Let's cut to the chase: customer experience is THE differentiator for today’s businesses.

In an overflowing market, it's no longer about being one of the choices; it's about being the choice. It all boils down to how simple, satisfying, personal, and (practically) mind-reading every interaction is with your customers.

Taking notice, businesses are on a mission to amp up their customer experience to win customers’ hearts, minds, and loyalty at every touchpoint (online and offline). In fact, 64% of CX leaders expect to have larger budgets in 2024 for CX initiatives.

Investing in CX is no longer optional to meet customers’ high standards – 74% of folks expect to do anything online as smoothly as they can in-person or by phone.

The best customer experience companies and leading businesses first invest in fundamentals and removing every friction. At the same time, they keep an eye on future innovation and opportunity by using data, AI, experimentation, customer feedback, and emerging technology to continuously stay ahead of their customers’ needs.

“When it comes to customer experience transformation, we’re not talking about one project or moment in time – we should always be transforming,” Whereoware’s Chief Technology Officer Eric Mackenzie explains. “Whether it’s people, process, or technology, there’s always some level of transformation happening in a business.

So, we encourage clients to continuously audit their CX, looking at strengths, weaknesses, and gaps to then prioritize the most meaningful areas where CX improvements will create the largest impact. It’s never-ending – there’s always an opportunity to get better.”

Let’s dig into all these factors and more in our Ultimate Guide to Customer Experience.
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In our Ultimate Guide to CX, you'll learn:

1. What is considered customer experience, and why is customer experience important?
2. What makes a great customer experience?
3. What is the value of customer experience?
4. What are the 5 steps of customer experience?
5. How do you improve site CX? What are the 5 components of customer experience?
6. What are the benefits of a good customer experience?
7. What makes a good customer experience? Examples
8. What is customer service?
9. What is an example of a positive customer service experience?

What is Considered Customer Experience, and Why is Customer Experience Important?

Customer experience definition, according to McKinsey & Company: CX refers to everything an organization does to deliver superior experiences, value, and growth for customers.

In a nutshell, customer experience is everything. It’s the sum of every impression you leave customers, across every touchpoint with your business, brand, product, and service.

Why? To your customers, every single interaction is a single customer experience.

Think about your daily life – you return to businesses that remember your favorite coffee order, help you look good in front of your boss, or make it easiest to find that last minute gift. Those personal, fast, and rewarding experiences make that business more memorable and top of mind.

Ultimately, your customers don’t differentiate between channels – whether they’re chatting with customer service, visiting your website, or browsing in-store, each of these experiences is a single deciding factor for whether you gain repeat business.

So, why is customer experience important in business?

The market is crowded – your customers have every alternative at their fingertips. Capturing customers’ increasingly fragmented attention and earning their loyalty is crucial to driving repeat visits, loyalty, and revenue.

It’s key to getting referrals, attracting new prospects, and gaining a leadership stake in the market. Everything comes back to customer experience.

What Makes a Great Customer Experience?

In our expert opinion, the best customer experiences are easy – so easy in fact, they seamlessly fade into the background or set a new bar for customers’ future expectations.

Amazon is one of the biggest examples of brands building their empires on seamless and personal customer experiences. Here are just a few examples from Amazon:

• Autofill shipping and payment information, so you can purchase in a click.
• Displays product recommendations, based on your recent purchases or browsing activity.
• Offers “buy again” and “pick up where you left off” widgets on your personalized homepage.
• Offers free returns at local retail chains, like Kohls or Whole Foods.

Amazon thinks through all of the small inconveniences getting in the way of a customer finding, buying, and even returning the right product—then aggressively pursues ways to make these steps easier.  

As Amazon demonstrates, a great customer experience is less about flash and more about focusing on your customers’ needs and pain points, and removing every possible friction obstructing them from completing their goals.

Whereoware's CTO Eric Mackenzie explains that technology is just one part of the customer experience, but it really comes down to nailing down and advancing your goals.

“This might sound odd coming from a CTO, but when it comes to CX, don’t put technology in front of your customers’ goals. It works two ways: don’t be too dependent on your existing technology and let that hold your customer experience back.” Mackenzie explains.

“At the same time, don’t let the excitement around new technology drive your business decisions. You need to focus on your own goals, understand what your key business drivers are, and what success looks like for your business. THEN, you start to layer in the pieces and platforms to push those goals forward. But, everything needs to come from a customer-centered strategy first.”

Let’s review how this approach pays off for greater customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue.

What is the Value of Customer Experience?

Customer experience is proven to drive revenue by increasing conversions (demo or contact requests, product purchases, and other opt-ins), offering an opportunity for substantial revenue growth.

