Originally published on ReadWrite
Customer Experience (CX) is in need of an update. Consumer bases are changing, customer demands are evolving, and existing models just aren’t keeping up. If businesses want the latest in CX, they’ll need to invest in infrastructure that can support it.
Even as antiquated CX strategies struggle to keep up, the heat is on companies to improve. More than two-thirds of marketers now say that their company competes primarily on the basis of CX — up from a mere 36% a decade ago.
Businesses wanting to stand out from the crowd over the coming years will want to completely reevaluate their CX from the ground up.
Forward-Thinking Solutions
Thankfully, companies don’t have to take this journey all on their own. A new firm has arrived, Experience.com, capable of helping firms take the leap into the next generation of CX. Experience.com is a full-service experience management platform (XMP) for businesses.
Experience.com’s cloud-based service checks all the boxes that companies have come to expect — fully integrated, customizable, and user-friendly. What truly makes it different is its approach to data.
Customer data is one of the most valuable commodities on the market.
Customer data has become one of the most valuable commodities available on the market today, but companies rarely know how to handle all of it. As important as data can be, it’s easy to get lost in the sheer deluge of information collected during typical company operations.
Customers are always giving feedback on how to improve your CX — intentionally or otherwise — and you need a service that can help you collect, analyze, and act on all of it. You want the data tied to each moment on the company journey.
The Future of CX Data
For years, data collection in the CX world has been clunky and slow. The “gold standard” for most of CX history has been the long-form survey, and it’s not difficult to see why. While surveys can provide high volumes of data on the issues you care about, their pace simply won’t work in today’s business ecosystem.
What are the tangible changes?
Then comes the question of turning information into tangible changes. “The future of CX is real-time data, in motion, so you can change experiences while they happen. We’re not asking the same old question — are customers happy with our brand?
We’re reaching out in the moment — during an experience with a particular employee or product, at a specific time, so we can alter and amplify outcomes in real time,” says Scott Harris, founder and CEO of Experience.com.
Harris is right: not only do you need to collect data quickly, you also need to utilize it on a dime.
Next-generation experience management software platforms do all of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to data collection. The heavy lifting includes such actions as funnelling business reviews from disparate sources like Yelp, Google, or industry sites all into one place.
How will Experience.com help your business?
While this experience platform gives you a clear overview of how your brand is perceived, Experience.com takes it one step further by helping you share, escalate, and cross-post the positive reviews your customers are creating. Remember that your experience journey is not just about consolidating feedback — it’s knowing what to do with the data — and being able to do something with it.
Translating and refining your CX experience.
What about translating that data into a refinement of your CX itself? Experience.com can help with that as well. Consider that 71% of consumer buying decisions start with social media — social media is square one for your company’s CX.
Not only does Experience’s platform bring all of your accounts together onto one platform to view and manage reviews, it also helps you flag certain words or phrases that data have shown to reflect poorly on your brand.
The more you learn about how your customers review you — the more you can improve your brand with the information contained in your data.
Where CX and EX Meet
Your employees are at the frontlines of the customer experience, in-and-out, every single day. If you want to improve your customer experience — you’ll need to work on your employee experience right alongside it.
Experience.com allows you to track worker impact on your CX just as closely as you track CX itself. By seeing which employee is accomplishing what in real time — you can tell which aspects of your existing EX are working and which might benefit from some additional work.
You can connect employee CX performance to compensation systems, scoreboard, and benchmark performance to motivate and drive engagement.
Your employees are always your number one customers — and brand ambassadors — so streamlining the experience they have on the job will directly lead to better experiences for your customers as well.
Making it All Work — In Real Time
Simply put, businesses can no longer afford to drag their feet on the CX evolution. Your customers are constantly telling you exactly how to improve your CX, and it’s time for you to adopt a platform that can keep up with that pace.
Improve the face of your business.
Experience.com is the only experience management platform out there today that works in real time, improving your business’s face with each passing minute.
What do your customer’s think?
Unlike other experience management platforms, Experience.com brings you closer to the customer than ever before, giving you direct access to their takeaways from your business.
By giving you a deeper understanding of what your customers are asking for, Experience.com can usher in a new era of CX for your business — but it’s up to you to take the first step.
