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Imagine the experience you had when you used any app or software for the very first time. You might have struggled to know the functionalities, features, tools, and navigation. But once you got familiar, it becomes easy for you to use it to its full potential. Your overall experience with that software or app is stored as data in your neurons with certain patterns for using it. These data and patterns are used by businesses to understand and observe the customer experience journey. This is how data works and how important it is.
For businesses whether online or offline customer data is the key to success as it helps you improve customer experience (CX). Customer experience data could help you understand and improve the way customers interact with your business. Every customer has a unique taste, choice, budget, brand commitment, and demographic background. Customer journey data helps companies to give suitable recommendations and user experience that matches their interests.
Customer experience data can help businesses improve their services and product offerings using deeper insights into the customer’s journey. This is how unique and personalized user experiences are crafted and delivered.
What is Customer Experience and Why is it Important?
Customer experience is the collective interactions users have with businesses while using a product or having a service offering. The journey of customers can influence their perception of the company or business. So, the customer experience journey is about how customers feel about the business and it covers overall aspects of the relationship between the company and customers that includes from initial brand awareness to after-sale support.
As per a recent study, more than half of the customers are frustrated when they receive product recommendations that don’t match their interests, or needs or have expired offers. This happens because companies don’t track the customer journey data properly which in turn reduces the conversion rate.
With improved customer experience you can benefit your business with increased customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, sales, mouth publicity, and referrals.
Customer experience data could help you improve the customer journey which could help you in increasing sales, customer retention, and customer satisfaction.
So, let’s see what steps and measures you can take as a business to improve the customer journey and experience with the help of data.
Understand Your Customers
Various interaction points like the web, including page view, sign-up, cart adds, call centres, and stores that could be point-of-sale purchases and returns, can help businesses collect information about their customer’s behavior and interests. It is also possible to gather information about customers’ journeys from past engagements like emails, SMS, and push notifications.
With this detailed information, businesses could be able to give a personalized shopping experience to the target audience and communicate well with them using customer journey data. Using this data, a business can recommend the right product at the right time to the customers which could persuade customers to make the purchase and create a loyal customer base.
Without understanding your users properly, it is almost difficult to deliver a superior customer experience and keep your users engaged. And it becomes difficult to increase conversion rates for any business.
Collect an Inventory of Existing Customers
With a deeper understanding of your existing customers, improving the customer experience and understanding how they engage with you is possible. During this process try to collect as much as possible data about your customers.
The factors that should be included in the data are,
Demographics: This factor will help you know the age of your customers, marital status, location, and socioeconomic background.
Interests and Preference: What does your target audience use to do in their free time? What fascinates and resonates with them when it comes to shopping? Is it a brand influence or price that could persuade them to purchase? What sites do they visit or what type of content do they consume?
Shopping Behavior: Up to what extent and what types of products your customer is viewing, buying, or adding to their wish list. Try to collect data about what factors influence their purchase decision and how much they research before purchasing any product or service.
Imagine closely observing the behavior of your users as they interact with your offerings. Pay attention to their actions when presented with enticing discounts—do they click on the email, link, or push notification?
By diligently studying these patterns, you gain valuable insights into user preferences and behaviors. Such data empowers you to make informed decisions and optimize your marketing strategies accordingly.
Existing Interaction: By tracking customer journey data businesses can understand how customers engage with them. And it could also help you know if there is any time pattern or behavioral pattern.
For instance, track what a customer is searching for, which site he is visiting, or which product or brand is there in his or her wishlist. If you offer an extra discount on the product saved in their wishlist there is a chance that the customer would complete the checkout process.
Analyse Your Connection with Customers
The customer experience data could help you measure the current sentiment and perceptions of your customer about your product, service, or company.
Start analyzing reviews, feedback, FAQs, and social media mentions to know your customer experience. These collective data will help you know the expectations and experiences of your customers with your business. It could also help you shape the business strategies and required modifications you need to make in your existing business model, product, or services.
You can also undertake market research, online surveys, live social media sessions, and online polls to gather customer experience data.
Track and Map Customer Profiles
Defining your buyer’s personas and their journey with your product or service with the help of customer experience data could help in improving the CX.
Start segmenting your customers into small similar groups based on their characteristics which include shopping behavior, demographics, and interests. It will help you accumulate granular data which you can use to analyze how they engage with your business. By drilling down with this available data about the customer’s journey you can segment it into individual levels or groups.
Once you organize your data, the next step you can take is to map the customer’s journey, right from initial brand awareness to purchase. While user visits your business app page or eCommerce site track and define each touch point, step users take, the time they spent, the way users navigate, and the decision they make. With a visual road map of each segment, you can understand where you are successful in influencing your user’s behavior and where you need to make improvements.
It will help you understand what elements drive your customer’s sentiment and customer journey very precisely.
Effective Communication
Sending appropriate messages with the right content at the right time will help you make your CX more effective and persuasive.
Remember no two customers are at the same point in their journey, they are at different points and they should be treated differently as well. You should send a message based on the pattern of the journey and the data you gathered. For instance, sending a message or mail about offers in an electronic gadget to a customer who searched for food won’t appeal to the users.
If you send a push notification, SMS, or email regarding the product or brand your customer has visited it will be a personalized communication that will give a unique shopping experience to the customer.
Also, track at what time they are visiting your site or app page, it will help you understand at what time they are occupied and at what time you have the chance of converting visitors into buyers.
Final Words
Customer journey data is your master key to unlocking and enhancing customer experience. From branding to developing a base of loyal customers, customer experience is at the center of any business no matter what. For online businesses and eCommerce tracking customer journey data is essential as it can surely help you in making a business strategy and analyzing your business model, customer behavior, and weak interaction points. In case, if you are struggling with a low conversion rate, app or cart abandonment, contact us for consultation and receive practical result-oriented solutions to improve customer experience. Our team of experts can help you develop a SaaS, Mobile App, or Web App or engineer your existing product to collect and track customer data efficiently.