By improving key points in the customer journey and delivering on what matters most to customers, businesses create a loop of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and repeat business.

In fact, a 2022 BCG survey found that businesses that lead on customer experience saw 190% higher three-year revenue growth and 70% higher net promoter scores.

McKinsey data mimicked this, finding that companies that are leaders of CX achieved more than double the revenue growth of “CX laggards” between 2016 and 2021 – and rebounded more quickly from the pandemic.

Ultimately, the better your customer experience, the more doors you open to drive revenue.

When customers willingly return to do repeat business, your marketing and sales teams aren’t continuously clawing to find new customers – a costly endeavor.

Instead, your teams are free to focus on improving your business and upleveling your customer experience as a key differentiator from others in your space.  

So, how do you pull this off? We’re breaking it down in five CX steps.

What are the 5 Steps of Customer Experience?

How do you deliver the best possible customer experience?  

Far from comprehensive, top CX companies improve CX with five steps:

Step 1 – Get Your Data Right

You need a reliable data practice to understand your customers needs and pain points to figure out the best ways to first meet their expectations and then continuously uplevel that experience over time.  

Luckily, marketers have tons of performance, intent, activity, and other types of data at their fingertips. Customers are also willing to provide data, when it’s used to better their experience. For example, 80% of consumers will share their data in exchange for deals and offers.

Clean and standardize your data and feed it into a customer data platform (CDP), so you can easily take action on it and gain a more complete picture of CX pitfalls and opportunities.

Step 2 – Know Your Customers

To deliver a great experience, you need to understand your customers’ needs, goals, motivations, pain points, and preferences.

Use your data and take the time to understand the types of customers you’re serving, what makes them unique, and what they’re trying to achieve.

Solicit feedback frequently! Data is great to infer from, but hearing directly from a customer is pure gold.

Step 3 – Get Fundamentals Right and Remove Frictions

If your website is subpar, it’s pretty hard to give customers a great experience.

At the same time, even the best websites have big and small points of friction. Getting the customer experience right requires obsessing over both.

Get the fundamentals right and you’re halfway there: improve your website speed, uplevel your security, safeguard user data, and make sure all conversion points work.

Next, look at key webpages and remove frictions. Look for opportunities to make the experience a little quicker and more delightful.

It’s perfectly fine to take a walk-run approach to continuous CX optimization.

Step 4 – Responsive Customer Support

Respond and resolve immediately; this sounds like a no-brainer, but it is front-and-center of customer experience complaints.

We’re all about reducing friction here – getting a customer complaint or inquiry and not immediately responding and resolving that problem is friction kingdom.

Offer multiple channels for customer support, like phone, chat, in-store support, social media, and email. If a customer has a problem, make sure there are plentiful channels and ways to resolve it ASAP.

Step 5 – Get More Personal

Today’s customers expect personal and relevant customer experiences. Smart personalization shows customers you get them and are trying to make their lives easier.

In fact, 56% of consumers say they will become repeat buyers after a personalized experience.

But, it’s easier said than done. The same study found, 50% of companies feel like getting accurate data for personalization is a challenge.

Break out of this disconnect by focusing your personalization efforts in meaningful ways (like, remembering customers’ preferences or personalizing content discovery). Place your customers at the heart of your personalization strategy.

These five steps are a starting point to creating a deeper connection with your customers.

But, let’s go farther – what specific steps can you take to incrementally improve website CX?

How Do You Improve Site CX? What are the 5 Components of Customer Experience?

Getting the customer experience right on your website is nuanced and unique to every company’s pain points, customer needs, and business opportunities.

Don’t try to boil the ocean! Instead, start with these five components of customer experience:

A great customer experience on your website makes it:

1. Easy to find products and information

Customers arrive on your website with a need or goal in mind.

They may be browsing your products, researching services, looking for gift ideas, checking your return policy, or trying to figure out how to get in touch with your sales team.

Help your customers complete these tasks with ease by ensuring your website has:

• Concise, descriptive, and intuitive website navigation, so customers find what they’re looking for without getting frustrated.
• Prominent and descriptive calls-to-action to help customers explore your website.
• Website breadcrumbs to help customers easily navigate back and forth between different pages.
• Organized products or services (logical categories) to help customers find the items they’re seeking.
• Interactive filters to help customers narrow down a large volume of SKUs and browse products how they prefer to shop (e.g., by top sellers, price range, brand, color, material, or delivery date).
• Personalized recommendations to help customers discover new products or content on your site, based on their recent browse or purchase activity; products frequently purchased together; or popular content and SKUs.
• Robust search, so customers can bypass site exploration altogether and find what they need fast.

