processes doing a good enough job at supporting your customers? What tools could you use to improve the customer experience?

3.) Use CX-centric tools to help you

Creating seamless customer experiences can feel overwhelming. To get started, you’ll need to understand how customers interact with your product and what they expect from it. Using CX tools can simplify this process for you by capturing relevant customer data and offering actionable insights. Tools like this are equipped with various capabilities such as content management, customer analytics, and customer feedback. For example, try using:

4.) Work backward to create the ideal consumer experience

Start with the end, ideal experience and work backward toward the technology and processes you’ll need in order to create the ideal consumer experience. Unsure what it is? Start by mapping the customer journey. Doing so helps you identify opportunities where you can make a lasting impression and avoid CX failure as a customer moves between touchpoints. Remember to focus on practical issues too, like autofill on forms to save your users’ time.

5.) Hire team players and get the team invested in customer experience

You can’t deliver a great customer experience without the right employees. You should train your team to pay keen attention to customers — no detail should be spared. This can be as simple as noticing that a customer mentions a birthday and making the effort to give them birthday wishes when they come in. Doing so empowers your team to create a personalized customer experience. So, when you’re hiring, be sure to look for strong interpersonal skills, a solid ability to connect with a wide variety of people and patience.

6.) Eliminate bad or rogue design early on

User experience, or UX, is critical. Customers arrive at your site through a variety of mediums, but your brand needs to remain consistent no matter how a customer gets there. One bad or inconsistent experience could be enough to put them off, sending them to a competitor never to return. To avoid this, create a branded style guide and empower your teams with a brand templating platform, so they can create on-brand content whenever, wherever. Ultimately, you want your content to be easy to consume and even easier for customers to find the information they need from you.

7.) Pay attention to customer needs and use feedback loops

If you’re going to provide an experience your customer truly finds helpful, you need to know what your customer expects, wants and needs. To do this, create a feedback loop — post-interaction and real-time feedback surveys are a good start. From there, support staff can easily follow up over the phone and ask about their experience. Use social media and other means of customer interaction touchpoints to keep tabs on your reputation amongst your existing customer base — and prospective ones, too.

8.) Research your competitors

Take the time to analyze competitors and market trends to build a clear picture of who the competition is and what they’re doing in contrast to your organization. If you know your business needs to improve, use this market research to help you bridge the gap between where you’re currently at and where you want to be. Do this by creating strategic goals and objectives that help you implement a successful CX strategy.

9.) Building systems for effective resolutions

Customer feedback requires a company response. Implement an unobtrusive support system for every stage of the customer lifecycle. Make it easy for your customers to find the support solutions they need — whether it’s a live chat option, text messaging, webinars, social media, self-service solutions, email, or phone calls — you must make yourself available. Be sure to keep your response time promise relative to what’s realistic.

10.) Dial-in your brand personality

Make your brand personality and presence something that customers want to be a part of. A strong personality helps to build a large, loyal customer base. To get started, think about who your brand would be if it was a person. Then, define it relative to your brand mission and values. For example, are you:

Alternatively, check out our brand archetype quiz jump start your brand personality efforts.

11.) Use machine learning or AI to deliver a seamless end-to-end experience

With artificial intelligence, you can set up auto-responses to routine customer queries and guide your customers with curated content. AI customer service interactions reduce the need for staff to attend to every customer query, enabling them to focus on more complicated, high-visibility problems. You could also use AI to segment your customer base and provide a more personalized experience. AI can use information from browsing data, pages visited and past interactions to send targeted messages automatically.

A seamless end-to-end customer experience provides your company a lot more than initial earned revenue — in exchange for going the extra 1% for your customers, you gain brand loyalty and authority within your industry. And in turn, you gain customers for life.

The customer experience (CX) is a critical part of your overall business strategy. Creating a memorable customer experience trickles down and impacts customer service, marketing departments, and (more importantly) your bottom line.

Customer experience statistics

If you’ve been wondering whether or not investing in the customer experience is worth your time and money, look no further than this blog post for concrete evidence (replete with customer experience statistics) that you should address the importance of customer experience.

63% of consumers say that the best brands are the ones that exceed expectations throughout the customer journey.

Wunderman

Great CX is a growing customer expectation

These days, the average consumer is a pretty savvy one, thanks in part to the sheer amount of options they can choose from and the power of the internet. Because of this, customers expect to have an outstanding customer experience — according to Salesforce, 73% of polled customers expect you to know what they want and need. They know it’s the one major differentiator between your company and another. And since they know what to expect, they’ll be far less patient with what they feel constitutes a poor or lackluster customer experience.

Customer experience statistics:

Customers have a lot of choices, so you need to have the tools in place to meet their needs and expectations across their customer journey. Collect customer feedback at critical points in the journey to make sure your CX is effective. 

91% of customers who don’t complain will simply stop doing business with a brand.

Huffington Post

The consequences of poor CX

One bad customer experience can really pack a punch and do a lot of harm to your bottom line. More specifically, it drives customers to shop with a competitor (instead of you) and winds up doing some real damage to your reputation. 

Customer experience statistics:

Brand loyalty takes a big hit after a bad customer experience. Your customers won’t hesitate to tell their friends and family about the experience they had with you, leading them to switch to a competitor. 

And as we mentioned in the previous section, consumers have a lot of choices, so don’t give your otherwise loyal customers an excuse to jump ship and hurt your reputation. Instead, do yourself and your customers a favor, go the extra 1% consistently to stave off customer churn.

82% of organizations that work to improve CX report an increase in revenue.

Dimension Data

CX impacts your bottom line

All businesses want a strong stream of revenue. Investing time and money into your customer experience is a solid way to ensure your company’s revenue stays healthy and robust even when the market fluctuates or you experience a product failure. Not only that, it’s more expensive to attract new customers than it is to retain existing ones. So by giving your customer experience the attention and dedication it deserves, you can tangibly increase your revenue — and save you the expense of having to attract new customers.

Customer experience statistics:

Whether a customer is new or existing, every touchpoint of the customer journey is factored into their buying decision process. It’s critical that you approach the customer perspective with a tailored-to-fit strategy based on the various needs, wants, and expectations from your customers. Keep in mind, you need to approach both new and existing customers with equal gravity — however, it’s your existing customers who wind up carrying the lion’s share and take care of your bottom line.

Loyal customers are worth more than ten times their first purchase, on average.

Adobe

CX boosts customer loyalty

Loyal customers are a massively valuable asset. These customers will undoubtedly spend more during their first experience — and then they’ll return to spend more frequently. These types of customers are typically the brand loyalists: the happy ones who relay to friends and family how great their experience [with you] was. And to that end, they’ll advocate for others to use your products or services.

Customer experience statistics:

That said, simply having a customer isn’t enough to turn them into a loyal consumer — much less a repeat one. Exceeding customer service expectations is a surefire way to transform one-time customers into loyal advocates. However, rather than assuming what your customers want (or need), ask them yourself — leverage technology and other tools, such as NPS or customer satisfaction surveys, to ascertain this information.

Fully engaged customers results in 23% more profit, revenue and growth potential.

Gallup

CX boosts customer engagement

Customers who engage with your business, through social media or other platforms, are also more inclined to show interest in new products or service offerings, meaning they’re also more likely to visit your website or store. 

Customer experience statistics:

Customers are used to the instant gratification of engagement — either with your company or with each other. More so, they’re accustomed to businesses interacting with them through their channel of choice. You must show up where your customers are whether that’s on social media or live chat. And remember: brand advocates are critical pieces of your brand puzzle. Be sure to praise or highlight customers who go out of their way to advocate on behalf of your brand. 

CX on the whole

We can’t stress enough about the importance of customer experience. 

However, fostering brand loyalty and good customer experiences doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a concerted effort on behalf of a company. That’s why it’s critical you approach the customer experience from a tiered, deliberate perspective — starting with your content experience. And remember:

The digital customer experience is the quality and sum of all digital interactions a consumer encounters with a company. This includes the company’s brand, products and services.

Unfortunately, some companies are still struggling to achieve a productive digital experience. Good digital experiences can lead to more sales, more loyalty and even more customers. On the other hand, poor digital customer experiences can cause a loss of sales by frustrating customers and ultimately driving them to competitors.

With a good plan of action centered around digital customer experience and the aid of digital experience management, businesses will be better equipped to achieve growth.

What is digital experience management?

Digital experience management is the software, product or service that helps you track, monitor and analyze your customers’ experiences.

Digital experience management helps you connect the dots between the digital experience and customer expectations, and in turn provide customers with the experience and content they need.

