What Is CX
CX (Customer Experience) simply encompasses everything your customers experience with your company and how they feel about it. From the moment they first discover you — say, seeing your Facebook ad — to the moment they no longer want to hear about you, for example because you haven't responded to their complaint for a month.
The customer experience covers 2 key areas:
- Functionality = rational experience, meaning how well you deliver on what customers expect, how you satisfy their needs (meet needs), and how you make their lives easier (make it easy).
- Experience = emotional experience, reflecting how customers feel. Enjoyment is the strongest predictor of a customer repurchasing a product or service (make it enjoyable).
What do your customers expect?
- That you deliver what you promise
- That they feel special
- Reward for loyalty
- Speed and friendly service
Why CX Matters
Companies with better Customer Experience have more satisfied and loyal customers, higher profits, and a better reputation. When you want to start working on customer experience, you need to do everything possible to make it easy for customers and make them feel good with you.
- Up to 33% of customers will leave your brand after just one bad experience
- 80% of customers will leave a brand after repeated bad experiences
- 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience
How customer experience profoundly impacts your business was also shown by our study of 12 selected Czech e-shops from the top 100 list according to CzechCrunch. We uncovered 82 issues customers encountered during purchases, from searching for products to unpacking their order. And 12 of them were serious enough that at least one customer in the study did not complete their purchase at all.
What CX Covers
We won't open a philosophical debate about whether CX is part of brand or marketing or vice versa. The truth is, CX encompasses many things and categories. You can look at customer experience from many different angles. We've selected the most important areas you need to get right to build great Customer Experience.
- Data and feedback management
- Customer support and service
- Customer journey mapping
- Brand and marketing
- Service design
- Personalization
- CX strategy and leadership
- Omnichannel approach
How to Improve CX
You don't need a huge budget or the best technology on the market to improve the customer experience. Even a small first step and a single change in the customer journey can move customer satisfaction forward.
Customer Journey Mapping
A customer journey map forces you to look at your entire company through the eyes of your customers. It helps you decide where to start. Through mapping, you'll find the most painful spots in the customer journey — where your customers are most confused and what frustrates them. Sometimes it's something very simple, like making it easy and convenient to pay with you.
Research and Feedback Collection
Building your business on customer data increases the likelihood that you'll make the right decisions. Research isn't just a luxury for large companies. Plenty of valuable data is already inside your organization or can be gathered on your own: through customer support, from your sales team, through mystery shopping, or guerrilla testing. You can also draw on external data that someone else has collected or that is publicly available online — for example in social media comments, groups, and reviews.
Simple Purchase Process
In the digital world, simplicity wins. Your customers simply don't want to think and don't have the time. The entire purchasing experience should be as simple, intuitive, and user-friendly as possible: fewer clicks, faster responses, better navigation.
Personalized Communication
Make the customer feel special. Like they're the only one for you, not just one of the crowd. And it doesn't have to be just addressing them by name. You can call customers after a purchase to see how they're getting on with the product. Or you can use tools to tailor parts of the customer journey to the needs of individual customers. For example, you can show each customer a different personalized offer in your e-shop.
Accessible and Friendly Customer Support
"A third of customers expect a response within an hour. But companies take an average of 12." Response speed is absolutely critical for customer satisfaction. So is availability across multiple channels. Having customer support available only via a landline from 9 to 3 simply isn't enough anymore. Invest in your people. Their expertise, mood, and energy have a huge impact on how customers perceive the quality of customer care.
How to Measure CX
When you start working on improving customer experience, you need to know how you're doing. NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), and CES (Customer Effort Score) are the three most commonly used methods for collecting customer feedback. However, they all have their limitations. NPS asks customers about a hypothetical situation. CSAT and CES do ask about a specific action, but all three metrics are highly sensitive to customers' personal circumstances. Customers may therefore reflect their momentary emotional state in their responses — a state that may have nothing to do with your company, product, or service at all.
Just measuring NPS simply isn't enough. You can hear more about NPS and other metrics in an interview with leading Czech CX expert Lukáš Pítra in our CX Space podcast.
NPS: net promoter score
What it measures: Customer loyalty.
Why it's useful: Shows the willingness to recommend your company, product, or service.
What to watch out for: The metric is sensitive to customers' emotions and personal situations, which they may project into their ratings. Moreover, it reflects overall CX — and that is its biggest limitation. You won't find out the reason behind the rating, where or what the problem is, and what you need to improve.
CSAT: customer satisfaction score
What it measures: Satisfaction with a product or service.
Why it's useful: The customer rates their experience after a specific action has taken place — for example, after receiving a purchased item.
What to watch out for: The metric is again highly sensitive to the customer's personal situation. The resulting rating may not reflect a mistake on your part. Satisfaction is a relative and subjective feeling — two customers may feel differently satisfied with the same delivered outcome.
CES: customer effort score
What it measures: The ease or difficulty of a customer completing an action.
Why it's useful: The customer rates how much effort it took them to complete a specific step or action in the customer journey — for example, returning a product or finding information on a website. CES is a stronger predictor of customer behavior than CSAT or NPS and can reveal certain process deficiencies.
What to watch out for: It is purely a transactional metric. Perception of ease is relative and influenced by emotions. A customer may find an interaction easy but still be dissatisfied. Or conversely, they may project their dissatisfaction into a negative rating even when the interaction was simple for them.
Other CX Metrics
For regularly evaluating the state of CX in your company, it pays to combine outputs and data from multiple sources. You'll then be much better positioned to focus your efforts, capacity, and resources on the right channels, touchpoints, and areas of the customer journey that you need to improve for your customers.
Where to Go for CX Inspiration
A great customer experience isn't a one-off project — it's a long-term approach that will help your company grow through satisfied and loyal customers. If you want to build a strong brand and take your CX a step further, check out our selection of 36+5 proven resources on customer experience from the Czech Republic and beyond. You'll find tips on books, articles, studies, newsletters, podcasts, and CX experts from around the world who can inspire you on your journey toward better CX.
