What Is Customer Experience and What Is It For?

• What is Customer Experience (CX)?  
• What is it for? 
• Customer Experience vs Customer Service 

Think about the last time you had a really good experience: what did it feel like, why did it feel good, what stuck in your memory, what did it feel like, what did it feel like, why did it feel good, what did it feel like, what stuck in your memory?  

Now I'd like you to think about the last time you had a bad experience: what didn't you like and why? How did it make you feel at the time? What do you feel when you remember that experience? 

It is crucial for companies to know what kind of experiences their customers are having and remembering with their brands, as a satisfied customer who has had an excellent experience will most likely tell their friends and family about your brand, your product or service, which could translate into more revenue and business for your company. 

The best advertising is not the advertising that a brand creates and develops for its products. The best advertising is what satisfied customers do to a brand when they talk about it, when they mention the name of your brand and get a huge smile on their face, when they get a huge thrill when they talk about what they experienced when they used your product/service or visited your shop. 

"They may forget what they were told, but they will never forget what they were made to feel". Maya Angelou. 

It is extremely important for brands to start taking Customer Experience (CX) into account, as it will not only make customers feel good by generating satisfaction and happiness, but it also means more business and revenue for the company. 

WHAT IS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE? 

We know that Customer Experience is vital for the continuity of any business. Good or bad, the experience that customers have had with our brand will predict their future purchasing behaviour: will they continue to buy from us or will they go to the competition. But what is Customer Experience (CX)? 

It is the set of feelings and perceptions that your customers have about your company or brand. In the end, this set of feelings and perceptions of your customers translates into an experience, which customers will remember and spread. 

To have a successful Customer Experience, we need to meet and exceed all the expectations that our customers have of our brand, regardless of the channel (social media, web, mobile, point of sale) and regardless of the commercial process that is being executed. 

CX is to understand that, in every interaction that the customer has with us, we must create an experience with which our customer is satisfied, feels happy and has a good perception of our brand. 

But where do these customer feelings and perceptions come from, who triggers them? The answer to this question is quite simple: every interaction a customer has with your company or brand results in a feeling and a perception. I repeat, every interaction with your brand. 

I repeat this because it is extremely important for companies to understand that every time a customer has contact with a brand, they feel and perceive something about that brand. 

With that in mind, would you leave the touchpoints a customer has with your brand to chance, or would you prefer to have each point specifically designed to provide value and a memorable and relatable experience? 

The moment companies start paying attention to each of these points they will be able to have better control over their customers' experience, which could result in a strategy to increase customer satisfaction, generate more revenue, encourage word-of-mouth, and nurture their loyalty program. 

Now, I ask you, what would happen if we stopped thinking about "touchpoints" and started thinking about "moments of contact"?

Every interaction a customer has with your company, with your brand, becomes a moment and this moment is an excellent opportunity to connect with your customer, to provide them with a unique experience. 

Above all, I recommend you never neglect the final moments that a customer has with your brand. Many times, we tend to overlook the last moment, the last minute in which our customer interacts with our brand. 

So many companies forget the importance of finishing well. For example, look at hotels: most will do anything for you when you arrive and you're there, but when you check out the process is extremely perfunctory, not managed or thought out. It's an opportunity they are missing to finish providing the best possible experience. 

Customer Experience is not just about the interaction with the product but includes a before and after. It includes any interaction customers have with your brand.

Understanding the moments that a customer goes through with your brand, from the moment they start to get to know it until they consume and live it, is essential to be able to create the right experience, and this is a practice that all companies must have in the world we live in today. 

Every moment our customer has with us must be transformed into a pleasant and unique experience, worthy of sharing with others.   

"Customer Experience is not necessarily about the product or service you offer. It's about how you make someone feel during their Buyer Journey". (John Boccuzzi, 2019) 

WHAT IS THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE FOR? 

Now that we know that Customer Experience refers to the feelings and perceptions that your customer remembers when interacting with your brand, what is it for?  

Specifically, Customer Experience is used for: 

• Increase customer satisfaction. 
• Generate better word-of-mouth advertising. 
• Retain your customers. 
• Reinforce brand preference. 
• Build customer loyalty. 

• Increase your business revenue. 
• Grow your business. 

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE vs CUSTOMER SERVICE 

It is common to find companies that, when you talk to them about Customer Experience (CX), mention that they provide excellent customer service, trying to ensure that every time the customer goes to or calls the company, they are attended to in the best possible way. This is important, and all companies should do it, however, it is not the same as Customer Experience. 

Customer Service is reactive. To serve the customer you need the customer to ask for something: information, help with a return, dealing with a complaint, etc. Customer Service waits for the customer to make a move before we react and respond to it. 

We react to what customers ask, mention, or say in specific moments they have with our company or brand. It is a concept that relates more to the support and help that a company provides to its customers in certain specific situations. 

Salto de páginaOn the other hand, Customer Experience is totally proactive. Before waiting for the customer to appear or say something for us to be able to attend and serve them, Customer Experience acts in advance, designing the sales process and brand channels, understanding moments to create experiences. 

CX is the holistic view of all the moments and interactions that the customer has with our company and brand, which generate feelings and perceptions in each of our customers. 

At the beginning of this blog, we defined Customer Experience as the set of feelings and perceptions that your customers have about your company or brand, translating into an experience, and that successful CX is achieved by meeting and exceeding all the expectations that customers have about your brand, regardless of the channel or the commercial process that is being executed. 

But your customers don't just interact with your company when they need to ask for information, make a complaint, make a return, or speak to a sales representative. Your customers also interact with your brand when they visit your website, when they visit your social networks, when they see your advertising, when they come to your point of sale, when they open an email from your company, when they register for a webinar or event of your brand and many other moments more. 

The most important thing to understand is that Customer Experience comes into play proactively when designing the entire customer journey, starting from the search for information about your company, brand, product, or service; and this is important to understand. CX involves us developing processes that are right for our customers, designed specifically for each interaction a customer might have with our brand. Processes that generate feelings and perceptions that make our customers smile. 

Customer Experience is to be able to provide our customers with a simple and attractive sales process, a sales process thought out and designed so that every time the customer encounters our brand, it is a unique experience, but above all it is an experience planned and designed in advance and with our customer, our Buyer Persona, in mind. 

As I mentioned earlier, Customer Experience is proactive, not reactive. Therefore, designing a good Customer Journey is essential to be able to generate an adequate CX. 

To conclude, Customer Experience is how the interactions customers have with your brand made them feel and the perceptions they have of your company and brand in general. This means that all the moments that a customer may have with a brand must be adequately satisfied, through the design of processes that generate experiences worth remembering. By doing this, companies will benefit because their customers will be more satisfied, generating greater word-of-mouth and recommendations and, therefore, greater customer loyalty. All this translates into more revenue and growth for your company, so Customer Experience is not only good for your customers, but also business.