Digital experience management platforms

The more insight you can gain from your audience, the more informed and strategic your content and digital experience can be.

So, in order to create an effective online customer experience management strategy (and therefore nurture a memorable digital customer experience), there are a few digital management platforms worth leveraging:

Why digital experience management matters

Brands are struggling to differentiate themselves in today’s crowded marketplace. Consumers encounter multiple brands across multiple countries all offering the same goods or services.

Because of this, you need to give consumers a good reason to choose you over all the other players. In fact, many experts believe that successful customer experience will become more important than product quality or price when differentiating one brand from another. Keeping this expert prediction in mind, it’s clear that digital experience management matters more than ever.

Elements of a great digital customer experience

When crafting a digital experience, include the following elements in your strategy.

Consistency

When your customers open up your website, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter page, they expect to see consistency. The same message, layout, logo, etc. Customers expect this consistency no matter the location, device or channel they are using. This consistency is especially important if you are delivering rich media. Today, brands have defined “best practices” across all channels to ensure consistency in the online customer experience. These best practices can include responsive design and well-known concepts among others.

Usability and accessibility

According to Forrester, 61% of U.S. online adults state that they are less likely to return to a website if it doesn’t provide a satisfactory experience. Based on this alone, the digital experience you want to create can be your greatest competitive differentiator. Improving the usability and accessibility of your channels can maximize functionality while also positively affecting lifetime customer value. And don’t forget that no matter how sleek and shiny your design looks, if customers are stumbling along the way your pretty design won’t help provide a good user experience.

Convenience

In the digital world, consumers prefer to find their own answers rather than call someone for support — a large majority of people now expect companies to offer self-service options. Because of this, a great digital customer experience gives consumers the option to interact with your brand with little human interaction. Overall, the brands that rate the highest in terms of customer satisfaction do so because they offer self-service options along with a seamless experience when moving across channels.

With customers using mobile apps and smartphones to make payments, purchase products, schedule appointments, access information, book travel and more, self-service is more important now than ever. Consider restaurant apps like Chick-fil-A or Starbucks, customers can place an order ahead of time and also manage their loyalty points all through the app. Nearly 16% of Starbucks purchases are made through the app alone.

Personalization

Studies have shown that having a large number of options can make it harder for customers to make a decision. Accenture collected data that indicated an increase in frustration from customers’ online experiences. Their data showed that 48% of consumers have left a website only to purchase a similar product elsewhere simply due to a poor digital customer experience. Alternatively, 91% of consumers were more likely to shop with a brand that remembered, recognized and provided them with relevant recommendations and offers.

Your business can harness machine learning to better gain insights into consumers’ needs and wants in real-time. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years has provided us with exceptional technology to better help us create digital experiences that focus on individual customers. This alone can help differentiate your brand from your competitors by providing accurate insights into your customers in order to give them a personalized and meaningful interaction. In addition to this, machine learning and big data can help ensure that your message reaches the right customer on the right channel and in the right format. It can also help you utilize insights and recommendations on consumer behavior and industry trends.

Deliverability

Another element of great online digital experiences is deliverability, better understood as the amount of effort a user experiences when navigating through your channels. The ultimate goal of deliverability is for you to empower your customers to accomplish their goals and feel good about it. Every turning point in their customer journey should be designed to deliver exceptional digital experiences centered around your brand’s promise. One survey provided statistics showing that only 11% of customers who experienced a complex transaction were likely to continue with purchasing the product. On the other hand, 68% were more likely to purchase when experiencing a low-effort transaction.

Related: 9 ways to improve the customer experience

Steps to develop a digital experience program

Along with the elements above, follow these steps to develop digital transformation through an excellent digital experience program.

Objectives then solutions

As you develop a digital experience program, begin by focusing on your business objectives first, then worry about solutions. Common objectives for many companies include:

As you look more into differentiating the customer experience, you may want to consider accessing outside help from customer experience consultants.

Omnichannel

An omnichannel approach to your program can help you succeed in providing a consistent and cohesive experience for customers across all channels. Make sure that you design your program in line with all other channels that your brand utilizes, from brick-and-mortar shops to mobile apps. By delivering a consistent omnichannel user experience you can improve your reputation and build trust among consumers.

Customer Journey

Mapping the customer journey is paramount when developing a digital experience program. In order to do this effectively, you will need to identify key turning points between the consumer and your brand that ultimately shape brand loyalty and perception.

Use the customer’s journey to localize where customers are getting stuck or where they are enjoying the experience. And don’t just do this at the end of the journey or when you’re starting to see your revenue tank. You should be mapping the customer journey often and always. Just as ecommerce continues to evolve, your own brand will need to evolve to better meet customers’ needs and wants.

Diagnose

As you map your customers’ journeys, take the time to also track and diagnose problems, existing and potential. You need to find which journeys are common and diagnose the most common problems within them. Additionally, you will need to find what resonates with your customers. Through diagnosis, you will want to capture high-level metrics such as the goal of your website or app visitors, along with the likelihood of them returning to your site.

Customer experience — the summation of every interaction a customer has with your brand — is critical. A great customer experience translates into satisfied customers, therefore boosting customer retention, improving the reputation of your business and elevating your bottom line.

Today’s brands have to develop a trusting relationship with their customers to continue to grow, and the majority of CMOs recognize the importance of customer experience (CX). But implementing an effective customer experience strategy that flows seamlessly from touchpoint to touchpoint and department to department is easier said than done.  

How to improve the customer experience 

Naturally, creating a memorable and good customer experience can feel challenging. But like any large project, you just have to break it down into smaller bits and pieces. To help you navigate it, we’ve compiled eight tips you can undertake to enhance the customer experience within your company.

branding

Develop a CX culture

Since every employee is a potential touchpoint for failure in a customer experience program, customer experience has to be infused into the very DNA of your brand. Successful companies develop a culture where customer experience can flourish. 

A culture primed for a great customer experience includes the following:

A culture based on data and testing

Gone are the days when a persona based on intuition and sweeping generalities is enough to produce a relevant experience. Instead, every team must learn to collect and use data to understand the customer as people. Then use that data to create experiments to see what experiences best resonate with customers and which ones fall flat.

Creating a culture that embraces diversity and inclusivity for many different perspectives opens your organization up to be more empathetic and understanding of your customers’ point of view. Not only does it give your employees the language and tool kit to know how to understand your customers but it also creates an environment where employees feel heard and cared for opening them up to extend that same feeling to the customer through great customer service.

A customer-centric culture

Creating a customer-centric culture sounds like a given for any company prioritizing CX, but according to the CMO Council, “Only 14% of marketers say that customer-centricity is a hallmark of their companies.” One reason for this is the majority of metrics and compensation plans still focus on sales or the product rather than customer service and success. Developing trackable metrics for every team that ties directly to the customer experience will put the customer front and center in the minds of every manager and employee.

A culture infused with your brand’s core purpose and identity

A great customer experience strategy should be intentional, which means your brand’s core purpose should be easily identifiable and should influence every decision made by every department. Adoption of a brand’s purpose starts at the top and must be an ongoing conversation to ensure it becomes a part of the company culture rather than a nice saying on the wall. 

Shift Your Recruiting Mindset

You also need the right people on your team. These folks are an essential part of making sure that your customer experience is the best that it can possibly be. Because, at the end of the day, if your employees aren’t paying attention to the needs of your customers, you’re never going to be able to create the kind of customer experience you want. 

Think about not just who is qualified in your industry but who is qualified in your customer’s industry? Who can speak their language? Every marketing team will benefit from having subject matter experts who thoroughly understand the customer’s point of view.

Find people who are right-brained and left-brained– people who can understand the CX data points. A marketing team that’s both creative and analytical will be better able to understand and apply customer data.

Beyond the marketing team, every addition to the company should be hired for customer orientation. Make it a mandatory part of the interviewing process for every hiring manager. This not only ensures you’re getting the right talent in place but also re-enforces a customer-centric culture.

Use CX technology

CX technology plays a critical role in understanding where people are at in their customer journey. Start by developing a centralized command center to unify global data. Data silos limit your ability to see the entire picture and can create disjointed experiences. 

With machine learning, you can create a personalized experience for each customer by proposing the next step in the customer journey based on where they’ve been and what they’ve read so far.

Many organizations have experimented with customer-facing bots to provide instant one-to-one interaction. However, agent-facing bots can also be a great tool to help coach customer service agents to answer questions faster and improve customer service.

A brand templating platform democratizes the content personalization process, so anyone on your team can quickly create professional, personalized content.

