CMSWire's customer experience (CXM) channel gathers the latest news, advice and analysis about the evolving landscape of customer-first marketing, commerce and digital experience design.
The speed of change is breakneck in modern business. Your customers’ preferences and needs change. Your differentiations, opportunities and safety net in the competitive landscape changes. Trying to stay in front of the next big thing is overwhelming and exhausting, and to be frank, makes people act stupid.
Chasing change, you may question, “do I need a spot in the metaverse? Should I create an NFT? Do I need to be on TikTok? I really need to be on TikTok.”
For many businesses, it’s a resounding “No." You don’t really need to be on TikTok. Unless of course, your customers are engaging on TikTok, gaining product inspiration from TikTok or having their needs met by TikTok.
You may not need a business in the metaverse, but how can you know where you really need to invest? It’s simple, really. By implementing a strategic user experience (UX) practice, you’ll gain insights to continuously improve customer outcomes (across channels and interactions) and reveal opportunities for greater impact and profitability for your business.
You’ll incrementally evolve to give customers greater value and a smoother experience, while gifting yourself the data-informed confidence to make sound decisions and take tempered risks.
User experience (UX) strategy is the intentional practice of analyzing user behavior and outcomes and putting together a plan of action to improve those outcomes, through improved design, messaging, testing or other factors. The best UX strategies tie directly to business goals, like increasing conversions or reducing customer churn.
Ultimately, UX strategy is a cycle of using data and user research to understand what customers need and where they’re challenged and making incremental improvements to guide their behavior and elevate their overall experience.
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Elevating your customers’ UX cements brand loyalty and customer retention.
Just think of your own experiences. When you easily find the perfect gift on a website, check out smoothly, receive the expected item without hiccups — or get great, responsive customer service for any hiccups — you’re much more likely to shop from that site again. The same goes for a movie you loved — you’ll watch the sequel; or that perfect margarita — you’ll enjoy a second round.
It's not just feel-good. Investing in great UX to drive loyalty has a direct impact on your bottom line; 32% of customers said they’d stop doing business with a brand they loved after just one bad experience, and 73% said experience influences their purchasing decisions.
User experience research and design uncovers:
Ultimately, UX reveals opportunities to better connect, persuade and guide customers to take desired actions.
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Modern business is highly temperamental and interconnected, and much of it you cannot control.
You cannot control shipping container, materials or trucker shortages, international tariffs and other supply chain issues. You cannot control the Great Resignation or a competitive labor market. You cannot control inflation and consumers’ resulting wallet tightening.
But, for all intents and purposes, you control your customers’ experience with your brand. As owned channels, your website and holistic digital marketing strategy can proactively react to the “uncontrollable” to reduce common customer frictions.
For example, supply chain issues strangled your inventory availability? Here's what you can do:
Or, customer service or sales rep hiring is down? Here's what you can do:
User experience strategies focus your attention on improving these micro-moments, reducing frustrations and guiding customers on the path of a positive journey. It enables you to get ahead of the uncontrollable, through a very intentional, data-informed, and customer-focused lens.
Too many businesses either skip UX design and strategy as a nice-to-have, or they invest in a single UX project, and call it a day.
Neither of these approaches enable businesses to leverage the complete power and profitability of improving UX.
Reviewing and optimizing UX is not a one-time thing or an oversight. It’s a continuous process of understanding (through user research, data and other analysis) your customers’ needs and actions; executing strategies to better serve their needs; measuring effectiveness; and building better performance through incremental adjustments.
Take it a step further by applying the lessons learned to other channels — your sales reps, customer service, or in-store staff all benefit from better understanding customers and meeting their expectations.
It’s an exploration, not a destination, and many businesses find false assumptions throughout the process. Customers rarely want flash. They want ease of use. Speed. Trust. Self-service. Reliability. These intangibles are revealed through the testing and continuous optimization lifecycle.
Ultimately, many businesses find out their strategic goals don’t match customers’ needs, and they may not understand their end users as well as they thought — truly valuable insights for any business.
Replace guesswork and reactive tactics with a data-centered, proactive UX practice. Learn what customers’ want, what they reject and what they respond to best. Test and experiment to learn along the way.
Maximize your owned channels to preemptively smooth customers’ frustrations, particularly when the seas are high and the waves are rough. Control what you can, by focusing on giving your customers the best possible experience — and recognize that the “best experience” is always evolving and your business must too.
As chief executive officer of digital agency Whereoware, Michael Mathias leads Whereoware’s strategic vision and culture of innovation, comprehensive digital marketing, and flawless performance. Mathias comes to Whereoware with an impressive track record accelerating growth for companies at all stages, with expertise spanning marketing, software, professional services, big data, analytics, and technology.