Customers are the heart of your brand. Web design companies in Phoenix now pay a growing importance on the relatively new concept of ‘customer experience’.

Customer experience, also referred to as CX, is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship. Regardless of whether you create it consciously or not, your company provides a customer experience.

Sometimes it is perceived as the digital experiences and interactions, such as on a website or across other social media platforms. Other times, it is focused on retail or customer service, or the speed at which problems are solved.

Customer expectations are rising with the increasing opportunity cost of choosing a particular brand out of the thousands available. Companies need to rise up to these expectations and make every interaction with a customer the best they’ve had.

Here are a few things that you need to keep in mind when it comes to creating a great customer experience.

Understand your Customers

The fundamental element of knowledge that you need to start with is, understanding your customers and the journey they take with your company. It is important to first connect and empathize with your customers to be able to understand their wants, needs, frustrations and issues.

One way to do this is by creating customer personas that would broadly categorize your diverse customer base into smaller relatable groups based on their knowledge of the products and services you offer.

This way you will be able to recognize who they are, understand them better, making your business truly customer centric.

Create an Emotional Connection

The best customer experiences are created when you strike an emotional connection with your customers. Studies have found that more than 50% of an experience is based on an emotion as emotions shape the attitudes that drive decisions.

Forming a bond with a brand can also instill enormous amounts of loyalty in the customer. This makes re-purchases and recommendations for your products and services more likely. These customers are also less price-sensitive and less likely to shop around.

Given these facts, optimizing on an emotional connection can help you outperform your competitors by up to 85%!

Capture Feedback in Real Time

When your customers come up with complaints it does not suffice to simply offer a solution. By seeking permanent, long-term solutions instead of quick fixes, your company will improve its reputation in your customer’s eyes.

It is important to not only fix the problem, but explain to the customer why it happened in the first place and assure the customer that it is not going to be a repeat issue.

You can capture customer feedback through post interaction surveys, emails and calls.

Regular Employee Feedback

Take the time to interact with everyone who interacts with a customer at any point. Everyone from the sales person to the receptionist will have important insights and ideas about what matters to the customers.

Continuous employee feedback can allow staff to share ideas on how to improve customer experience while at the same time bridging the communication gap with managers about the issues they themselves face.

There is scope for immense improvement when it comes to customer experience. It is a good business practice to implement the above steps and keep improving on them.