Communicate values

Creating content that is relevant and insightful is an important part of the customer journey, but today’s buyer often prioritize working with companies that share their values over the product’s value proposition or price. As you’re mapping content to the customer journey, think about how you will communicate your company’s values as part of the education process. 

Hubspot, for example, communicates openly about their culture code and how they’ve actively worked to create a place where their employees love to work. 

Personalize content to the customer

You know your customers, or at least you think you do, right?

For the most part, yes. Most successful businesses will already have a strong idea of their customer base, but it’s not enough to think about this in terms of broad strokes. 

Your customers offer unique insights and highly informative data sources — from conversion driver and motivating factors to content funnels and more. You must pay attention to your customers’ habits and preferences. 

You’ll want to create a detailed profile of your average customer. Use reference points like:

Once you’ve done that, you’re in a much better position to personalize the content based on how you can meet your customer’s needs. Content personalization is one of the best ways to ensure that your customers feel valued, appreciated and heard by your business. 

Unsure how to personalize your content? Try customizing:

At the end of the day, this kind of targeted experience makes everything feel much smoother and more effortless for your customers.

Related: How to create a great digital customer experience

Customer loyalty rewards

Improving the overall customer experience isn’t just for new customers — it’s for your existing and repeat ones too. Recognizing customer loyalty through kickback programs is a surefire way to ramp up engagement and customer commitment. 

That said, loyalty isn’t just about giving out discount codes: there are other ways you can gather customer loyalty by highlighting that you appreciate and value their opinion, as well as their purchase. For example:

Loyalty rewards are a wonderfully simple way to make sure that everyone — from a brand new customer to someone who has been connected to your business for years — feels as though they get something in return when they choose to do business with you.

Pay attention to customer feedback 

Understanding your customers isn’t terribly difficult. But unfortunately, a lot of marketing leaders find themselves wondering what customers do and don’t want from them — and how they can acquire that information. 

The solution is pretty dang simple: your customers will tell you. But they’ll only tell you if you give them that opportunity. 

To start gathering customer feedback, make it as easy as possible for them to offer feedback in the first place. Meaning, you need to provide them with feedback options through their channel of choice. This can be via social media, email, texting and more. Find out what makes the most sense for a majority of your customers and customize it from there.

Ultimately you want to ascertain customer opinions — what do they think is going well, what went wrong, and what could be improved. Doing so will give you a solid grasp on the direction your business is moving, and it allows your customers to feel as though they have a great deal more agency in the direction of your business, too.

Pre-empt solutions

Of course, if you want to be sure that your customers are always having the best possible experience with your business, you need to be able to predict and preemptively deal with any and all problems. This means carefully testing your various user experience touchpoints to make sure that they always function properly and dealing with any potential problems as quickly as possible.

A final note on how to improve the customer experience

This might seem like a great deal of effort in a lot of different directions just to focus on one specific element of your business. But the truth is, the experience your customers have with your business is simply too important for you to ignore. 

If you’re not able to nurture an improved customer experience, then it won’t matter how great the other elements of your business are. You could be running the most efficient business in the world with the most incredible product, but that doesn’t matter if the experience of interacting with your business isn’t a pleasant one for your customers. Without this essential ingredient, your business simply won’t be able to reach the kinds of heights that you know it to be truly capable of.

Elevate your content experience with Lucidpress.

Few things are more stressful than trying to navigate the healthcare system, and if patients have a bad experience on top of that, it adds to their stress and can even slow the healing process. While providers are primarily focused on health outcomes, a focus on improving patient experience is equally important.

Why patient experience is so important in healthcare

Research shows that high rates of patient satisfaction correlate directly with good patient outcomes. The bottom line is that patient experience is inextricable from the quality of care.

Aside from quality of care, patient experience is a huge factor in your reputation as a healthcare provider, and it influences whether your organization is recommended and well-reviewed (or not) by patients. If a patient has a bad experience with a physician and goes on to leave a bad review online, this could dissuade a lot of future potential patients from visiting your clinic. To put it another way, patient experience has a direct effect on your financial success — and in the highly competitive world of healthcare, that really matters.

How does patient experience influence patient outcomes?

A patient’s experience will have a great effect on how they’re feeling emotionally, and a person’s mental and emotional health affects their physical health. Simply put, if someone is stressed out and unhappy with the care they’re receiving, they’re less likely to get better quickly.

Imagine yourself in a less-than-ideal patient experience scenario: You don’t feel well and you’re waiting for test results while you lie in a hospital bed under a scratchy blanket. The doctor mispronounced your name, didn’t go into much detail about possible diagnoses and didn’t have time to answer your questions. You can hear another patient moaning out in the hallway, unattended. You’re scared, uncomfortable and unsure if you’re getting quality care. What you need to do is get some rest, but sleep feels impossible.

Good patient experience is about giving people the support they need to improve health outcomes — whether that support is attentive staff or a quiet, comfortable space.

We’ve pulled together five tips to get you thinking about how to improve patient experience at your organization. 

5 ways to improve patient experience

1. Take a holistic healthcare approach

Borrowing a page from holistic healthcare’s book can create immediate, positive changes in patient satisfaction. Holistic health considers mental, spiritual and emotional health, as well as a patient’s physical health. Offering resources that support a person’s whole health can create the groundwork for healing.

Provide patients access to counselors and mental healthcare professionals if needed. Working with a therapist through a difficult time like a cancer diagnosis can be essential in helping patients cope and follow a treatment plan. Encourage regular visits from friends, family and church leaders to boost patients’ spirits. Put resources toward maintaining calm and inviting prayer and meditation spaces.

Keeping patients connected and engaged in other aspects of their health will help them deal with their illness and make them feel that they’re receiving good care.

2. Make the most of patient experience surveys

Getting feedback straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, is the easiest way to learn how your organization can improve patient experience. Gathering data can show you your organization’s weakest areas and potentially give you insight into creative ways to increase patient satisfaction. Consider customizing the standard HCAHPS survey to include questions about areas you’re particularly interested in.

If you’re seeing multiple responses about one department always running behind schedule or a certain physician with a cold bedside manner, you’ll have a pretty clear idea of where to focus your improvement efforts.

Don’t discount the true experts on patient experience — the patients themselves. Regularly surveying patients will let you evaluate individual staff, as well as teams, departments and facilities as a whole.

3. Create personalized patient experiences

Uncertainty causes stress. The uncertainty of what’s going to happen at the hospital and what a diagnosis means for your health is a big factor in the stress associated with health problems. Do what you can to eliminate uncertainty by making sure your organization offers consistent, personalized communication for patients every step of the way.

Here are a few ways you can use personalized communication to improve patient experience:

Providing customized patient communication across your entire organization will let patients and their families know they’re in good, organized hands. They’ll be properly informed and know what to expect while receiving care at your hospital.

4. Foster employee engagement

A surefire way to increase patient satisfaction is to make sure patients are cared for by focused, committed employees. Staff who feel engaged at work are much more likely to be happy with their job and pass that on to the patient.

Employee engagement surveys are right up there with patient experience surveys in indicating the health of your organization. Soliciting employee feedback, and then listening and responding to it, is an important step in making your staff feel heard and valued. Take steps to offer regular, clear views into how employees contribute to your hospital’s mission. Give managers the training they need to create open, trusting relationships with their staff.

Focusing on employee engagement will pay off double in that you’ll end up with happier employees and happier patients. 

5. Emphasize emotional intelligence

Feeling dismissed by staff or a physician is a common complaint among patients. Teaching your staff to provide kind, calm, compassionate care is one of the best ways to improve the patient experience.

Healthcare providers experience more than their fair share of stress, being subject to long shifts, unexpected events and life-and-death situations. Learning to manage their own stress and emotions can help your staff be better in tune with patients’ nonphysical needs. That way doctors and nurses will be able to accommodate and support patients as they deal with health problems.

Company-wide training for emotional intelligence can benefit every single person at your organization and make for an all-around more compassionate environment. 

Improving the patient experience will take a comprehensive effort. Thomas H. Lee, MD, a primary care provider at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, put it well when he said, “The real goal has to be cultural change.”

With so much competition for a customer’s attention and loyalty, creating a positive customer experience has become a top priority for brands and businesses. Great customer experiences can ultimately lead to business growth, but some businesses struggle to accomplish a well-curated experience for their consumers.

Taking the time to track and benchmark customer experience metrics can make a huge difference in your quest to improve customer experience. A great starting point is measuring customer experience metrics, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT), customer effort score (CES), customer churn rate and visitor intent.

