Historically, customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) have been used interchangeably to describe the collection of on and offline interactions that a person has with a brand or organization. In truth, CX and UX focus on different aspects of the same journey. With the user experience, you’re mainly focusing on the end-user, the person using the product or service. Whereas CX concentrates on the customer. Often customers are using the product or service too, but they may be buying it on someone else's behalf.

To better understand the importance of creating a good customer experience, you need to first understand their journey, a fundamental, guiding principle of CX.

The customer journey, in its purest form, is the collective experience a customer goes through when interfacing with your organization and its brand. This means everything from a person researching your company to becoming a repeat customer and referring your business to others. It’s virtually all-encompassing, which makes it important to breakdown the journey into observable and measurable phases:

This is arguably the most critical phase of the journey, with customers being three times more likely to purchase from a brand that makes it through this phase. Much like how a gatekeeper functions, the consideration phase is where customers shift from passive to active consumers, doing the bulk of their preliminary research to whittle down the field to a few worthy options.

Once those choices are narrowed, customers then begin to further examine their choices, sometimes removing brands they were once confident in, replacing them with new contenders. This phase is important as it’s an opportunity for brands to engage with potential customers, impressing upon them the reasons why they should go with them over the competition.

Traditionally the most desired phase for most companies, the purchasing phase says it all: a potential customer has reached the point of sale and has chosen to invest their money into your product or service.

Ideally, this should be the most desired phase for brands. When you transform a customer into an advocate, you’ve essentially gained a brand evangelist, someone willing to sing your brand’s praises from the mountain tops, imploring other potential customers to invest their money and time into your product or service.

Now that we have a better understanding of the customer journey and how it can be affected by its quality, we can start to analyze how some industries implement CX practices and what can be gained.

Notwithstanding the events of the last few weeks, there’s much to learn from the way travel brands handle the constant transience of millions of travelers each year. Naturally, having an iron-clad CX strategy in place is very important in the high-stakes, oftentimes high-stress, world of travel. Here are three best practices to consider:

As we said before, traveling can be a stressful time for some; doubly so for those who aren’t going on vacation. Being there, wherever they are, can mean the difference between a good trip and a great one. CX bots, in-app support features, and AI-enabled messaging systems ensure that you’re always a touch away if a traveler needs assistance.

Integrating customer support and customer experience into the same bucket helps otherwise siloed teams work together more efficiently to solve problems in real-time. For example, at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, TSA specialists sit next to customer care support staff to address travelers’ pain points before they become full-blown problems.

Accessing detailed forecasting information and reporting is essential in being able to learn from the past while prepping for future customer experience strategies.

Albeit, we’ve always been able to learn a great deal about CX from the travel industry, and these coming months are slated to provide some eye-opening insights on how to mitigate and maintain good CX in the midst of a crisis.

To some, elevating the human experience can be more difficult than depressing it. This careful balancing act gets played out in restaurants and hospitality venues around the world, every day. The customer experience in restaurants specifically gets affected by so many factors, from food quality and wait-service to the moment a person first makes a reservation, that without the right combination of best practices, you’re dooming your restaurant before first open. Consider these:

Most restaurants follow a very formulaic approach when receiving guests. Don’t be afraid to break away from this routine. Everything from changing up how people are received to adding an amuse-bouche to the course list will add a subtle hint of spontaneity to an otherwise predictable routine.

Find ways to boost the senses when entertaining diners. Engaging multiple (if not all) senses at once stimulates the mind, but also makes it more likely they’ll remember their dining experience as more than just a meal.

Instead of relying on the standard reservation system, take the time to create an elevated level of commitment for your guests. For example, the famed Chicago restaurant, Alinea, has its guests purchase tickets instead of making reservations. This simple gesture encourages guests to treat their upcoming dining experience like a show, a show they’re less likely to not show up for.

To yield positive results from diners throughout their customer journey, it takes a combination of creativity, discipline and attention to detail to a level that few other industries are held to. Essentially, when anyone decides to eat at a restaurant, they’re trusting you enough to relinquish a great deal of control over an important aspect of life. That is reason enough to make sure you’re going the extra mile every time.

There are few industries that have as much raw access to the human condition than that of the healthcare industry. In this instance, when we say “healthcare”, we mean clinic and hospital networks, and the hundreds of thousands of people who work within them. Doctors, nurses, physicians, and other healthcare professionals, whether they know it or not, perpetually practice CX every day, but here are some of the most standout examples than can be applied to nearly any strategy:

In healthcare, it’s easy to get caught up in all the bells and whistles of new equipment and technology, but it should never be used to replace human interaction and connection. Having voice or even face-to-face interactions with patients goes a long way than relegating someone to an automated chatbot in times of need.

Having a good bedside manner is one of the oldest conundrums in healthcare, but being a provider of care extends beyond curing ailments. Human advocacy and positive reinforcement have been shown to help patients heal faster than those receiving basic care.

Most medical professionals can’t be in multiple places at once, so it helps tremendously to establish a good rapport with those working with patients more often. Nurses, interns and administrative staff interface with patients beyond the ailment itself, which can yield valuable information on how to do your job even better.

Interfacing with people, some of whom are at their very worst, is like running the CX gauntlet in terms of maintaining an acceptable customer experience. Ideally, the end goal for healthcare professionals is to have their patients leave better than the way they came, and much of that outcome is predicated on how well they’re treated while there. 

In light of current events, there’s a great deal of uncertainty as to how certain industries are meant to recover and rebuild. There is reason to take solace, though, in the fact that many of the CX fundamentals and best practices transcend the circumstances of this day and age. Here are three pillars to consider when addressing the modern customer experience:

In times of high anxiety and tumult, logic and rationality tend to go out the window. Making sure your CX recognizes that, while proactively creating processes to minimize the stress, will allow for cooler heads to eventually prevail.

When addressing CX, you need to be mindful of both the voice of the customer (VoC) and the voice of the employee (VoE). Using customer feedback and pain points to make CX changes on the fly and using employee engagement survey data will help to create a holistic strategy, effectively addressing both sides of the customer experience.

Conversely, your customer support teams will also be feeling the pressure, so you must be an advocate for them while continuing to drive home the importance of maintaining a high-level customer experience.

Embracing the art of pivoting will serve your brand well, even outside times of crisis. People are unpredictable, but if your CX is designed to adapt well to that unpredictability, you’ll already be steps ahead of the competition. 

Consequently, these are not designed to be a cure-all for your respective industries, but it should serve as a strong foundation to base on future CX strategies.

To learn more about how the right customer experience strategy can not only elevate your brand but position you as the best choice for potential customers, contact us at biz@prpl.rs.