Planning Your Customer Experience Strategies in 2021 – Part 2

From the “Hands” collection via Blush

In part 1 of our look at customer experience (CX) strategy planning for 2021, we looked at the need to communicate with your people, refreshing your insights and the importance of ethics on the purchase funnel.

Now that 2021 is in full swing we take a look at loyalty loops, the need for a “service” voice and looking at every touchpoint in the customer journey. All things that should help you plan your customer experience strategies for the next year.

Let’s dig in!

Customer Experience Strategies in 2021 - man sitting next to ronald macdonald
Photo by Niver Vega on Unsplash

Loyalty Loops 

Intense experiences, like going through a global pandemic, can either bring people together or alienate us from each other. Your customers are no different.

If you take the time to go that extra mile during a troubling time like this your customers won’t forget it. So going the extra mile should form part of your overall CX strategy in 2021.

But how do you do that? How do you invest in moments that delight, and surprise, your customers?

Focusing on innovation is a good start.

Consistent optimization from insights is essential. But when planning your customer experience strategies for the next year, it’s important to not only look at touchpoints in the customer journey that already exist. Examine your user data and start exploring possible new touchpoints that will differentiate your brand from the competition.

Designing your customer experience and optimizing it for the year ahead is great, but thinking about where things might be in five years can lead to even greater innovation. As well as managing risk in the future and ensuring competitiveness.

Customer Experience Strategies in 2021 - customer service in a store with a counter
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

The Service Voice

Developing a brand voice is a process that most companies go through. It can take time and creating a truly authentic brand voice can help you to communicate effectively and even attract new customers.

But there are not many companies around that have a well-defined service voice.

One customer support person giving a customer a great experience, going the extra mile, is an asset. But if all your employees operate in the same way, with the same tone, you will create a loyal customer base that will keep coming back and be loyal to your brand in trying times. You could feasibly have thousands of very happy customers, with “word of mouth” referrals going through the roof.

When thinking about your CX strategy, consider how you can inject a service voice into every touchpoint on the customer journey. This means that when you meet your customers, wherever they are, they get a consistent but unique experience that fulfills their needs. 

As mentioned in part 1, talking to your customer facing staff is essential in developing your customer experience strategies. So make sure you align with your staff when you are thinking about how to develop a service voice.

Customer Experience Strategies in 2021 - customers walking around a showroom.
Photo by Charisse Kenion on Unsplash

Voice of the customer (VOC)

Imagine you are buying a pair of shoes in a store. Usually a member of staff will walk up to you and ask if you need help. You will then have an interaction with this member of staff that should (hopefully) be pleasant.

What if the owner or manager of the shoe store could collect and analyze all these conversations that customers are having with their staff? What if they could also collect phone enquiries, emails and social media posts from customers? And then assemble all this data into one view of the customer experience?

Omnichannel voice of the customer solutions (VOC) help to provide those very insights.

Proper VOC solutions do not just involve surveys and collecting feedback from customers for the sake of it. Customer signals are listened to, and captured, everywhere. A unified view means these insights are analyzed quickly and shared widely through the business and actions are prioritized and linked to outcomes. 

Capturing all the customer insight you can helps you to plan your CX strategy framework. This framework will then be able to focus on rapid, tactical response, real improvements and help you to prioritize what’s most important to your business.

If you’re interested in learning more about VOC trends, Forrester’s 2019 report is a good read.

Contact us via hello@maqe.com.

How MAQE can help

MAQE’s data team are experienced in gathering customer insights from across every touchpoint of a customer journey. They can work with you to help you to implement, optimize and innovate your CX strategy. Get in touch via [email protected] to find out more.