5 Keys to improve customer experience

25 de April de 2023

On April 20th we organized a webinar where we were able to share our experience in optimizing the customer experience through tactical and intelligent solutions. At the event, our experts in the retail sector, Elena llamas and Andrea Carrillo, addressed the keys to understanding customers and maximizing their experience in all interactions they have with the company.

Want to know more? Read on…

First of all… let’s put ourselves in context

Before starting with the keys to optimizing the customer experience, our experts wanted to provide some figures to measure how this knowledge of the customer optimizes the loyalty program:

Loyalty sales on average in loyalty programs is around 70%.

  • There is a 28% increase in the customer base month by month: this is always during the first year of the program; in the following years this percentage decreases.
  • The average loyalty ticket is 24% higher than the non-loyal ticket when we know our customer well.
  • Purchase frequency among loyal customers increases by 5%.
  • Customer churn is reduced by 7% among high-value customers.
  • 5% in customer migration from low-value to high-value segments.

In order to obtain all this information, Cognodata has a consolidated methodology that goes deep into all customer knowledge in different areas. The following are 5 steps to be taken into account to optimize the end-to-end customer experience.

1. Buyer persona

The Customer Journey is fundamental for any company seeking to better connect with its customers and offer them a satisfactory experience. To begin this process, it is essential to define the Buyer persona.

Our expert Andrea wanted to make a differentiation in the definition of the profiles, dividing them into 2 types of Buyer persona:

  1. The first one focuses on the digital profile of the follower in social networks: It aims to know and understand the followers to design a communication and content strategy that enhances engagement. This type of Buyer persona focuses on knowing the brand’s follower profiles on social networks, both quantitatively and qualitatively. With this information, a communication and impact strategy can be designed for this type of target to generate greater proximity and contact with consumers.
  2. The second focuses on the customer who has already purchased products from the brand: It aims to understand customers to generate an impact strategy towards them. It focuses on knowing the customers who have already purchased products from the brand, to understand them and generate an impact strategy towards them. To achieve this, we use the company’s internal data at the analysis level, such as purchase tickets and customer purchase behavior. In addition, external research is used through focus groups to learn about the customer’s shopping experience with the brand and the competition.

2. Customer journey

The second step to optimize the end-to-end experience is to understand what are the main insights that customers give us: what are their categories of interest, what do they look for, where do they shop and what are those moments of truth.

Once the customer is understood, a customer journey is generated based on these experiences and the input provided by the customer. Our expert, Andrea, mentions that there are a number of customer journeys, from macro to more detailed ones, but in essence, the objective is to generate that customer experience at specific points of all the contact they have with us.

Once the journey is built, actions are generated to improve the customer experience. Designing actions to reinforce the positive points, as well as to improve the pain points and opportunities for improvement that are detected at the time of designing the journey. Our expert believes it is important to consider all the touch points: to detect which are the moments of pain and the moments of truth, since they are critical and decisive for the customer to decide whether or not to continue a relationship with us.

Finally, when building these actions, it is essential to be as clear and tactical as possible in order to impact a continuous improvement of the customer journey. Connect the point of pain with the point of improvement so that, at the moment of implementing the action, it is known what should be measured in the journey in order to know if the customer noticed a difference in the initiatives that are being implemented.

3. Measuring the experience

Measuring the customer experience is a key aspect for companies looking to improve their marketing strategy and increase customer satisfaction. Once the Buyer persona and touch points have been identified, pain points can be measured to analyze how they evolve and how the customer experience is perceived after improvements have been made.

For example, the customer complains about a product search on the website, either because it does not return the products in question or because it returns categories that are not; this is called a pain point. After the improvement made on the website, the subsequent measurement can observe the evolution of the user in these pain points. Therefore, it is important to measure the customer experience to understand how the customer feels and how you can improve the experience in this regard. Without this feedback, it is possible that the purchase will not be repeated.

As our expert mentions in the webinar, cognodata carries out a complete execution and integral operation of all actions related to the measurement of customer experience. In addition, we address the analytics and reporting of the information, pursuing effectiveness and efficiency in each customer experience measurement shipment.

4. Marketing automation

Automating the customer journey is fundamental to improve the customer experience and achieve an increase in satisfaction and repeat purchases. Once the 3 points mentioned above are accomplished, the campaign management process is integrated and automated from a customer centric point of view.
For a better understanding, our expert Elena mentions 3 real use cases carried out from Cognodata.

Improving customer experience

In the first case, advanced analytics is used to analyze the propensity to purchase a product and make different shipments and triggers depending on the interactions that the customer has with the communications they receive. All this, with the aim of improving their experience and achieving an increase in satisfaction and repeat purchases.

Customer engagement with the use of the card

In the second case, it is the design of the complete promotional action, in which we advise and help the client in the design of the actions and in the operational management of the promotion. Thanks to this process, we achieve greater customer loyalty to the brand and a greater use of the card.

Customer loyalty through cross-selling

In the third case, the challenges are identified and defined, analyzing what they may be and establishing a multichannel communication plan to encourage the customer to meet them.
To carry out this customer journey automation process, it is necessary to integrate the measurement of results within the communication flow of the company. To this end, different channels are used depending on the actions taken by the customer on that previous communication and additional communications are sent if their codes are rewarded. All of this is aimed at increasing customer freedom and cross-selling.

The planning of all launches and the execution of all necessary tests are critical to ensure all these correct flows and execute the seamless integration of data within the reporting platforms. In addition, channels are combined according to the customer’s interests and the saturation of the different communications is managed so as not to saturate the customer.

5. Continuous improvement

At this point, our expert Andrea mentioned that it is crucial for companies to generate a culture of continuous improvement to adapt to changes in customer behavior. Marketing automation and customer journeys must be constantly updated to meet customer needs in real time.

In addition, continuous improvement involves designing experiments, selecting test actions and learning from mistakes and successes. This culture allows companies to better understand their customers and develop initiatives that positively impact their target audience. In short, continuous experimentation and positive customer impact are key to staying competitive in today’s marketplace.

To conclude the webinar, our expert Elena provides us with some additional figures of interest that can be visualized in the image below:

You want to know more?

Do not hesitate to contact us if you want us to show you a demo with one of our use cases in the retail sector. If you want the full video of the session you can access it through the following questionnaire, we hope you enjoy it!

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