We’ll show you how to measure customer experience — and whether you use one or all of these metrics, just remember they’re simply scores to help you track and monitor improvements. What’s most important is taking what you learn from any one of these metrics and improving your customers’ experiences with your brand.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is used to gauge your customers’ overall satisfaction with your brand. When calculated, it can reveal the percentage of customers who may or may not recommend your services to family, friends, etc. An NPS can easily be measured through a customer survey that flat out asks, “How likely are you to recommend [your brand/business] to a friend or colleague?” Through a rating scale of 1-10, you can calculate your NPS by subtracting Detractors from Promoters:

By measuring your NPS, you can assess the overall loyalty of your customers. Measuring the NPS is one of the most common customer experience metrics as it’s quick to complete, easy to understand and can give a look into the big picture of customer loyalty.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

Another metric used to gauge the overall customer experience is customer satisfaction (CSAT). CSAT can be measured as the average satisfaction score your customers use to rate a specific experience they’ve had with your brand. This can include anything from returning a product to getting an answer from customer support. To measure this, you can send automated surveys to customers asking them to rate their level of satisfaction during this interaction from “not satisfied at all” to “very satisfied.”

Customer satisfaction is essential to growing your business in this digital age where our economy runs on split-second decision making by consumers. To make this metric most effective for your business, try to get a CSAT score within 30 minutes of a customer’s interaction. Getting a here-and-now reaction to your product or service can really help in calculating your CSAT. Be sure to use follow-up questions that dig further into their experience so you can identify pain points and highlight where improvement is needed in the customer experience.

Customer effort score (CES)

A third metric for improving customer experience is calculating your customer effort score (CES). This score helps you determine the effort required by your customers to accomplish a task such as finding the product they’re looking for or receiving a response from a support request.

You can calculate this score with a similar post-interaction survey like the CSAT and asking customers to rate a specific statement. Be sure to curate these statements based on specific interactions. For example, if it’s following a customer support interaction, you could ask, “How much effort did you personally have to put forth to resolve your issue?” Your scale can range from “very low” to “very high.” On the other hand, if you’re gauging how easy it was for them to find a specific product they were searching for, you may use the statement “The company made it easy for me to find the product I was looking for,” and have a scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

One of the biggest reasons customers choose to interact digitally is the ease and lack of effort it requires of consumers. Customers don’t want to work to get something they’re looking for — this is why more and more companies offer online chat support rather than forcing customers to call or go to a physical location for help. In this digital era, your customers will prioritize products and services that don’t demand too much effort.

Note too, the more effortless the customer experience, the higher the satisfaction. This can lead to high-value, loyal customers. And although CES is a more recent metric, it can provide actionable data to help you change pain points quickly in the customer experience journey.

Customer churn rate

Along with the above customer experience metrics, customer churn rate is a great measuring tool. The customer churn rate is the rate at which customers abandon a brand, service or product. This can include customers who don’t make repeat purchases or cancel recurring services that are subscription-based. To calculate your churn rate, divide the total number of customers lost by the total number of active customers for any given period.

If you’re not a subscription-based business, you’ll need to clearly define what constitutes a churn event for your company. For example, if you know most of your customers tend to make repeat purchases within 90 days, then mark any customer who doesn’t do so within this 90-day period as churned. If you are subscription-based, simply divide the number of customers who cancel a service by those you retain. Other ways you can measure this are as follows:

Visitor intent

Our final customer experience metric is visitor intent. Visitor intent measures why consumers are coming to your page or website. By measuring this, you can discover what users want when they first land on your page and specific problems customers are looking to solve. This metric can also help you gain insight into audience needs along with providing an opportunity to create more relevant products, services, content or even landing pages.

Overall, there are two types of visitor intent: informational or transactional. Users are coming to your page either in search of information or they’re specifically looking to buy something. You can measure visitor intent through website analytics by reaping data around the terms that attract users to your page, which pages they visit and how long they stay on the pages.

Along with this, you can also ask customers directly by creating pop-up questionnaires, customer polls or online surveys. Use targeted questions that are both multiple-choice and open so you can understand the “why” behind their actions.

Give your customer experience program the metrics it needs to generate support across the company and grow your business. The stats show both the consequences and rewards can be high.

Transform your employees into the driving force behind good customer experience.

Why the customer experience matters

Existing in today’s business world requires much more than simply producing a product or service for people to buy. So much of it comes down to creating a great customer experience (CX). In fact, the vast majority of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience and more than 62% of companies are recognizing the impact customer experience has in contrast to competitors.

With a large part of shopping and customer interaction happening digitally, great customer service has evolved beyond discounts or quick product fixes. Now, it is more about giving people a good feeling about your business and nurturing customer loyalty — with the end goal being that customers spread their love for your brand by word of mouth to friends, family, colleagues, which ultimately concludes with more sales and more loyal customers.

To stand out among the competition, your brand and business need to create and deliver more customer-centric experiences and campaigns as it gives your target audience a compelling reason to stay and become repeat customers.

That said, in order to deliver this customer experience, you need to combine data from your online and offline initiatives. You also must create an emotional connection between your brand and customers, putting them at the center of your marketing strategies. To give you an idea of how to accomplish this, we’ve rounded up some of the best customer experience examples.

Check out these unique customer service experience examples below.

7 of the best examples of great customer experiences

1. Microsoft: customer-centric innovation and engagement

In the early 2000s, Microsoft was experiencing a hitch in its growth until its new CEO came in and led the change from a bureaucratic corporation to an innovative collaborator who focused more on its partnerships and customers.

Microsoft began partnering with B2B companies and sharing best practices to build new products, which not only gave Microsoft the boost it needed, but it democratized access to technology and empowered businesses and teams with the type of technology they truly needed to get the job done.

They also began to invest more in their social media presence. Today, Microsoft has a strong presence on Twitter with multiple accounts dedicated to various themes, which include careers, development, events, security and customer service. Through social media, Microsoft customers can interact and engage with just about every aspect of the brand.

CX lesson: It’s easy to accomplish this type of approach by simply asking questions through polls, surveys, chats, forums or asking for feedback. Each of these can encourage engagement, which can lead to innovation or changes that keep the customer involved and coming back for more. Just remember to respond to comments on social media in a timely manner. The quicker you respond, the more satisfied customers will be and the more they will feel that your business values them and their feedback.

2. Tommee Tippee Cups: 1-to-1 marketing

Small but mighty, one of the best examples of a great customer experience comes from Tommee Tippee Cups.

Through social media, the company stumbled upon a father looking for a replacement of a limited edition Tommee Tippee sippy cup for his son, Ben, who has severe autism. The sippy cup was the only one Ben would drink from, as such, the father created a hashtag #cupsforBen. The result was a viral tweet, amassing thousands of likes, retweets and shoutouts, which of course caught the company’s attention.

The company ended up announcing they would be creating a limited run of the discontinued cup, especially for Ben.

CX lesson: By paying attention to your business’ social channels, you can turn listening to your customers’ feedback into truly memorable customer experiences.

3. AirBnB: Personalized user experience

AirBnB provides a great example of personalized customer experiences. By recognizing the two different types of customers in their industry — those looking to rent out their place and those looking for a place to stay — AirBnB has made a simple search experience for both audiences on the same platform.

Through their home page, you can either become a host or book a place to stay. Additionally, with consistent branding and design across their mobile app and web browser, they’ve made this marriage between UX and customer experience even more seamless.

CX lesson: When customers lead, you follow — and understand that your customers do not exist within a binary. There might be other important use cases your company offers. Be on the lookout for what those might look like.

4. McDonald’s: In-restaurant customer experience

When McDonald’s started suffering a decline in sales, they decided to turn things around not by changing their marketing tactics, but instead by focusing on customer experience.

They started by making an effort to listen to their customers and providing them with a more streamlined experience — like the one customers had been requesting. Based on customer feedback, McDonalds created a simpler menu, improved order accuracy and started using higher-quality ingredients.

McDonald’s also took the time to upgrade store interiors for a better look and installed digital, self-order kiosks and table service, resulting in lower wait times for customers. As these changes were implemented, BTIG projected a sales growth of 4.1%. And in turn, McDonald’s is able to set themselves above competitors by elevating their overall customer service experience.

CX lesson: Listen to what your customers are asking for — and then implement changes as best you can.

5. Adidas: Digital customer experience

In recent years, Adidas has been fine-tuning its digital experience by committing itself to better customer experiences

One of its biggest initiatives came about as it recognized customers were shopping online more. Adidas ended up pouring resources into a simple and tailored-to-fit customer experience by personalizing its messaging and content based on data insights and user engagement.

The company also began listening to customer feedback. This introduced them to a desire for more sustainable goods from customers. The company began producing shoes from ocean waste and sold over 1 million pairs in just one year.

