A guide to improving customer experience

Understanding customer experience

Think “experience”. What do you imagine - something immersive? something interactive? something life-changing even? A customer’s experience refers to the customer’s complete interaction with a company throughout their relationship. Now, how or what this experience can be is open-ended i.e. you get to define how that experience will be for your customers. Every single touchpoint, every single interaction, every ticket raised, every ticket closed, every new feature update, every new onboarding - everything collectively encapsulates what this experience can be. And fostering a good customer experience is like a domino effect; it’s never just ‘one’ thing but a series of good customer experiences that can lead to great customer relationships. So, how do you define those touchpoints, what do you do to ensure you can constantly improve how you engage with your customers not just as a product but as a brand? This is what customer experience is all about.

Some key components of great customer experience

Creating a great customer experience involves excelling in several key areas that collectively shape how customers perceive and interact with your brand.

Personalization

People value nothing more than being heard or seen. And when it comes to customer interactions, being as personal as you can reinstates the customer’s importance to you. This is one of the most important factors for better CX. Leverage customer data to understand individual preferences and behaviors. Tailor interactions and offers to meet specific needs and expectations.

Consistency across channels

Ensure seamless experiences across all touchpoints, whether on call, web app, phone apps, and communications channels like Slack Connect, Emails, Socials, and more. Customers should receive the same level of service and quality regardless of the channel they use. Maintain consistent branding, messaging, and tone of voice across all customer interactions to build trust and recognition.

Proactive Engagement

Predict customer needs and address potential issues before they arise. For example, sending reminders about upcoming renewals or offering support for complex products. Ensure prompt responses to customer inquiries and issues, reducing wait times and enhancing satisfaction.

Empathy and Emotional Connection

Incorporate empathy into customer interactions. Train employees to understand and respond to customer emotions effectively. Focus on long-term relationships rather than one-time transactions. Engage customers in meaningful ways to create loyalty and advocacy.

Ease of Use

Design products, services, and interfaces that are intuitive and easy to navigate. Simplify processes to reduce customer effort. Ensure that all customers, including those with disabilities, can easily access and use your services.

Quality and Reliability

Ensure that products and services consistently meet or exceed customer expectations. Reliability builds trust and satisfaction. Pay attention to every aspect of the customer experience, from the quality of the product to the packaging and delivery process.

Empowered Employees

Invest in training programs that equip employees with the skills and knowledge to deliver exceptional CX. Give employees the authority and autonomy to resolve customer issues and make decisions that enhance the customer experience.

Why CX Matters

Customer experience becomes the foundation for customers to trust a brand beyond just services and products offered. Connections are more than just what you have to offer, it’s about how you offer it. Companies that prioritize CX often find themselves at a competitive advantage, as they are able to foster stronger relationships with their customers. Positive customer experiences lead to increased customer loyalty. When customers feel valued and have positive interactions with a brand, they are more likely to continue paying for your service. This loyalty not only ensures a steady stream of revenue but also reduces the cost associated with acquiring new customers. Loyal customers often become brand advocates, sharing their positive experiences with friends and family, thereby driving organic growth through word-of-mouth referrals.

Moreover, a superior CX directly correlates with higher customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers are more likely to leave positive reviews and high ratings, which can significantly enhance a brand's reputation. In an age where online reviews and social media play a critical role in influencing consumer decisions, maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction can be a key differentiator. Companies that excel in CX often see their customers acting as unofficial ambassadors, promoting the brand through positive feedback and testimonials.

Measuring CX

The effectiveness of your efforts in improving customer experiences can be measured with certain KPIs that determine how customers are responding to your methods. Based on what you understand from this can be leveraged to either improve/change your ways or keep doing what you’re doing to keep customer satisfaction high.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring CX -

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer loyalty by asking how likely customers are to recommend the company to others.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Gauges customer satisfaction with a specific interaction or overall experience.
• Customer Effort Score (CES): Assesses how easy it was for customers to complete their desired actions, such as resolving an issue or making a purchase.

Tools and Methodologies to determine KPIs -

• Surveys: Collect direct feedback from customers about their experiences.
• Analytics Tools: Use data from websites, social media, and CRM systems to track and analyze customer behavior.
• Sentiment Analysis: Employ tools to analyze customer sentiment from reviews, social media posts, and other unstructured data.

The impact of AI on customer experience (CX)

60% of CX leaders expect AI to have a transformative impact on customer experiences with customer self-service, automated insights, and freeing teams for important tasks emerging as the three most impacted areas of an organization’s customer experience. AI in customer experience is expected to reach a market cap of $12 Billion in 2025. We’re becoming extremely accustomed to AI agents taking charge to handle up to 80% of customer concerns without compromising customer experiences. In fact, most customers prefer to talk to an AI agent and then route to a human agent if necessary, otherwise, resolve their issues instantly with self-service.

With automated support, you can train the AI agent on your company’s product knowledge that exists in the help center, internal documentation, Slack channels, etc., and deploy it on your websites/products, enabling it to answer these questions instantly, aiding faster product adoption and significantly boosting customer experience.

While it’s impossible for support agents to learn everything about the product - 100s of help articles and product videos, 1000s of support tickets, and countless solutions hidden across Slack channels and emails - AI agents can be trained on all of this in minutes, without needing agents to be trained on all this material, easing up onboarding while also enabling your agents to resolve concerns faster with AI agent assist.

Searching through hours of documentation and crafting responses for customer concerns isn’t just hectic but also counterproductive. With AI agents, you can customize the brand tone (empathetic, friendly, and professional), have multi-lingual capabilities, and be great at explaining details clearly and instantly. Your support agents can run a quick check against their draft replies to quickly refine them for consistency without losing their individual style.

Elevate your customer experience with Threado AI

Threado AI is a new-age AI solution that contextualizes structured and unstructured company information, making it accurate and reliable. Works perfectly as a self-serve tool for customers and provides deeply personalized responses, automating support by eliminating the need for agent involvement. What’s more, customer-facing teams can get instant answers where it’s convenient - on Slack, Microsoft Teams, or as a Chrome app - and save hours spent on searching through knowledge bases, CRMs, support conversations, data metrics, intranet, and more.

With Threado AI, you get the Holy Trinity of great customer experience -

• Automated Chat Support: Enable self-service with AI agents that understand customer queries and provide instant, accurate answers.
• 24/7 Immediate Team Assistance: Internal teams get reliable support anytime, anywhere across Slack, Microsoft Teams, or our Chrome app.
• Unified Data Platform: Seamlessly connect all company sources for a single source of truth, integrating with Zendesk, Intercom, HubSpot, Freshdesk, Salesforce, Google Drive, Confluence, Notion, and Slack.