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The 10 Pillars of Customer Experience Your Customers Care About Most

The 10 Pillars of Customer Experience Your Customers Care About Most

Got an appetite for all things CX? Check out our entire CX series.

Part 1:  The Two CXs You Have to Deal With — Customer Experience vs Customer Expectations

Part 2:  The Audience Experience is More Important than Customer Experience

Part 3:  Why Brands Believe Their CX is Better Than It Really Is

Part 4: Great Customer Experience Starts with Great Employee Experience

If Customer Experience is Everywhere, Where Do You Begin?

First, let’s acknowledge it really is everywhere. Every potential point of interaction with your brand and each potential customer is a CX opportunity, or shortcoming. That’s a lot to address and it absolutely spans multiple departments in every organization. 

As a starting point, we’ve identified these 10 Pillars of Customer Experience and in this short self-assessment below, you can quickly see where you’re strong and where you have opportunities for improvement.

Pro Tip: Share this with your colleagues and learn how they see things.

As we’ve covered previously in our “The Two CXs You Have to Deal With” article (a must read!), we limited our list to these 10 essential pillars of customer experience. These are not in a rank order that applies to all organizations, so as you delve into each, begin to think how each pillar compares to the others in your organization’s specific circumstance. 

10 factors of customer expectations

At the end of this article, we give you the specific next steps to determine the precise rank order that is right for your organization, regardless of what your colleagues might think. 

They are (and again, not in rank order):

  1. Advertising to consumers
  2. Content they consume
  3. Digital experiences in which they interact or observe
  4. Non-digital experience in which they interact or observe
  5. Communication from the company
  6. Company representatives with whom they communicate
  7. The products and services they purchase
  8. The customer service they receive
  9. Friction, or lack thereof, throughout the customer journey
  10. Brand reputation and expectations

Let’s see how you rate in each of these 10 pillars with a quick self-assessment.

Your 10 Pillars Quick Self-Assessment

For the following customer experience pillars, rank yourself from Poor (1) to Excellent (5).

1.  Advertising to Consumers

We’ll start with advertising for two main reasons; most companies advertise in some form or other (with rare exceptions) and for those who do, it is one of the most visible and monitored sets of metrics. Advertising expense is a direct cost and failing to have your CX buttoned up within the sphere of the advertising—the promise made vs. reality—is a waste of money plus a suboptimal CX. That’s a double hit. How well do your advertising messages and promises align with the customers’ journey and experiences?

[Score 1-5 points]

2.  Content they Consume

When a consumer engages with your content, there is already some level of expectation. Your content is positioned to offer something of value, right? Will this content inform or help make a purchase decision? Does it answer an essential question along the consideration journey? Will it entertain? Across your content library, how effectively does your content support a superior customer experience?

[Score 1-5 points]

3.  Digital experiences in which they interact or observe

We differentiate digital experiences from non-digital (#4 below) for the simple reason they are so vastly different. Although similar to content consumed (above), digital experiences extend beyond just consumption; it includes engagement and interaction. Do online forms, quizzes, calculators, games, chatbots, digital assistants perform as consumers expect they will? Do audio, video or virtual reality improve the consumer experience in a meaningful way? Are the right type of digital experiences being provided as well as meeting and surpassing your consumers expectations?

[Score 1-5 points]

4.  Non-digital experience in which they interact or observe

To the extent your organization relies on some level of human interaction, does it meet the needs of the customer? In person interactions (e.g., retail, events, phone conversations, packaging, samples and orders received, etc.) are amongst the best opportunities to deliver a great — or disappointing customer experience. Recent research from Experience Dynamic and the Center for Generational Kinetics confirms more than any other experience tested, Americans are the most satisfied with the customer experience they received when purchasing something in-person over the past year.

How are your in-person customer experiences measuring up?

