Strategy
10 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand Through a Better Customer Experience

10 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand Through a Better Customer Experience

August 15, 2020
4 min read

Customer Experience (CX) is a widely discussed business topic. Companies across the world are starting to shift their marketing focus towards building a better, more intuitive experience for their users.

A survey conducted by Econsultancy shows that companies are most excited about the opportunities brought by customer experience, even beating out fierce contenders like content marketing and mobile marketing. In addition, a recent Walker study suggests that by 2025, CX will overtake price and product as crucial brand differentiators.

CX is defined as the customers’ perception of how a business treats them. It can affect customer satisfaction and build both positive and negative feelings towards a brand. Meanwhile, companies can transform CX by understanding their customers and delivering personalized experiences to foster loyalty.

Simply put, if a customer likes your business and continues to like you, they are going to continue supporting you and even recommend you to others. However, collecting customer experience data for in-depth knowledge and valuable insights takes a lot of work that requires speed and precision.

Now is the time to implement CX strategies for your business, and according to Customer Strategist Journal, these are six key areas should be considered.

  • Reachability
  • Service convenience
  • Purchase convenience
  • Personalization
  • Simplicity and ease of use
  • Channel flexibility

Creating a Better Customer Experience

1. Segment Customers and Tailor the Experience to Match Each Group’s Needs

Knowing who your customers are is necessary if you want a customer-centric marketing strategy. However, it shouldn’t stop there. You should group your prospects into relevant categories to create personalized functions based on your understanding of their needs.

This level of personalized communication will help to connect with their situation and help you deliver on your value propositions.

2. Create an Emotional Connection

If you want a unique CX for your business, establishing an emotional connection with your users is a must. Research from the Journal of Consumer Research has proven that more than 50% of CX is based on emotions that help shape decisions. When emotions are involved in the use of a product or service, customers end up being much more involved, which is great for engagement and loyalty.

This is further proven by another statistic showing that businesses that use emotional connections in their CX experience 85% more sales growth compared to competitors that do not.

In addition, Harvard Business Review’s The New Science of Customer Emotions shows that emotionally-attached customers may repurchase and recommend the business and 44% are less likely to shop around for options.

3. Get Feedback in Real Time and Work On It

The best way to inquire about your customers’ priorities and responses is to ask. Ideally, in real time.

Gain insightful feedback with post-interaction surveys that can be done through email, calls, and other automated tools to find out more about what they want. Real-time feedback will also determine if your products or services are still effectively fulfilling their needs and where improvements can be made.

4. Deliver a Consistent Experience by Utilizing Multiple Channels

In whichever point of the buyer’s journey the customer is at, and whether the process is done face-to-face or on mobile, it is essential to deliver a high-quality CX time and again.

Different channels are now available to buyers, but make sure to innovate and improve all your channels to offer fresh experiences along with reliability on a consistent basis. Apply the right metrics and use customer satisfaction tools to measure each channel’s efficiency as well.

5. Don’t Use Technology for Technology’s Sake

Technology may be as beneficial as human interaction when it comes to CX today, but it shouldn’t be the center of transactions. Problems emerge when technology is used without considering the needs of your customers.

Some businesses don’t realize that technology should only enhance the customer’s experience in doing business, not overshadow it. Improvements must be founded in differentiation, and for its long-term value for the company—not just for innovation.

Great CX still needs human interactions. Strike a balance between the enthusiasm of your IT department and the psychological insights of marketing, and make sure that improvements are geared toward resolving consumer issues.

Once again, always remember that technology is there to complement and enhance human interaction, not replace it.

6. Avoid High-Effort Experiences

Another common mistake when using technology for customer service is to elicit amazement from your audience. Whether you utilize technology or not, reaching out should not require too much effort from your customers.

Most of them don’t need to be astounded. They simply want their concerns to be heard and addressed.

  1. A Long-Term Commitment to Customer Delight

Effective customer service addresses real-time concerns, and in turn, results in customer delight and loyalty. Outside of technology, there are still many other ways to make your customers happy.

Making customers happy should become part of your company’s DNA—encourage stakeholders and employees to come up with innovative ideas on how to make this possible. Value added through great service can establish your position as the go-to brand for your particular market.

  1. Make Your Brand Personal

Human interaction is still essential in customer service. Technology can provide the means to make these interactions as personalized and relevant as possible.

Discover each individuals’ preferences, past purchases, demographics, and shopping histories, and customize the service based on those. Tie your brand to an experience that customers will remember as something that is their own.

Show your audience that there are humans behind your brand and inject a bit of personality into your content.

  1. Use a Quality Framework to Train Your Team

Aside from utilizing technology, you should also hone your people to become better at customer service. Know what your customers are saying about the quality of your service then compare that to the experience you have defined. From there, you can identify the training needs of each member of the customer support team.

A quality framework means you have to schedule and track your team’s development through coaching, learning, and group training.

  1. Measure the ROI

To check if all your customer service efforts are paying off, use tools and metrics like the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which collects information by asking things like, “Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?”

NPS was created by Rob Markey and Fred Reichheld from Bain and Company and is considered a standard for CX metric that many companies are using today. Feel free to use your own tools and metrics to measure ROI if you deem it more useful.

Create a Competitive Advantage with CX

When your customers are happy with your product or service, you’ll not only see an increase in revenue, but you also retain your customers and even gain more along the way—thanks to the satisfied ones who continue to support you.

Remember that customer experience optimization is an ongoing process. No matter the nature of your business, taking necessary steps to improve CX continuously is always worth the effort.

4 thoughts on “10 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand Through a Better Customer Experience

  1. Johnathan Weberg

    One of the ways I’ve helped my own company and many others to truly guide customer experience, is to guide the customer as if they were a child.

    Showing them every way to go through your training/guide/program/etc, and walking them through personally, by the hand.

    Because with customers that LOVE you and the product. They will come back more and more, and then become even more enthralled with how much they trust you.

    Awesome post!

  2. Michael Brenner

    Thanks for sharing your methods and your feedback!

  3. James Nguma

    Great tips there. Sure, your clients are in different stages in their buying journey.

    Segmenting them and giving them the best experience where they are in their sale funnel is awesome.

    Making it easy for clients to know how your brand will help them solve their pains improves their experience.

  4. Michael Brenner

    Thanks James. I appreciate the support!

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Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of "Mean People Suck" and "The Content Formula", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group. Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.