As customer experience and service design experts at Furthermore we have helped many businesses improve the experience for their customers. We believe in using research and evidence to help formulate holistic customer experience strategies.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience (CX) refers to the overall perception and satisfaction of customers resulting from their interactions with a company, product, or service. It encompasses every touchpoint, from the initial awareness of the brand to the post-purchase experience. A positive customer experience is crucial for building loyalty, retaining customers, and driving business growth.

How to create a Customer Experience strategy?

Our process for creating or refining a customer experience strategy involves several key steps:

1. Customer Research
In order to improve a customer’s experience, first we need to understand how they interact with your business across all the digital and analog touchpoints and what their needs, expectations, pain points and questions are at every stage. Conducting research with real customers is the best way to do this, and can be done using a variety of methods including interviews, surveys, observational studies etc.
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2. Journey Mapping
Using the insights gained from research, the next step is to create a customer journey map, a crucial step in creating a customer-centric CX strategy. We map the entire customer journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase and advocacy, identifying key touchpoints along the way. The customer's needs, expectations, and pain points can be mapped against each touchpoint so that it is easy to identify areas for improvement. Journey mapping also helps align different departments within an organisation, ensuring a consistent and seamless customer experience across all channels.

3. Setting CX Goals & Metrics
To design a successful customer experience strategy, we first must define specific goals that directly contribute to your business objectives. We ensure goals are clear, concise, and tailored to your unique business needs. Next, we establish measurable targets to objectively track progress towards your CX goals, choosing metrics that are relevant, reliable, easy to track, and ideally, realistic and achievable within your resources and capabilities.

4. Developing a CX Strategy
Equipped with a clear direction and set of goals, we can now prioritise solution ideas based on their potential impact. There are many different prioritisation methods to use, we can help choose the right one for your business. After identifying the high priority solutions, we can flesh out a roadmap for implementation alongside a more comprehensive strategy which clearly outlines the new customer experience to all stakeholders.

5. Review and refine
Once the new strategy has been implemented, the work is not done. It is essential to regularly monitor your chosen metrics to assess effectiveness of your CX initiatives. This will allow you to make data-driven decisions to optimize strategies and improve CX outcomes. Put a plan in place to revise the strategy and roadmap on a regular basis. 

Still not sure where to start? Our team of customer experience strategy experts are here to help you at any stage of the process. Get in touch for a chat!