Customer Experience - Growing Recognition

Growing Recognition

Analysts and commentators who write about customer experience (CX) and customer relationship management have increasingly recognized the importance of managing the customer's experience. Customers receive some kind of experience, ranging from positive to negative, during the course of buying goods and services. Brad Daniels (Business Development Manager) says that “an experience is defined as the sum total of conscious and unconscious events. As such, a supplier cannot avoid creating an experience every time it interacts with a customer” (2011). Furthermore, it has been shown that a customer’s perception of an organisation is built as a result of their interaction across multiple-channels, not through one channel, and that a positive customer experience can result in increased share of wallet and repeat business. As employees create or deliver a positive experiences for customers, they in turn, receive positive experiences through feedback and recognition, leveraging the benefits of positive customer experience to the company or institution.

A company's ability to deliver an experience that sets it apart in the eyes of its customers serves to increase their spend with the company and, optimally, inspire loyalty to its brand. "Loyalty," says Jessica Debor, "is now driven primarily by a company's interaction with its customers and how well it delivers on their wants and needs." (2008)

To create a superior customer experience requires understanding the customer's point of view, say Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D in Rules to Break and Laws to Follow. "What's it really like to be your customer? What is the day-in, day-out 'customer experience' your company is delivering? How does it feel to wait on hold on the phone? To open a package and not be certain how to follow the poorly translated instructions? To stand in line, be charged a fee, wait for a service call that was promised two hours ago, come back to an online shopping cart that's no longer there an hour later? Or what's it like to be remembered? To receive helpful suggestions? To get everything exactly as it was promised? To be confident that the answers you get are the best ones for you?" (Peppers and Rogers 2008)

In short, customer experience meaning a customer journey which makes the customer feel happy, satisfy, justify, with a sense of being respected, served and cared, according to his/her expectation or standard, start from first contact and through the whole relationship.