2. Easy to enjoy

This is a biggie. Your website design, messaging, and media work together to give customers a positive impression of your brand and business.

Definitely get the technical, security, and other mechanics right. But, don’t overlook making your website an enjoyable place to browse products or research information.

Make sure your website features:

• High-quality imagery and video to engage customers and show off your unique offering. In fact, 85% of shoppers said product information and pictures are important to them when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from.
• Clear copy, concise messaging, and helpful content to help customers understand your value and unique differentiators, while improving site exploration and product/content discovery.
• Immersive media, like user-generated content, product variants, interactive zoom, augmented reality tools, or product comparisons, to help customers research products or services.
• Self-serve portals, particularly in B2B, to give customers tools to reorder products, view status updates, pay invoices, connect with your customer service reps, and more.

3. Easy to convert (buy, download, signup)

How do you feel when you’re trying to download a report ASAP for your afternoon meeting and the “download” button returns…. nothing, but a circling loading icon. Anger! Frustration!

Want to enrage customers? Get in their way of taking a desired action, like buying, downloading, or signing up for a sales demo.

To optimize website conversion points:

• Test all webforms, calls-to-action (CTAs), checkout carts, and more, to make sure customers can easily complete desired actions.  
• Improve webforms by reducing the number of required fields and adding helper copy and error messaging to complete forms without error.  
• Simplify your cart to consolidate steps, highlight loyalty opportunities or discounts, display payment choices, offer customer service options, and add messaging or visuals to guide customers throughout the process.
• Optimize for mobile to make sure customers can interact with your website and convert from any mobile device.
• Check accessibility across your website to make sure it is ADA compliant (enabling all people to successfully use your website, including those with physical, mental, temporary, or lifestyle limitations).

4. Easy to get in touch

Make it easy for customers to get in touch with you.

If a customer has a concern or question, your website is one of the first places they’ll go to get a resolution. Quickly resolving their problem deepens customer loyalty.

Help customers get the help they need:

• Communicate clear contact information to directly connect with your customer service, customer success, or sales teams.
• Reply to contact us webform submissions, as soon as feasibly possible (no longer than one or two days, ideally same day).
• Offer alternatives to customer support, like AI-driven chatbots to answer common questions, score contact submissions, and route to the most appropriate team member.
• Prominently display detailed Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), shipping/returns policies, and informative content to help self-serve customers answer questions on their own, before they reach out to your customer teams.  

5. Easy to trust you

Customers have a healthy fear of their personal information being compromised in a cybersecurity breach. For good reason – SonicWall reported in 2022 a 264% surge in ransomware attacks on ecommerce and online retail businesses.

Your website needs to be secure, trustworthy, and rigorous in protecting customers’ data.

Partner with experts to ensure your website is:

• Secure and running the latest software, with continuous updates and monitoring.
• Compliant with data privacy laws, like CANSPAM, GDPR, and other data protection regulations.

Additionally, build trust with customers by giving them a peek under the hood. For example:

• Proudly show off employees and other cultural happenings to let customers get to know your team members.
• Feature client testimonials, reviews, and awards to tout your quality and client satisfaction.
• Display security seals, payment service provider logos, star ratings, and other visual indicators to demonstrate that you partner with reputable parties to keep customer data secure.

Remember, improving your customer experience is an ongoing process. Let’s look at why it’s so worth your investment.

What are the Benefits of a Good Customer Experience?

Where do we start quantifying the benefits of customer experience? A good customer experience helps you attract and motivate lifelong, loyal customers.

It’s far more cost effective to gain revenue from existing customers than to continuously acquire new ones. Repeat visitors help you truly hone in on your audience and proactively create more valuable interactions.  

Plus, you get better data to inform all aspects of your business and endless opportunities to incrementally improve customer satisfaction and business performance.  

Top CX benefits help you see growth and improvement across:

• Sales revenue
• Subscriber rates
• Customer loyalty and retention
• Website traffic
• Referrals and positive testimonials
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Data-driven decision-making
• Cost savings
• Long-term business sustainability
• Budgeting and resource allocation

And so much more. Each of these KPIs has an enormous impact on your bottom line and profitability. Let’s see an example in action.

What Makes a Good Customer Experience? Examples

The best digital customer experience examples start by intimately understanding your customers by using data and human-centered design to get into their head and solve their challenges.

Let’s look at award-winning customer experience examples from a Whereoware client.