CX lesson: By investing in CX, you can change your company’s growth trajectory and even establish yourselves as a leader in your field.

6. Delta: Empower employees

Delta Airlines has been awarded high praises for their customer experience and many of these are due to the way in which they empower their employees. They boast a retail-like experience which is a new way to think about air travel given that it is a generally stressful situation for most.

Delta was named best overall service airline and their latest marketing campaigns feature customers sharing their great experiences due to the employees. From their pandemic response to their acts of empathy, Delta has cultivated a reputation that is built on the people who work for them.

CX Lesson: When you empower your employees to engage with your customers and offer human interactions that identify with the human experience, your brand will be known for it.

7. Casper: Omnichannel customer experience

A truly unique approach to perfecting the customer service experience can be seen through mattress company Casper.

The ship-to-your-home mattress company created a free chatbot just for insomniacs. By simply texting “Insomnobot3000” from their mobile phones, customers can talk to the chatbot about whatever is on their mind and have a real conversation.

But the Insomnobot3000 isn’t just for insomniacs to get a little peace of mind to help them fall asleep. Through the chatbot, Casper is able to collect mobile numbers and send promotional offers and discounts. And courtesy of the Insomnobot3000, Casper pulled in $100 million in sales in just the first year of the chatbot’s launch.

CX lesson: Make it easy for customers to connect with you on their channel of choice. And furthermore, you need to humanize the customer experience as you do so. Because, after all, we all sleep on mattresses, but who or what audience can you tap into and elevate the customer experience for?

Make your customer experience a memorable one

By looking at these seven great customer experience examples and the approach each company took to improving its customer experience, you can find your own solutions to help your business outpace the competition.

So much of the customer experience entails listening to and collecting feedback from your target audience and then using that feedback to incite change. Whether this change happens in your products or services — or even a design flaw in your website or app — it can result in better UX and CX experiences for your customers. And in turn, result in happier customers.

But don’t forget! Listen to your employees as their perception of your brand can also influence their own interactions with your audience, for good or bad.

In the healthcare industry, direct and immediate communication between patients and hospital staff is essential. The health of patients can depend on a clear and concise exchange of information. Too many of us may have personal instances where navigating the healthcare system was frustrating because of a lack of communication or a bad patient experience. Thankfully, we’ve seen a recent shift in the industry to a more patient-friendly approach with the emergence of online reviews, surveys that measure patient satisfaction and in-house training for better communication in hospitals.

But there are still major failures in communication between patients and healthcare personnel, along with failures among healthcare teams, that can lead to medical errors and patient harm.

Overall impact of communication failures

Current research has shown that failures in communication among healthcare professionals are one of the leading causes of patient harm and medical errors. In fact, 80% of medical errors involved informational or personal miscommunication. Additionally, 70% of sentinel events include communication breakdowns as one of the root causes of preventable patient injury. As more research has been conducted, it’s shown that ineffective or insufficient communication among healthcare team members is one of the biggest contributing factors to adverse events.

In order to improve patient safety and outcomes, healthcare organizations need to start improving communication in hospitals between professionals and patients, but especially among their own medical teams.

Ways to improve hospital communication

1. Encourage mobile collaboration

Most healthcare facilities still rely heavily on pagers as a means of communication. They are an effective way to get in contact with someone if you need to speak with them immediately, but they aren’t great for a two-way conversation that could include a litany of technical information. Many professionals also find it difficult to respond to emails as they hurry from patient to patient. A great solution is to use a mobile team communication app. Many healthcare organizations provide mobile devices to their staff as a way of bridging this gap between the restrictiveness of a pager and time-consuming email.

Over 80% of American adults own and use a smartphone, making it a convenient and effective form of communication between healthcare professionals and patients along with communication between healthcare professionals themselves.

2. Implement team huddles

A team huddle is a quick meeting between a healthcare team at the start of the day or shift with a specific focus on distributing pertinent patient information from the previous team. These mini-meetings include operational and care personnel ensuring that all healthcare providers are on the same page for a patient, ward, or department. Recent research has shown that daily team huddles have resulted in fewer interruptions during the day/shift and provide immediate clarification of issues. These meetings have also been shown to help teams identify pertinent issues of the day, giving teams a chance to prioritize and assess changes in clinical workload. Plus, they enhance staff cohesion and teamwork.

To ensure effective team huddles, follow these guidelines:

3. Provide communication training

According to Anthony Orsini, DO, president and founder of The Orsini Way and practicing neonatologist, communication training can achieve cultural change at hospitals by rewiring the way professionals communicate. Organizations that have used Dr. Orsini’s communication training have seen significant improvements in HCAHPS scores along with improved patient satisfaction.

Consider looking into a communication training program for your department or entire hospital staff. Pick one that includes specific training in communication techniques along with verbal and nonverbal language skills.

4. Facilitate cross-department collaboration

One barrier to effective communication especially during handoffs is the misunderstanding between professionals from different departments. Two healthcare professionals in the same field can communicate quite easily due to sharing the same jargon, experience and training. But specialists in different fields can easily miscommunicate especially in situations like operating rooms where several different types of caregivers are involved — surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, etc.

Cross-training and collaboration can be accomplished by having a nurse from one unit take a shift on another unit. Another way to accomplish this is to have departments learn about each other through meetings and having conversations outside of handoffs.

5. Templatize communication collateral

A final way to improve hospital communication is to templatize provider letterhead along with flyers for research studies and announcement displays. Using templates for in-house communications along with communications within the community can make it easy for doctors, nurses and other house staff to create on-brand content quickly, allowing them to maintain communication with patients and the community. With a platform like Lucidpress, healthcare organizations can provide their personnel with professional templates while also giving them autonomy to create their own content under approved parameters.

Implementing these five steps can help you improve overall hospital communication among your medical teams and between healthcare professionals and patients. Read our article about how to improve the patient experience to learn more.

Every business worries about customer experience, but B2B businesses face a much harder challenge than B2C companies when it comes to interpreting CX. Consumer-oriented customer experience has decades of research behind it, while B2B CX is still getting its footing. Applying B2C measurements to your B2B business won’t get you clear results — you’ll need a strategy that’s designed specifically for the complexities of B2B.

The challenges of B2B customer experience

B2B customer experience ratings are significantly lower than B2C ratings — less than 50% satisfaction compared to 65%-85% for B2C. And it’s not surprising. Retail businesses have only one person on the other end of a transaction, but B2B customers are a whole lot more complicated.

In a business-to-business deal, you’re involved with any number of stakeholders, teams and personalities to account for. There’s a much greater distance between you and your end user. Plus, B2B services are often complex — a single product can have various facets. To put it simply: the customer journey is a lot more complicated. Untangling the web of customer touchpoints for your particular business can be a formidable task.

Pair that with business expectations rising to meet consumer expectations for quick and seamless interactions, and you could find yourself in a tight corner.

Strategies for improving B2B CX

Here are a few specific strategies for measuring and improving the B2B experience for your customers.

Map every customer

To get a better understanding of your customers’ experience, you first need to map all of your customers. This means the people who are actually purchasing your product as well as their supervisors, the end users and any third parties involved in the customer journey. And you’ll need to do this for each persona. It’s going to get complicated, but the more insight you have into your customers, the better you’ll be able to tailor your CX strategies.

Create tracks to improve journey mapping

Once you’ve mapped each customer in each persona, you can start to create tracks, which means building a hierarchy of customer journeys and divvying them up between more and less complicated journeys. This will help you know where to focus your efforts (and how much effort it’s going to require).

Tracks can be separated into categories like a complex journey, a standard journey and a simple journey, but figure out a set of tracks that makes the most sense for your business.

Work closely with channel partners

When you have channel partners, your customer journey is even more complicated. It’s important to remember that channel partners are just another branch of your business and to treat them with the same attention you do the rest of your company. Focus on maintaining excellent relationships with your partners and providing them with the same level of training that internal departments get.

You may even consider investing in a partner relationship management (PRM) solution to facilitate an open, beneficial relationship and customer success across the board.

Democratize content creation for a fluid content experience

Good content connects the dots between your brand, your product and the customer experience — and a consistent content experience will go a long way in keeping B2B customers happy.

Democratizing access to content production, or making sure everyone at your company can create on-brand content, will ensure your customers are regularly getting content that resonates with them. It’s a clear way to improve your CX while also bolstering marketing efforts for future prospects.

