Customer experience (CX) is king: 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better experience, according to a recent survey from Walker.
It’s obvious that CX is now a priority, but what can you do to ensure that your company's CX processes are competitive? Conducting a customer experience analysis is an easy way to see how your customer service stacks up, and where your business can improve.
But, don’t just do a customer experience analysis to do it—understand the value to your business to make sure you get the most out of the process. In general, a customer experience analysis is a measurement of whether or not a product or service meets the expectations of customers. Knowing whether you’re meeting expectations or not is critical because 71% of US consumers said that they would switch brands after one bad experience. The very same survey found that if expectations were continuously met, customers were three times more likely to be loyal.
If you’re not sure where to start with your customer experience analysis, or what data to consider, start with these three areas that are critical for SMBs.
Dig into the website experience
It’s time to go back to basics. The company website is a critical piece of the CX because that’s often the first place that customers interact with your brand. According to research from the eCommerce Foundation, 88% of consumers will research product information before making a purchase, which means that your website needs to be easy to navigate, but more importantly, you need to be available to your customers.
Start by looking at whether you’re following best practices for website CX. For example, on, 5 Ways to Test and Improve Website Customer Experience, Usersnap suggests using the following methods:
- In-the-moment feedback options
- Chat box
- Thumbs up/down feedback
- Exit intent feedback
- Customer interviews
If you already do most of these things, you have plenty of data to pull into your analysis to determine whether your website is providing a great experience or not. If you don’t do any of this, now's the time to implement the tools necessary to start gathering that data.
Analyze every customer touchpoint
In today’s world, there are multiple ways for your customers to connect with your business—and analyzing each touchpoint is critical. The best way to do this during your analysis is to walk in your customers’ shoes, suggests Jessica Noble, Founder of Magnetic Experiences. She explains in a recent customer experience analysis blog post:
“To better understand where the non-value-add hiccups are, you need to experience each touchpoint yourself. For example, is your ‘Get Support’ button taking the customer to an easy-to-access contact page with phone numbers, chat and email? Or are they dropped at an FAQ page, where they have to continue digging around to find someone to speak with? Or worse, taken to a page where they must select the reason for contact, none of which apply?”
To walk in your customers’ shoes for an effective customer experience analysis, you have to know where to walk, so start there. What touchpoints might your customer move through in connecting with your business before, during and after a sale? Here are some places to look:
- Website chat
- Social media
- Website contact form
- Phone calls
Depending on your business, you may even have more touchpoints, so make your list and bring that into your analysis. Are there ways to make these processes easier and faster? What could you offer at those points to make the experience easier? What could you automate to streamline the experience?
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Get feedback directly from customers
Talking to customers is the best way to find where you’re falling short and where you’re succeeding. You can speak with your customers through a number of mediums, each of which allows you to dig deeper into the experience in their words. Here are a few ways to get customer feedback for your analysis:
- Customer surveys via email
- Website user reviews
- Phone calls with long-time clients
- Phone calls with prospects who didn’t convert
Finally, pair the quantitative data from your internal analysis with the qualitative data from customer surveys and calls to connect the dots between what you’re doing and seeing and what the customer is actually experiencing.
Get more from your customer experience analysis
Gathering data is an excellent way to refine your business practices and keep customers happy. The most important part of a customer experience evaluation, however, is what you do with the data. Gather feedback, collect information, and then implement changes to ensure that your CX will keep customers coming back time and time again.