Creative Co-Op, a global leader in wholesale home accessories and lifestyle products, owned four distinct brands -- Creative Co-Op, Illume, Bloomingville, and Finch + Fennel.

They knew each brand had considerable audience overlap, so Creative Co-Op set out to make it easier for their retail customers to shop these four brands and fulfill inventory for their stores.

Creative Co-Op partnered with Whereoware to build a highly sophisticated multi-site experience, nesting all four brands within a single digital customer experience. Retailers can shop all four websites from one spot and checkout from a single one-stop shopping cart.

Data is shared across sites to enable Creative Co-Op to show AI-driven, personalized product recommendations and brand-specific incentives. Plus, feature-rich retailer portals help retailers pay invoices, reorder inventory, and take care of other business tasks.

Creative Co-Op understood what their busy retailers needed – business tools and seamless product discovery to fulfill inventory in a snap. The investment in CX paid off in droves.

Creative Co-Op’s multi-site saw a 33,000% increase in referral traffic in the first month alone and received a WebAward, dotcom Award, and Marcom Award.  

Next, let's look at a critical point of the customer experience vs customer service.

What is Customer Service?

At its simplest, great customer service is just one part of an overall great customer experience.

Customer service is a key component of customer experience, but is traditionally thought of in terms of reactive customer support (e.g., responding to customer calls, answering customer questions, handling issues or returns.)

Yet, so many of our customer experience best practices fall squarely under the same roof as proactive customer service:

• Handling customer returns via personalized experience workflows
• Answering common questions via chatbots
• Offering proactive information (like FAQs) and self-serve portals, so customers can answer questions and take action without human intervention

Customers increasingly prefer to handle customer service inquiries via digital channels, as long as that experience is positive, immediate, clear, and secure.

In fact, 72% of customers have used self-service portals, and 55% have used self-service chatbots. But, that same report noted that 68% of customers said they would not use a company’s chatbot again, if they had a bad experience.

More and more, delivering on either requires a strategic mix of technology, data, automation, and of course, a human heart and brain to get it right.  

What is an Example of a Positive Customer Service Experience?

The best customer service experiences urgently resolve issues and help customers get help, all while making them feel heard and valued.  

Let’s take a look at an example of how improving customer service is good for customers AND good for business.

We partnered with Volvo, a leader in the luxury automotive industry, to build a better portal and user interface (UI) to make their internal dealership customer service teams more efficient and improve customers’ overall experience.

The custom interface:

• Helps dealership employees with workflow automation, risk mitigation, improved reporting, and more.
• Helps customers gain a way easier time scheduling appointments, addressing issues, and simplifying the process for booking test drives, maintenance, and purchases.

It’s a win-win – great customer experience examples prove that investing in your service teams is an investment in your overall CX, which pays off in repeat business, employee retention, and customer loyalty.

We Can Help - Why CX Agency Whereoware?

Whereoware has helped clients improve their customer experience and customer service capabilities for more than two decades.

As a digital experience agency, we bring together experts with vastly different skill sets, industry experience, and POV.

We approach a problem from every angle – with in-house design, data, development, strategy, marketing, and media teams – to truly create meaningful change or unexpected opportunity for a company.

“Our clients have a ton of internal industry knowledge, but we're able to pull information, experience, and real-world scenarios from other industries, other scenarios, other sized companies to offer objective advice and solutions to keep pushing clients out of their comfort zone,” Makenzie shares. “We help clients advance their goals holistically – across the people, process, and technology sections of their business.”

Here’s just a handful of the things that make Whereoware special:

• Holistic Approach: our digital experience strategy goes beyond technology implementation, encompassing process, people, and digital culture to drive comprehensive transformation.
• Expansive Experience: our diverse teams are experienced across different industries, technology platforms, skill sets, and solutions. Together, we’ve seen it all and can apply the best from our past performance to solve the most challenging issues.
• Customized Digital Strategy: each strategy is tailored to your business and unique needs.
• Technology Agnostic: our team members have technical certifications and experience across all kinds of platforms and tools. We have close technology partners and a broad array of technical knowledge.
• Continuous Improvement: We don't just assess; we use data and human-centered design strategies to guide you through the implementation of recommendations, ensuring ongoing optimization and agility.

The takeaway

Your customer experience distinguishes your business from others in the space.

Today’s businesses are making strategic investments in improving their customers’ experience to differentiate themselves from competitors, increase customer satisfaction, drive repeat business and revenue, and ultimately, achieve customer acquisition and retention goals.

Improving CX is never a done deal. If you need help, our team at Whereoware can audit your existing CX, solve common issues, and deliver a roadmap of continuous optimization to incrementally achieve your goals.