Creating a Cohesive Customer Experience

The growth of the online marketplace has certainly helped to spur entrepreneurialism. Not to mention that 2019’s Innovative Startup Act has been instrumental in supporting and encouraging a new generation of small business owners across the Philippines. However, for all the positivity that greater access to startup resources has been, this has also resulted in making the marketplace extremely competitive.  

This means that you must make sure that the service your business offers can stand out in both the local Filipino commercial landscape and on the global scene. It is becoming clear that among the most effective ways to achieve this is by focusing on creating a cohesive customer experience. This is a consumer-centric approach that makes certain that your demographic can have the most positive journey with your business from start to finish.

This isn’t always easy to achieve, but it is important. We’re going to review some of the elements you can focus on to hone your business in a way that you consistently put customer experience front and center.

Understand Your Customers

In most cases, your consumers’ engagement with your services will be informed, if not led, by what their priorities are, what their relationship to the products you offer are, and what they value in the businesses they interact with. Therefore, if you want a business approach that attracts loyal customers, you need to learn about them.   

Your first step here is to undertake thorough data analysis. This can seem daunting; however, it’s far from inaccessible. One recent study found that 58% of Philippines-based companies already have data analytics teams embedded as part of their business. Even if you can’t build a team at this stage, there are a growing number of big data consultancies in the country that you can use to obtain quality data sets and source relevant analyses about your current consumers and the market. This won’t provide you with all the answers, but it does give you key insights. Indeed, as so many businesses are already using data analysis, you may be falling behind your competitors by neglecting this aspect.   

You should then use this analysis to create a set of customer personas. These are fictional profiles about your average target customer (or customers). The benefit here is that you are essentially building a guidebook that makes it clear to everybody on your team what the priorities of your target consumers are so that they can apply this consistently across all your customer experiences, no matter what department they are working in.

Know Your Experiential Goals

Once you know your customer’s priorities, it’s time to factor in those of your company. After all, you are unlikely to create a unique, meaningful customer experience if you are slavishly committed to their needs and not helping them to experience what is special about the way you do business. Therefore, you must take time to solidify your goals.

Gather key members of leadership to discuss what the core values of your company are. Talk about what experiences you feel it’s important for customers to take away from their time with your business, what you’d like them to be able to communicate to other potential customers. If you have a mission statement, outline how this should be reflected in the activities of staff and systems. You should then formalize these into a document that can be accessed, understood, and applied by all members of staff throughout the organization — this includes building it into your onboarding procedures and training program.  

It’s then imperative that you set about testing them against your current company processes. Map out your customer’s current journey — from how they discover you, to the completion of a sale. This story mapping process allows you to understand where each of the key touchpoints is for your consumers, where they have to make decisions, and even where you might lose them along the way. It’s a good tool for clarifying where potential problems lie and what elements you need to prioritize for change or improvement. Importantly, assess how each step along the way reflects your values and whether they achieve your experiential goals. 

Align Your Tools

We operate in an increasingly technology-reliant commercial landscape. As such, you must make certain that you have the tools and protocols in place that produce a cohesive customer experience. This includes focusing on those tools that your customers are most likely to engage with you on. One recent study found that in 2019, 66% of Filipinos were using the internet on their mobile phones, and this is expected to grow. If you are operating locally, this may mean that you need to put additional focus into tools that are designed for a good customer experience primarily on smartphones.    

Your website is also likely to be a primary source of customer interactions. Therefore, you need to make sure that it is designed to be a positive hub through which your customer’s journey passes. This means making certain that the design of the site is optimized for their best experience. An important aspect of this is creating a design system. There will be times that your website needs to change, or that are used by some customers and not others. Having a design system means that you design the different components of your website to be consistent in appearance and positive functions. This means that you and your staff can always adjust to the needs of the company or individual client journey without disrupting their experience. 

Don’t discount your social media channels as a tool in your customer experience plan, either. You might think that it is largely a tool for marketing, but it can be helpful for customer service, too. Use your insights into the accounts your customers use most to interact with them throughout their journey. Make it as easy as possible for them to contact you or tag you in posts, and be responsive.

Conclusion

Creating a cohesive customer experience can significantly inform your success. Take time to understand who your customers are, and review how your values and goals should interact with their experiences. Don’t forget that technology is the medium through which your customers will interact with you, so optimizing these is essential to a consistently positive experience.