Metrics that matter in B2B CX

You’ll need at least a handful of different measurements to get a good sense of your customer experience. Since there are so many steps in the B2B customer journey, it only makes sense that you need multiple metrics to get the full picture.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is widely used to measure customer experience for B2C companies, and it can be useful for B2B experience too, with a few adjustments. You need to use a larger sample size (at least 1,100 scores) to get an accurate measure, and looking at the average score will give you more insight than dividing scores into promoter, passive and detractor. B2B scoring just isn’t as straightforward as B2C.

OSAT (overall satisfaction) and CES (customer effort score) ratings can help round out NPS scores and give you insight into certain aspects of your customer experience.

Tracking importance will also help you further narrow the usefulness of CX metric scores. Importance looks at how useful your product or service is to a business right now (absolute importance) and how useful it will be in the future (importance trajectory).

B2B International cites six pillars to measure for an understanding of the true quality of your company’s CX.

Looking at your customer experience from as many angles as you can will help you identify what needs to be improved so you can put a plan in motion.

Examples of B2B CX done right

If you’d like some real-life examples of nicely done B2B CX to get your wheels turning, take a look at what IBM and Salesforce are doing.

Customer experience is inarguably one of the most important elements of your business. And while B2B CX can be complicated to measure, you’ll reap what you sow here — so don’t hesitate to get down to it and tailor a CX strategy for your company.

Learn more about the customer experience and how each of your employees can make a difference in our free ebook.

Financial institutions face their fair share of challenges when it comes to growing and retaining a happy, loyal customer base. People have any number of choices of where to bank, and to consumers it can feel like there’s not much difference between banks and other companies offering financial services. Plus, financial institutions all comply with the same government regulations, which can make it seem like most banking services are all the same.

When it comes down to it, this is what will really set your bank apart from the next: the seamlessness with which customers can interact with your services and the quality of service offered — i.e., the customer experience.

Why customer experience is so important for banking

Competition in the industry is fierce. It’s estimated that tech companies will swallow up 40% of the $1.35 trillion in financial services revenue from banks. Tech giants like Google, Amazon and Apple already have a huge base of loyal customers and they’re transitioning their success to financial services. A survey from Bain shows that consumers from the US and UK trust PayPal and Amazon nearly as much as they trust banks.

Free business card templates

(Source: Bain & Company)

These companies are highly skilled at providing a level of fast, easy service that’s hard for regular banks to match. Tech companies have been honing their customer experience skills for years, and now they can apply it to financial services. Banks are being held to those standards and it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep up. You’re not only competing with the myriad of other banks — now you’re competing with tech giants too.

That’s why focusing on CX and providing a superior banking experience is so crucial for financial institutions, big or small. CX is often one of the few ways you can differentiate yourself from competitors. Even if your product can’t quite compete with other companies, offering a seamless and supportive experience can keep customers happy and coming back.

8 ways to improve CX in banking

Improving the customer experience will take persistence and a multipronged approach. Here are eight things you can focus on to improve customer experience in banking.

1. Look at it from the customer’s point of view

This probably seems obvious, but it can’t be overstated. Often what companies think they need to do to improve customer experience is quite different from what their own customers would actually like to see improved.

Instead of looking internally to better your CX, dig in to your customers’ opinions. This can take a few different forms, the best one being talking directly to customers.

2. Get the C-suite to commit

In order to find success with your CX initiatives, you’ll need full buy-in from the higher-ups. Improving customer experience at your financial institution will likely lead to big changes in your current system, products and processes. Without support from senior leaders, it will be hard to see true change in your organization.

Make sure leadership is involved in CX improvement plans from the very beginning. When your executives participate, lead by example and show that it’s a priority, the rest of your organization will start to embrace the new changes.

3. Establish a dedicated CX team

Rather than having one simple plan to improve CX, you’ll need a variety of strategies that involve people from all departments of your bank. Pull together a team of stakeholders from across your business to help manage customer experience improvement.

You’ll need their insight into their specialties, and they’ll operate as the point person for CX efforts in their department. A diverse team can bridge the gap between the different services your bank offers as well as silos that can arise from having multiple locations, possibly spread across the country. Depending on the scale of your customer experience initiatives, it may even make sense for your bank to bring in a dedicated CX role to head up this team.

4. Offer unique services

While this is arguably one of the more difficult aspects of providing an exceptional customer experience, having a product or service that truly sets you apart from competitors can be invaluable.

Look to leaders in the industry for ideas on innovative digital services. Bank of America attracts customers with access to its free virtual financial assistant, Erica, that helps people with everything from checking credit scores to bill payment reminders. Spanish bank BBVA’s app offers Bconomy, which helps customers track their finances and work toward a savings goal.

All banks have apps, but going above and beyond the basics to identify tools that really help people will make for a meaningful customer experience. Evaluate how your bank can address customers’ financial health holistically, rather than focusing on a single service at a time.

5. Balance digital and human service

While it is true that consumers now expect effortless digital services from their bank, you can’t rule out the importance of having humans readily available for customer support. You’ll need to find the right balance of the two.

Balance your digital initiatives with a strong commitment to personal customer service. People love to do things online, but if they hit a snag or have a complex problem and there’s no phone number where they can easily reach someone for help, it makes your organization seem untrustworthy. Being able to quickly get through to a friendly, helpful representative will be a huge boost to your customers’ banking experience.

6. Scale your efforts

One of the hardest parts of customer experience is getting your entire organization — every location — to deliver on new CX efforts in a consistent, sustainable way. Being able to successfully scale your customer experience is key for the health of your bank.

With your dedicated CX team, you’ll want to create a plan of attack for business-wide adoption. Look at which initiatives are doing well in which departments and analyze how you can apply or translate those successes to other departments. Learning from specific failures and successes, you can begin to apply changes to larger parts of your organization until the bank as a whole is compliant with updated customer experience standards.

7. Keep your brand consistent

Brand consistency bolsters CX efforts by guaranteeing your customers are always interacting with a familiar company. When your brand always looks and sounds the same — e.g., your design, voice, tone and messaging is consistent — your customers know what to expect. They’ll be comfortable with your brand, and you’ll see brand loyalty from them in return.

Brand templating will help keep your brand consistent across departments and locations. Making customizable design templates available to your company will ensure that each branch stays on-brand and uses approved logos, colors, assets, etc. It also cuts down on off-brand and one-off creations that don’t reflect your organization’s brand style. Templates can range from flyers and brochures to social media posts, emails, presentations and more.

Presenting a unified front to your customers will both bolster CX efforts and help strengthen your brand.

8. Follow up

Customer experience is something you’ll have to continually revisit. What customers want and expect from a financial institution will evolve over time. And once you improve one thing, something else will pop up that could be better too — that’s just the nature of business. Plus, CX improvement often isn’t a straightforward, linear process. There’s going to be trial and error, and you’ll need to keep at it to find the right solutions for your bank.

Just like you set goals and OKRs for each quarter and year, you’ll want to do the same for customer experience. Make CX a focus in all of your strategy plans and hold people accountable in the same way you do for financial goals.

Dedication to leveling-up your customer experience will pay off in happy customers who are more likely to stick with your bank and recommend your services to friends. For more tips on improving CX and creating personalized experiences for your customers, check out our free guide How to avoid CX failure and empower your team to become your greatest CX asset.

In its simplest terms, employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals. Unlike employee satisfaction, employee engagement measures how much employees care about their work and their company. 

Employee satisfaction is often connected to benefits, pay or job security. On the other hand, employee engagement relates to a manager’s influence and the employee experience through things like recognition, job assignments, trust and day-to-day communications. 

For engaged employees, it’s not about the paycheck or climbing the corporate ladder. Engaged employees are the kind of folks who go above and beyond their daily workload — without being asked — simply because they care about the business or their team’s success.

But, you don’t have to take our word for it. Check out the employee engagement statistics we’ve aggregated to help you better understand how and why your company should nurture employee engagement.

Why employee engagement matters

This new focus on employee engagement isn’t for nothing — employee engagement leads to better business outcomes. Unfortunately, just 33% of American workers feel engaged in their current jobs. In fact, 52% say they’re “just showing up” and 17% describe themselves as “actively disengaged.” 

With disengaged employees, you have people working for you who are doing just the bare minimum — they feel no real connection to their job. This can manifest itself as:

On the flip side, engaged employees look at the whole of their organization and understand their purpose — where and how they fit into the grand scheme of things. This can lead to more robust strategies and clearer decision-making, allowing a company to outperform the competition. 

According to research from Towers Perrin, companies with engaged workers have 6% higher net profit margins. Additionally, Kenexa’s research shows that companies replete with engaged employees have five times higher shareholder returns over five years. Not only does employee engagement have the potential to affect stakeholder value and net profits, but it is also a critical factor in employee retention, productivity and loyalty.