[Score 1-5 points]

5.  Communication from the company

Consumers don’t have a lot of patience for their time being wasted so it is imperative that your company’s communications—brand building, operational, and transactional—are thoughtful and achieve a specific objective of importance to the recipient. Are your communications relevant? How do you know? Are they timely? Delivered at the right frequency? What are the communication intervals the consumer is expecting?

The stakes have been raised by thousands of other brands across all industries which means customers’ expectations are higher than ever. How well does your company deliver on outbound communications? How timely does your company reply to your customer’s inquiries and complaints? If you’re not consistently delivering same-day replies, you have work to do.

[Score 1-5 points]

“Great organizations strive to deliver great experiences.”

6.  Company representatives with whom they communicate

We feel for you if you have a call center. There are books on that topic but for our purposes, think broader than just the help desk. Consider how executive management conveys the company’s ideals and values. Are your salespeople truly serving their customers’ needs or too focused on their own agenda? What about people out in the field making service calls or interacting at trade shows and conferences? All of these are points of contact that should also be priorities in improving the customer experience.

[Score 1-5 points]

7.  The products and services they purchase

Apple perhaps sets the bar in customer delight with their product design, including their super-slick packaging. And while no product or service is immune from shortcomings or an occasional quality control issue, the bottom line is your product/service has to meet or exceed each customer’s expectation. What does your company do to go the extra mile, and add something unexpected to provide a differentiated customer experience that is better than expected?

[Score 1-5 points]

8.  The customer service they receive

You probably already record calls for training purposes, track customer resolution times, and overall satisfaction levels. Those are table stakes. Today’s top-tier customer service teams are empowered to quickly resolve issues ranging from reversing charges, replacing products lost in transit, exchanges, and refunds.

Data tells us what may begin as a poor customer experience can be reversed by great customer service afterward, resulting in an even higher level of brand loyalty. Customer service is not a cost center; it is a customer retention process that leverages the investments made in every part of the customer journey. How do you rank your customer’s customer service experiences?

[Score 1-5 points]

9.  Friction, or lack thereof, throughout the customer journey

Every potential touchpoint in every customer’s journey must be as friction-free as possible. How much friction still exists in your customers’ experiences? You must find those and reduce them, with the goal of zero friction at each point of interaction. How long should a customer wait on hold? The best answer is zero seconds. How many clicks on your website are needed to find, compare, purchase and check-out? Today’s e-commerce expectations are shaped by the best-online retailers regardless of what industry you are in. People now expect seamless online and offline experiences. You must regularly conduct your own friction assessment across each channel in which your customers engage with your company with the goal of identifying the areas in most need of improvement.

[Score 1-5 points]

10.  Brand reputation and expectations

Answer this: What does your brand stand for? Does it convey? Now survey your management teams and staff. What do they tell you? Now, ask your customers. Any disconnects there?

Often, there is a gap between the brand promise and the reality the customer experiences. In all points of communication, your team must set the expectations, realistically, and be able to meet or exceed those expectations. To do this, you must have a continual information feedback loop—not just an annual survey—but an ongoing streamlined process for monitoring brand reputation and how well your organization is meeting ever-changing customer expectations. Start with a comprehensive social listening program tied into customer service for active reaction and response.

[Score 1-5 points]

80% of organizations believed they delivered a “superior experience” to their customers; however, only 8% of customers felt the same way.
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Add Up Your Score for the Customer Experience Pillars

Total your score (Score up to 5 points for each pillar).

50 points total is possible only for those who believe they are truly delivering an excellent customer experience in all 10 of the CX pillars.

*drum roll*

Your Total: [Score Sum]

Pro Tip: No one scores 50. Just ask your customers.

Looking beyond these 10 pillars of customer experience, we’ve also provided insights into the top ten Top 10 Obstacles to CX Program Success to help you along the way.

What Next?

