What is CX?

Customer experience, or CX, is the cumulative effect of all online and offline interactions a customer has with your brand. CX is a concept that goes beyond individual transactions and customer encounters.  It involves a customer’s perceptions, emotions, and attitudes about your company. The CX you create shapes a customer’s overall satisfaction, their loyalty, and their willingness to recommend you to others.

Customer Experience Examples

Great CX spans the entire customer journey and, increasingly, it includes personalization and customization at the individual customer level. Here are a few CX examples from our own clients:

• Nespresso’s interactive coffee quiz guides customers to their perfect brew by asking about taste preferences, brewing methods, and flavor intensity. The way a customer respond to the quiz informs personalized recommendations – an approach that helped Nespresso increase their conversion rate by 18% for coffees recommended thanks to the quiz.
• British supermarket chain Waitrose used AI to tailor experiences for customers, creating an automated personalization experience that showed customers optimal content and recipes for each visitor. This approach led to a 66% engagement lift for visitors exposed to the “recipes experience” on the Waitrose homepage.
• Office Depot’s automated personalization strategy focused on dynamically presenting the right information on product description pages (PDPs) based on where each customer was in the buying cycle. A machine learning model determined which sections should appear first on PDPs, a customized content approach that made the buying process more relevant for shoppers. The approach generated $6.9 million in additional revenue for Office Depot in approximately 4 months.

While the above examples are focused on digital experiences, CX spans all channels and touchpoints. Great CX looks at a customer’s buying journey as an omnichannel one spanning physical and digital channels. 

For example, a customer might browse products on a store’s mobile app, add items to their cart, then complete the purchase in-store. They may start at the store so they can see the product, then complete the sale online and have it delivered.  All of these touchpoints, when stitched together, amount to one buying journey.

Why Customer Experience Matters

Great CX builds loyalty and gives customers confidence in your brand because it communicates that you understand a shopper’s needs. When customers have positive experiences, they’re more likely to complete a purchase, spend more, and show up on your website in the first place. According to Zendesk research, 60% of shoppers choose to buy from a company when they anticipate good service. Key benefits of strong CX include:

• Increased customer loyalty and retention
• Higher customer lifetime value
• Positive brand reputation
• A strong competitive advantage

Regardless of where a customer’s shopping journey starts or ends, great CX makes them feel understood and valued where poor CX can drive them straight to your competitors.

How to Measure Customer Experience

You’ll need more than gut feelings to understand CX from your customers’ perspective.  It takes concrete data to pinpoint areas for improvement and understand what’s working and what’s not. Here are three metrics that can help you establish benchmarks and gauge your CX performance:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures how likely customers are to recommend your brand. 
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Offers insights into happiness with specific interactions. 
• Customer Effort Score (CES): Measures how easy it is for customers to get what they need.

But numbers only tell part of the story. To truly understand CX, you need to ask your customers about their experience. Surveys, interviews, and social media monitoring can provide rich, qualitative feedback. Getting this information is worthwhile, from bottom-line perspective. According to McKinsey, companies that excel at delivering superior CX produce 3X returns for shareholders.

What is a CX Strategy?

A CX strategy is a comprehensive plan for delivering exceptional customer experiences across all touchpoints. It’s a roadmap that outlines how your business will create and maintain positive interactions throughout the customer journey. As McKinsey points out, this often requires companies to reimagine their approach, transitioning from a focus on individual touchpoints to a holistic view of the entire customer journey.

A well-crafted CX strategy aligns every department around a customer-centric approach. To do this effectively, you need to create feedback loops to continually gather and act on customer insights. Your CX strategy should help you create an omnichannel experience that’s consistent and includes self-service options for customers who prefer to find solutions independently.

What Does a Good Customer Experience Entail?

A good customer experience rolls several key ingredients into what amounts to a recipe for delivering great service to your customers. At the top of the list? Personalization and a willingness to embrace all channels in a way that creates a single, omnichannel experience. Here are the top elements to consider when creating great CX:

1. A Personalized Approach

Personalization, from a customer’s perspective, is all about relevance. Customers respond to relevant product recommendations, content suggestions, and elements like social proof and bundled items. Personalization, from a customer’s perspective, is all about relevance. 

Customers respond to relevant product recommendations, content suggestions, and elements like social proof. Per McKinsey: “71 percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76 percent get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.” Personalization should be a feature of your CX versus an add-on or an afterthought. 

2. Have An Omnichannel Outlook

To deliver great CX, you need to connect all the various dots of a customer’s buying journey so that it’s one connected “omnichannel” experience. This requires  integrating what may be siloed or separate channels so that they talk to each other. Omnichannel includes your physical stores, website, mobile app, social media, kiosks, and whatever else your customers use to do business with you. 

A personalization  platform like Monetate syncs customer data in real-time, allowing shoppers to effortlessly transition between channels, adapting to how people shop. For example, a customers might add an items to their mobile cart while in-store, then complete the purchase later on their desktop. Or they might place an order online and pick it up in-store, with personalized recommendations offered at checkout. 

3. Be Proactive About Customer Service

A shift from reactive to proactive support will immediately improve CX since it’s focused on solving customer concerns in real time. Use data and AI to anticipate customer needs, for example, via predictive analytics that can help identify potential issues before they occur. AI-powered chatbots are another powerful tool that customers are embracing to get help as they shop. These tools can offer help based on browsing behavior or send personalized product recommendations, care tips, and more. In Zendesk’s recent CX Trends Report, over 70% of customers said they expect more AI interactions in customer support scenarios.  

4. Create An Emotional Connection

Great CX creates an emotional bond with customers. You need to understand what drives someone to make a purchase, what frustrates them, and where you may be succeeding (or not). As we touched on above, data is the path to gaining a full understanding of what motivates and moves customers. Use data to inform personalization strategies, tailor experiences across touchpoints, and create relevant, timely interactions. By leveraging AI and machine learning, you can automate this process at scale, ensuring each customer feels understood and valued throughout their journey with your brand.

5. Prioritize Data Privacy

Personalization and data privacy go hand in hand with exceptional CX. Customers value tailored experiences but are cautious about data usage. Implementing transparent data practices and giving customers control over their information builds trust. 

Monetate’s approach includes compliance with regulations like GDPR , but it isn’t just about avoiding penalties—it’s about respecting customer preferences. By obtaining explicit consent and allowing data removal options, companies show they value personalization and privacy. This approach fosters stronger, more trusting customer relationships – and you can’t beat that for good CX.

6. Be Willing To Adapt and Learn

If we learned anything over the last few years, it’s that peoples’ needs and behaviors can change in an instant. The perfect CX strategy you have today may not work six months or a year from now. You need to consider this when creating a CX approach that truly adapts and evolves as your customers as customers’ needs and expectations change. Again, data is your best friend here. Regularly collect and act on customer feedback, review performance data, and follow industry trends so you can innovate quickly and adjust your approach, as needed.