Plus, current employee engagement helps employers attract and retain top talent. For example, employees want a good, compelling reason to stay. If they don’t have one, they’ll leave and find another company that offers them what they want. And they’re pretty certain that they can find another job. According to research by Glassdoor, 53% of employees are confident in the fact that if they were to quit or lose their current job, they could find a comparable position within six months. 

By not committing to creating a fleet of engaged employees, companies rack up a considerable cost for hiring and training new hires.

Employee engagement statistics

Of course, it’s not just qualitative facts that show the impact and improvements that employee engagement brings to organizations. The following employee engagement statistics reveal the immense need to make engagement a strategic priority for your organization.

1. Organizations with an engaged workforce are 21% more profitable

Including employee engagement as part of your business strategy could help your company beat out the competition. In Gallup’s State of the American Workforce, analytics showed that businesses with the highest employee engagement scores suggested 21% higher levels of profitability compared to those in the lowest quartile. Successful engagement can come about by ensuring all employees have the best tools and knowledge available to perform their duties as well as possible.

2. 37% of employees consider recognition important

A study by O.C. Tanner asked participants a simple, but complex question — what is the most important thing a company or manager could do to help employees be successful? Out of the total survey constituents, 37% cited that recognition is the most crucial method of support. Other solutions, while helpful, lagged notably behind:

In short, these statistics suggest that over a third of a workplace needs, first and foremost, to be recognized.

3. Highly engaged business units achieve a 10% increase in customer ratings

Reports show that engaged business units can achieve a 20% increase in sales. Along with an increase in profitability, business units with engaged employees can achieve a 10% increase in customer ratings — meaning the employee experience has a definitive impact on the customer experience. Employees who build strong relationships with customers and are notably engaged with their job help their company increase profitability and sales.

Related: Stats that prove the value of customer experience

4. Businesses with engaged employees have 24% less turnover

It’s no surprise that the employee experience is considered valuable — companies with highly engaged employees experience 24% less turnover. Plus, 85% of HR leaders say employee experience is the most valuable HR capability. But, while workers are certainly deemed an essential aspect of business success, a recent survey reported that despite a high value being placed on employee engagement, only 24% (of survey constituents) plan on prioritizing or improving the employee experience.

5. Engaged employees are happy and healthy employees

More than 60% of engaged employees feel their work positively affects their physical health. Employee engagement statistics often highlight the effect that the workplace can have on its employees’ physical health. Wellness programs can help prevent burnout, stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed. By providing employees with the resources they need to be successful, employees are less likely to get sick and experience burnout or stress-related ailments.

6. Businesses see 70% fewer safety incidents

Engaged employees are more connected to their workplaces — and more connected employees are more aware of their surroundings. Research shows that 70% fewer safety incidents occur in workplaces with highly engaged employees. Instead of worrying about whether there’s room for advancement or whether their boss likes them, engaged employees can focus on the task at hand which reduces errant accidents.

7. About 80% of employees are considering leaving their jobs

Regardless of whether or not your employees are actively looking for a new job, a recent study found that 81% of employees would consider leaving their jobs for the “right” offer. For many, changing jobs isn’t just about money. A large percentage — 71% —of workers would iterated that they would accept a pay cut to work at their ideal job. Incentivizing employees to stay goes beyond the paycheck. Giving employees the resources and tools they need to stay engaged is one way to ensure retention. However, there also needs to be a healthy balance between the workplace and employees’ personal lives.

8. Low employee engagement costs companies up to $550 billion each year

Unengaged workers take less responsibility and ownership of their behavior and can really drain overall productivity. To offset this, companies can implement invest in cost-effective programs and tools that monitor and maintain personal engagement. In the long run, focusing on self agency and employee recognition goes a long way in boosting morale and saving companies financially.

9. Employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work

When creating a diverse and inclusive workplace, it’s critical to truly hear your employees’ voices. A report from Salesforce found that diverse companies that hear out their employees see a major boost in financial performance. Therefore, by inviting more people to the table, eliminating bias and establishing a diverse and inclusive community, companies can get a leg up against their competition.

10. Nearly 90% of workers at companies with well-being initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work

According to a report published by the American Psychological Association, a determining factor in the success of wellness programs is the involvement and commitment of senior leadership. At a business where employees view leadership as uncommitted to their well-being, barely 17% of employees would recommend their respective employer as a good place to work. It goes to show that when your own employees aren’t speaking highly about a business, you lose out on great talent.

To sum up . . .

With many more statistics that prove the value of employee engagement, it’s easy to see why more companies are beginning to invest in programs to increase employee engagement. Harvard Business Review even states that engaged organizations have double the success rate compared to less engaged organizations. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, investing in well-rounded, all-inclusive employee engagement tactics spells out true financial success for your company.

You’ve probably heard of the term “employee engagement” by now, but have you heard of employee experience? As more and more companies shift towards customer-centric goals and healthy work environments, we’re seeing an overall prioritization of the employee experience. And for a good reason too. 

A great employee experience can lead to some pretty stellar success for your company. But what’s the point in building a great employee experience? 

What is employee experience?

First off, just what is employee experience? 

Well, employee experience is everything an employee experiences at work, which can be anything from software to interactions with you or their teams. It’s a general term that encapsulates the full spectrum of an employee’s experience throughout their time with your organization.

But don’t confuse employee experience with employee engagement. Employee engagement is a focus on rewards and perks. It’s a booster shot businesses use to jump-start their beating heart. It can include recognition programs, a different floor layout, monetary rewards, etc. 

Employee engagement is more of a stepping-off point. It’s good when you first initiate it, but you need to have something more concrete to continue the momentum forward — which is where employee experience comes into play. 

As the name suggests, the employee experience is a movement all about creating workspace practices that fit your people. So, instead of trying to make square pegs fit into round holes, you change the holes to fit the pegs, which we’re aware sounds likely overwhelming and heady. 

Let’s keep moving.

Why employee experience matters

Cool, cool, cool. So what, why does it matter? 

Your employees want to be valued as human beings — not just valued for what they offer the company. If you’ve received employee feedback along the lines of ‘I don’t know how my work impacts ROI’ or ‘I don’t feel heard or appreciated,’ then your org could stand to benefit from a revamped employee experience.

In a study by Deloitte University Press, researchers found nearly 80% of execs worldwide rated employee experience as necessary or very important. On top of that, experiential organizations have seen four times higher average profits with 40% lower turnover. This isn’t surprising when you think about how a great employee experience lends happier, more engaged and efficient workers.

Additionally, organizations that invest in employee experience can be found almost four and a half times as often on LinkedIn’s list of North America’s Most In-Demand Employers and are 11.5 times more likely to be found in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work.

If that doesn’t convince you, consider these employee engagement stats:

Stages of the employee experience

The employee experience begins when someone steps in the door, all the way to when they leave your company. 

In total, there are five stages of the employee experience:

Recruitment

This includes every step involved in identifying, attracting, screening, interviewing and hiring a new employee. As you work toward improving the recruitment process, consider:  how long does it take to hire, how much does it cost (to hire), what is the rate of offer acceptance and the hire’s quality? Is the interview process engaging? Do your job ads attract the best talent? Evaluate current effectiveness and unpack what you could do better.

Onboarding

The onboarding, or training stage, is where your new hires get up to speed with your tools, processes and systems. The quicker a new employee can get up to speed, the sooner they can get the ball rolling. You’ll know if your onboarding process is effective by whether or not a new hire’s initial enthusiasm translates into a more meaningful, long-term connection to the company.

Development

Development is the ongoing stage in your employees’ journeys. Everyone will develop at different rates, but you need to quantify their productivity, promotion aspirations, and ability to be a team player as they grow. Offer them a chance to expand their skillset.

Retention

At this point in the journey, your employees are fully integrated into your organization. Now, the challenge is how to keep them performing and contributing to the organization’s success. It can often cost upwards of $35k to replace an employee, so finding ways to ensure yours are inspired and connected can save you a lot of cash.

Exit

Whether your employees leave due to retirement, move to a new employer, or have a life change, you need to understand what drives the transition. Doing so can help you improve and develop the employee experience.

How to improve the employee experience

Make it count

Changing the employee experience requires a holistic approach — it’s a change that has to happen at the core. You need to be empathetic and thoughtful in your interactions with your employees. Treat them like customers. It’s easy to look at the customer experience and see what you do there and mirror it to what you want to do for your employee experiences.

Co-create solutions

Affecting change in the workplace requires help from HR. It’s a chance for HR to bring both employees and leaders to the table to improve the employee experience. Sit downs like this help streamline testing needs and socialization efforts, allowing for things to move from concept to execution quicker when both leaders and employees are involved in finding a solution.

