Creating a customer experience strategy can help brands not only get an accurate picture of the current state of the customer experience; it can also give them insights into what can be changed or kept to improve it for the future.
There are many different ways to approach the creation of a customer experience management strategy that will fit your needs, but they are all rooted in customer feedback. By using your online reviews and comparing your current reputation against local competitors, you can create a realistic customer experience strategy that works for your team while being a main staple of brand success in the future.
Customer Experience Strategy Step 1: Look at Your Reviews
Getting an accurate picture of your current customer experience is vital to building an effective customer experience strategy, and your customer reviews are the puzzle pieces that can create that picture.
As you sift through hundreds or even thousands of feedback, it’s important to note specific things said about the customer experience whether it’s in a positive or negative light. One customer could praise the helpful staff while another complained about the lack of options available. Taking note of how many times these specific experiences are noted in reviews can reveal major pain points in the operation.
Even with a small team, this manual process of reading each review and noting specific trends in experiences can be time-consuming. Fortunately, customer experience analytics software now exists that can read a plethora of reviews and provide trends and insights in a matter of minutes. This frees up your team to conduct other research that benefits your customer experience strategy.
Customer Experience Strategy Step 2: Create Benchmarks for Success
With the current state of the customer experience fully mapped, it’s time to create new tactics that meet the realistic goals set by your customer experience findings.
While your customer experience analytics software shows your current customer experience standing, you should also strive to see where it could be by taking a look at your local rivals. If they’re attracting more customers or have a better overall star rating online, use competitor analysis to get context for their success and more importantly, a realistic goal to set for your brand.
If your local competitors are few or are not performing as well as your business, you can also look to the industry at large. By taking a look at an online reputation analysis report you can see if your brand is meeting benchmarks for the industry average or even nipping at the heels of top performers.
Customer Experience Strategy Step 3: Gather New Feedback
Between existing feedback and competitor analysis, you should have enough information to make data-based decisions to improve your customer experience. However, your customer experience strategy doesn’t stop there.
Asking for reviews is not just a way to boost your online reputation; it’s also a way to gauge your new strategy. Use the same customer experience analytics software to see if there are any changes in current customer experience trends, specifically ones that were changed in light of the new strategy.
For instance, if you recently retrained your staff, see if new reviews mention the way your team members interacted with customers. If a new item is added to the menu, look at fresh reviews to see if it caught the eye of consumers.
Getting a steady stream of feedback helps you get near real-time status on your customer experience strategy, which allows you to nip any early problems with the plan before they further damage your brand reputation. This ensures that you continue to iterate on your strategy and make a strategy that meets your brand’s specific needs.
Conclusion
It’s no coincidence that a powerful customer experience strategy begins and ends with online reviews. With reviews, you can take stock of the current state of your customer experience and keep tabs on any changes to it in the long run, which can set you up for long-term success.
By seeing reviews as more than online reputation markers, you and your team can create the customer experience strategy that helps your brand get noticed and easily overtake the competition.