Do this:

  1. Rank your CX pillars. List each of these 10 essential pillars and rank them in order of how you think your customers value each, most important to lesser important. Ask your colleagues involved in CS and CX for their rankings too. We’ll bet you a taco you won’t all agree, and that’s ok. (We love winning tacos!)
  2. Survey your customers. Next, you must validate your assumptions. Rapid deploy a lean, focused survey to recent customers (you’ll need several hundred responses to be statically valid) and compare their customer experience priorities to yours.

Spoiler alert: If your survey was written, executed, and analyzed properly, the customers’ priorities trump yours.

  1. Prioritize our organization’s CX pillars. Take the top 2-4 most important from the customers’ response list and assess how well your organization performs in those specific areas. This may require cross-department cooperation depending on how your organization is structured, so you’ll need to formulate a plan to get the required stakeholders on board. You’ll need their participation to effect any meaningful change management.

Pro Tip: One final, extremely important insight we’ll share. Based on the latest research study and data collected from Convince and Convert, Experience Dynamic and The Center for Generational Kinetics (GSK), your audience’s priorities will likely vary greatly by age. In a nutshell, the CX expectations of Gen X consumers are NOT the same as for Boomer or other generational audiences. The savvy CX executive must know this, adapt plans and processes, and deploy resources accordingly. This is not a one-solution fixes all problems scenario.

If you have thoughts, questions, or ideas to share, drop us a note. And if you want to take me up on that taco bet, definitely drop me a note!

The post The 10 Pillars of Customer Experience Your Customers Care About Most appeared first on Convince & Convert.

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The Ultimate Guide to Paid Content Marketing

Congrats, your content marketing efforts have been implemented and you have a steady stream of content in the pipeline. Creating ideas isn’t easy, but through planning and implementation you feel okay about how you’re performing so far.

But what if I told you there’s a way to give your content marketing a little boost in views and engagement? How, you ask?

Enter: paid content marketing.

Paid content marketing is how you can artificially push your existing efforts in front of your customers’ eyes in the online spaces they frequent.

Here’s a quick brush up on content marketing and digital marketing strategy from our friends at Semrush.com:

Quick Takeaways:

  • Companies spend A LOT (even too much) on advertising at launch
  • Content marketing is a sustainable way to create new traffic to your website and draw new eyes to your new product, but you can boost your views with paid content marketing
  • Starting off strong can build your organic audience over time can be more efficient and better for your bottom dollar than exclusively using paid advertising to promote products and services

Paid content marketing only works if you already have good content marketing practices, so let’s start with why you should be using content marketing in the first place.

Why content marketing in the first place?

You need to adopt a solid content marketing strategy to maximize the eyes on your product. It’s easy to forget about in the hussle, but crucial to your short and long term sales goals for your business.

On average, it takes about 3-4 months of consistent, quality content to see larger yield. One article per week is a solid start, but getting into a daily rhythm of publishing will give you the quickest result over a shorter period of time. This process is especially beneficial for businesses that expect their prospects to seek education and information before they purchase. Creating context about why they need your item and leading them to the conclusion is key.

For example, let’s say your new product is an air purifier. Writing articles like The health benefits of having an air purifier, or Best appliances for your room will lead prospects directly to your site, right where you’re selling what they need!

Forms of paid content marketing

Paid social media promotion

How’s your social media presence? If your answer is we have none or not great, chances are your visibility is low. Being plugged into your target communities builds brand recognition and trust with prospects.

If your answer is pretty good, actually, paid social media promotion might be one of your best options when considering your paid content marketing strategy.

All of the more popular social media platforms have their own take on promotional advertising. Twitter and Instagram use advertisements that are camouflaged into user’s timelines.

While anyone paying mild attention knows the difference between an advertisement and a real post, the post still inserts itself right in the middle of their screen.

These companies have their own algorithms and targeting practices so that you know your advertisements are reaching your target audience and buyer personas. By paying your way in with your social media content you can gain followers and engagements on your posts to attract new customers.

Influencer marketing

How about a different way to advertise on social media? Influencer marketing is sending money to users with prominent follower counts to demonstrate or promote your product or service.