Refine the creative process

Find pain points in the creative process and eliminate them. By making these changes, teams can prioritize time for the most meaningful work. For example, we recommend creating a system of checks and balances using content creation software. By doing so, you empower employees to make personalized adjustments to creative content while ensuring your creative team can continue to focus on meaningful projects instead of making small edits all day. Templates can come in handy to keep things on-brand, so you don’t have to worry about significant changes (or typos) happening to content before it gets shipped out to clients.

Use the right tools and technology

Good tech helps streamline otherwise complicated (or dysfunctional) processes and improve employee engagement. With the right tools, your employees can effectively get their job done — minus a lot of frustration.

Ways to measure the employee experience

As with any changes you make to your work processes, it’s important to measure employee experience to ensure these changes work. You can do this in several ways, such as:

Knowing what your employees feel at various stages of their growth and employment with your company can help you improve not just their experience but your org’s overall success. Disgruntled or unhappy employees could cause some significant setbacks. 

As you begin to turn your focus inward and find ways to understand your employees’ needs better, you’ll start to see a unity within your company that you may not have seen before. 

If you want to find out more about the impact of employee experience on customer experience, check our ebook on CX failure.

A strong brand image is crucial to your success. If you’re asking yourself, “What is brand image?”, strap in. We’re going to help you understand what brand image is, why it’s important, and how you can get the best brand image for your organization.


What is brand image?

Brand image is what customers think about your brand or the feeling they have about it. It’s the overall perception or impression of your brand that’s created through your message, brand awareness and brand identity. But, your brand image develops over time as your customers experience and interact with it, and it can be enhanced through word of mouth, advertisements, sales promotions, etc.

Just remember your brand image and brand identity aren’t the same things. Brand image is how your brand or business is perceived, whereas brand identity is the visual aspect, i.e., the literal face of your brand. Brand identity includes logos, colors, typography, messaging and packaging. Brand identity also reinforces the existing reputation of your brand and requires complete consistency since it’s the first impression customers have of your business.


Why brand image matters

A strong brand can potentially equal a strong business. With a strong and consistent brand image, potential consumers are more likely to pick you over the competition because they see you as trustworthy and reliable. Plus, if you’re targeting your audience correctly, consumers will associate themselves with your brand image, attracting them to you from the get-go.

A strong brand identity + a strong brand image will let you introduce new products to the market more easily, since you won’t need to focus too much on marketing. If your consumers already love you, they’re more likely to buy other products from you, right? Think of it this way: My first Apple product was an iBook G4. Followed by an iPhone 1, iMac, iPad, iPhone 7, MacBook Air, another MacBook Air, and now an iPhone 11 Pro — all across a span of 15 years. I like Apple (maybe a little too much), and I trust that its products are going to do what I need them to do.

Now imagine that same domino effect in your organization. A strong brand image can help you get that.

Steps to develop a brand image

Thankfully, developing a brand image is a straightforward process. Just follow these steps and stick to the best practices of brand guidelines to get started.

1. Know your audience

Before you do anything, determine your target audience. Be as specific as possible, go beyond the basic demographic (age, gender, occupation), and determine their behaviors and lifestyles. The more specific you are, the more you ensure your brand message comes across loud and clear to your target customers.

2. Define your value proposition

Your value proposition will be a part of your overall marketing strategy and refers to the value you promise to deliver to your consumers if they choose you. It can be either a marketing or business statement that summarizes why your audience should buy from you, what you stand for and how you operate.

3. Establish your visual identity

Your visual identity, e.g., your logo, shouldn’t necessarily be the first thing you create. It’s easier to create a logo after you’ve built or started building a clear brand. Doing it this way can make things a lot easier — by starting with your audience and mission, you’ll create a springboard for designing your visual identity, which should complement and enhance your brand, not define it.

4. Create your brand archetype and personality

Make your brand personable by creating an archetype or personality. You can do this by using colors, type, imagery and tone of voice to represent who your brand is. 

By knowing your brand archetype, you can create a pattern of ideas or way of thinking to help influence decisions around your brand. Brand archetypes are most often associated with characters in a story, such as the hero, magician or outlaw. For example, Nike embodies the hero archetype by using athletes in their advertising who inspire us to be the bravest, strongest versions of ourselves.

5. Cultivate brand consistency

As you continue to build out your brand image, remember to be consistent. A consistent brand can affect your ROI by earning trust with customers. And an inconsistent brand can create confusion and depreciate your brand status. Plus, brand consistency can lead to new customer leads and conversions.


Don’t be surprised if building your brand image takes a bit of trial and error. Some of the most recognizable brands out there have gone through a rebranding or two. For more in-depth tips on brand image, check out our free book on how to build your brand.

Customer enablement sounds like a complicated marketing term, but it boils down to educating and empowering your customers with the tools, resources, and information they need to make the most of your products or services. Ultimately, customer enablement is built on a simple principle. When customers succeed, everyone wins.

Stats on customer turnover prove that paying attention to the customer experience is always good for business. In fact, estimates indicate it costs five times more to recruit new customers than to keep existing ones. A focused enablement program takes the customer experience to the next level with a thoughtful effort by your sales team to anticipate customer needs and ensure customer success at every step of the journey.

5 steps to better customer enablement 

Your guide to better customer enablement includes five steps to create an enablement program for your business that will drive customer success and, ultimately, sales.

1. Focus on customer feedback

The customer experience is a journey that begins pre-sale, but far too many companies focus on conversion and drop the ball on customer enablement post-sale. Sales teams can provide a better experience by working closely with customer service to follow up and ensure implementation of the product goes smoothly.

Post-sale is also the perfect opportunity to lean into customer feedback, especially on social media platforms. A study sponsored by Microsoft found 77% of consumers view companies that ask for feedback more favorably, so don’t be shy. Engage directly with customers online and via email to solve complaints and be proactive about soliciting feedback. Using feedback to regularly identify pitfalls in the customer experience can prompt development of better tools to enable and empower the people who use your products or services.

2. Think of your customers as partners

Ultimately, you and your customers have the same vested interest in seeing your products or services be successful. You both want to provide or receive value in the marketplace. To achieve that, you and your customers have to work together. Thinking of your customers as partners can produce the kind of framing that’s especially helpful in enablement programs. 

Consider what you can offer to create a better understanding of how to use your products or how to get more out of the services you offer. Putting customers in the driver’s seat means not only providing great, personalized service but offering plenty of self-service options, too, like chatbots. Not only do 70% of potential customers expect a knowledge base on your website, but 40% prefer self-servicing to human interaction.

3. Educate your customers through brand advocates

Putting a wealth of product information at the fingertips of your customers and clients is a good start, but you also have to show instead of tell. Think bigger than tossing a few FAQs on your website and start a laundry list of possible customer training content like webinars, knowledge bases, and video demos. 

Some of the best folks to do this are your brand advocates and social influencers who can become partners in producing how-to videos and promoting educational content. Leaning into empowering and amplifying the voices of brand advocates also creates a sense of community. This is a critical step in successful relationship marketing because it demonstrates that your business is invested on an emotional level in putting something meaningful out into the public space.

4. Give your sales teams the resources they need

A commitment to pursuing customer enablement is admirable, but it won’t result in success unless your sales and service teams have the resources and tools they need. The dissonance between a concerned and attentive customer service rep who shares sloppy, outdated instructions or materials to solve complaints is real, and it can leave an unfavorable aftertaste.

Consistent, high-quality resources such as product pamphlets, instruction manuals, or even social media how-to graphics are an often overlooked component of sales enablement. Invest in managing and producing branded assets like the ones Lucidpress provides so you can ensure your sales and service teams have everything they need to enable a better customer experience and educate consumers.

5. Make an enablement program part of the customer experience

Mapping the customer journey can be a transformative exercise for your marketing and sales team, but take it a step further and consider what roadmaps you provide along the way to customers. How do you help them navigate the customer experience at each step of their journey from product sale to implementation and beyond? 

Carefully considering how you encourage and empower customers can also identify roadblocks you’ve inadvertently placed in the way. This goes beyond identifying sales touchpoints into identifying how your business fosters customer retention and encourages advocacy. Educated customers that are passionate about what you do and why you do it can create the kind of enviable engagement that turns customers into lifetime brand advocates.


Investing in a customer enablement program is about building out a robust customer experience and it requires being able to step back from your role in sales and see the entire journey. Organizations that carefully consider how they can empower and educate customers can seamlessly reap the rewards of sales enablement through customer loyalty and retention.