The perfect CX strategy

Lately, companies are constantly talking about their strategies to increase customer loyalty. With more competitors every day, consumers diversifying and markets getting bigger, it’s also becoming difficult to keep up. One of the reasons is that we’re not investing enough resources or time as we need to in researching thoroughly for our next big strategy.

Right now there’s a market for everything and if you’re reading this, you probably already have one. But late marketing shows that the issue is not finding a market, it’s being able to keep customers loyal to our company, having in mind that in our market, there are several other companies that cover the same needs.

And yes, we’ve talked about finding our value proposition, differentiator, and other factors that have a high influence on a consumer’s purchasing decision. This though is only a part of what constitutes a truly loyal customer. Recently there has been a big wave of companies investing in what we think is one of the biggest factors in keeping our customer loyalty, customer experience.

We are in an ever-changing environment with customers increasingly demanding, as research shows that every day, consumers are less likely to give second chances to companies. According to PwC, one in three previously loyal customers will leave a brand after just one bad experience, mainly because they’re certain that there’s always a second choice, either better or more suitable to their expectations.

Consumers know now that they have the power to shape companies’ offers, that they’re a priority, and what they ask for is what companies will start developing and investing their resources in. Opposed to how the customer-company relationship used to work, where the latter shaped the market by putting their marketing efforts into convincing their potential clients that their product or service is the ideal one for them.

So is it the end of customer loyalty? It’s still uncertain, what we do know is that as much as we talk about customer loyalty, we also need to start talking about a brand’s loyalty to its consumers. This means that every action a company executes or plans has to be consumer-centric and thought around what their needs are and how they want it delivered.

For example, the biggest failure around this is customer experience. One would say that today, we’d have that covered, but a CX trend report by Zendesk shows that only 18% of clients say that they’re completely satisfied with their customer experiences overall, which only proves that we’re failing to identify those specific preferences and cover them.

One way in which we can avoid this CX strategy gap is by being aware of the trends that consumers are responding to. Some of them, according to Forbes, are related to the technologies we’re using to improve the experience, like the Metaverse or Artificial Intelligence.

It’s only natural that consumers start demanding solutions that align with how they consume and their overall behaviors, technology is a big driver right now. Specifically when it comes to making the experiences shorter and more efficient, as these two factors benefit both our clients and companies.

This is why Artificial Intelligence has taken part in the customer experience revolution. As of 2022, 7 out of 10 consumers agree that AI is good for society and 66% of them think customer service AI makes their lives easier. But Artificial Intelligence still has a long way to go to meet every consumers’ preferences. For example, chatbots still have issues with languages and accents, which is why, even if it’s potentially one of the best solutions to improve CX, around 50% of companies believe chatbots have low success rates.

As we mentioned before, customers are very sensitive to having bad experiences, and using technology inappropriately could make some of them change companies and brands. Especially when faced with technology, we are now seeing a real intolerance for the digital inconvenience, and using digital tools just for the sake of it could offer a slow or frustrating experience.

So building a quality customer experience should include having the technologies and tools to complement what we can offer in our human-to-human interactions. Have your customers constantly rate the service you provide and give you insights about how it can be improved. Normally, we’re looking for the perfect customer experience, but in reality, it will never be finished.