Source: Marketing Charts

Let’s borrow from the gaming industry for our example. When Respawn Entertainment launched their free-to-play title Apex Legends Battle Royale they targeted popular Twitch and YouTube streamers who played similar titles to play their game on opening day.

The result? 122.1 million hours of live viewership, with 657K max concurrent viewers in their first month of launch. With a little bit of advertising money they were able to get their game in front of hundreds of thousands of their target audience.

The point? People like seeing their favorite social media stars showcasing products and their favorite companies. Lately companies like Hello Fresh and BetterHelp have seen record sign-up numbers with targeting paid advertising on successful podcast channels of diverse genres.

Influencer marketing may be new to the fold but it’s definitely here to stay. How can your company utilize it?

Paid SEO

Google something. Anything. Chances are that the top 2 or 3 sites are promoted, or paid to be ranked that high. Companies in every industry often commit funds to put their sites above the competition.

Google ads sponsors their own form of an auction that you can bid on. Typically you’d bid on keywords that are relevant to your topic or business’ product or service.

Wordstream.com lists the typical list of criteria that contribute to the likelihood of your link getting promoted:

  • The relevance of your ad to the search query
  • The relevance of the keyword to your ad group
  • The relevance of your ad to its landing page
  • The historical PPC click-through rate (CTR) of the ad and its ad group
  • Overall historical account performance

This goes back to what we were saying earlier, you already need to have a solid content marketing foundation to thrive under paid promotion. Costs for this service vary, but it often depends on cost per click and keyword popularity.

Source: Wordstream.com

Depending on what kind of business you’re in and the size of your competition, this could be lighter or heavier on your budgeting wallet than you expected. This is why proper strategy and market analysis are needed when considering paid content marketing.

Wrap up

Paid content marketing is a great way to get that extra edge on your existing content marketing efforts that you’ve been looking for. But don’t forget, paid promotion works best when you’re already putting the work in. It isn’t a get out of jail free card, it’s meant to enhance great work you’ve already done!

You’re equipped with the know-how, start planning out where the best places are for your company to implement a paid content marketing strategy!

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation. 

The post The Ultimate Guide to Paid Content Marketing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Take A Social Media Review from Audit to Action

The social media landscape has changed dramatically since 2020 began. If you aren’t working from a current strategy, you have no strategy at all. That’s why we recommend auditing your social media programs annually. 

If you’re just getting started with a social media review, here’s my (free) course on completing competitive audit and a C&C primer on the best tools to use to conduct an audit. 

A key part of rethinking a social media strategy is to evaluate which social media channels are the best fit for your business with their different strengths and weaknesses. It is important that you understand how each channel can be used as an effective tool for marketing, customer service, and communication. There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration before you can decide which channel will work best for your company.

There are three things that you should know before you create a channel-driven social playbook: your audience, the best way to engage them, and the purpose of each social channel. Articulating these will help to work out how to support a social strategy by detailing what type of posts to publish, how often you need to post, and what metrics will show your progress. 

Is Your Audience Also Your Followers?

The first step in this process is being clear on the audiences targeted by using social media. 

Creating a relationship between brand and follower requires significant effort from both sides. A follower must opt-in to “Follow” and then seek out or actively engage on a brand’s content in their feed. The brand must ensure content is relevant to the follower and provides enough value to help them move forward in a relationship. 

When we conduct social media audits for clients, there is always an “a-ha” or discrepancy between who the brand thinks is following them on social media, and what the audience demographics and psychographics tell us about who is truly among the followers. If you haven’t looked closely at follower insights by channel, be sure that is part of your next review. 

Think you know your followers? Then you should be able to answer these five questions about the key target audiences you are trying to reach on social media. 

  • WHAT kind of content do they expect? 
  • WHERE are they participating most often?
  • WHEN are they most active? 
  • WHY are they motivated to follow and engage with your business? 

After considering these questions, you’ll be better equipped to build out the tactical steps to reach these audiences and see positive results on each channel. 

Action step: Create a matrix that lists your priority audiences down the side and the social channels in your mix along the top. For each audience, identify which channels they’re most likely to be active and engaged with brands on. Review the matrix to determine what the correlation is between where your audience is online and the channels that are most important to you. 

Consider Your Social Channel Selection

Social media channels are as diverse as global cities and cultures – none are exactly alike. Spend time in each channel and take in the culture of the channels before (re)creating your strategy. This includes understanding the audience’s intent and expectations. What type of content will resonate with what they are looking for – and drive engagement that matches your business goals? 

It’s fine to be on every social media channel. It’s also fine to be more selective, and only activate where you and your audience are consistently present. 

Ask these questions of each social media channel during your social media review to determine if it belongs in your strategy going forward:  

  • Is your target audience here?
  • Does the content you are creating match with the channel’s preferred format(s)? 
  • How much time per day can your team participate beyond posting to engage with audience replies and the accounts you follow? 
  • Is there a budget and resources for paid amplification to support this channel?
  • What results are most valuable to achieve from this audience? 

Action Step: Prioritize social media channels for your brand in a HIGH, MEDIUM and LOW effort. Then, identify any emerging channels to begin experimenting with, and those that can be decommissioned to free up resources.  

Writing Your Social Media Playbook

The social media playbook is the guide on how to use social media channels to reach business goals and engagement targets. The playbook should be rewritten periodically in order to align with changes to marketing campaigns, target audiences, internal resources, and outcomes.

What goes into the Playbook? A good playbook is derived from, but doesn’t replace, your strategic approach to using social media in support of marketing and communications activities. A playbook explains the tactical support for your social media strategy. It should have specific direction on the channel mix and how each channel individually supports business goals with a specific KPI. The playbook should be concise, easy to understand, and flexible enough to be updated throughout the year. 

  1. Write (or rewrite) your playbook to align with the audience targeting and channel considerations done in the aforementioned steps. When making a big departure from what historically has been done on social, by potentially deprioritizing a channel or focusing efforts on an emerging channel, it’s important to “show the work” for how this reprioritization will look going forward.  
  2. Detail a game plan for each channel starting with the core content that anchors the brand’s presence. Core content aligns with the editorial or content marketing plan, and should address multiple personas or journey stages. It is important to define specifically what content supports each channel. Identify what content pillars are prioritized, what content types will be used, and how to support the ideal frequency by curating and sharing user-generated content.  
  3. Give direction on the amount of time spent for engagement by the brand on each channel, and best times of day to be active (based on the time zone of your audience). It’s important to remember that social media isn’t just another online platform for publishing content. It’s more of a conversation between you and your followers. This means that you should be actively engaging in conversations on social media as much as possible, even if there isn’t new content to publish every day. 
  4. Select specific KPIs that will identify the health of each social channel and how it contributes to overall business goals. If experimenting with TikTok is done to build awareness with a different audience, the KPIs must reflect that it’s a top-of-the-funnel activity. Compare that to Pinterest, which has a more direct aim to bring users back to a website–so measuring referral traffic is a better KPI than pin impressions. Include data from your social media audit to benchmark current results and set goals for increases in your KPIs.  

Action Step: Write a channel game plan in the Playbook for each social channel prioritized in your mix. Be sure to include the target audience(s), content frequency and types, hashtags and emoji to use in posts, and how to measure outcomes. 

Convince & Convert Social Channel Game Plan

Download our free social channel game plan template here.

Final Thoughts For Your Social Media Review

Conducting a social media audit is a smart initial step to understanding the strengths, weaknesses and overall health of a social media program. Use your social media review to identify what is working, what needs to change and where fine tuning must occur. How the data and insights are used to rewrite a strategy and playbook is what sets apart the best social media teams. 

The post Take A Social Media Review from Audit to Action appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

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