When customers engage with a business, they expect to be greeted at all touchpoints in a way that helps them navigate those interactions. Customer Experience makes users feel seen and heard; it’s like metaphorical handholding, so users don’t feel alone while engaging with a business.
Kishor Fogla is the founder of Yellow Slice, and all the clients that have worked with him have appreciated his management skills and how he prioritises the stakeholders. In a way, he is providing a customer experience to his clients as well, so we asked for his opinions on the matter, and he came up with some valuable advice.
“If you run an organisation that intends to scale in the future, investing in CX is not just a ‘nice-to-have’ next thing, but a growth strategy you can’t do without. Product alone is never enough; experience is the key. Customers remember you by how you treated them.”
What is Customer Experience (CX) Design?
Customer Experience design is a process that a design team (along with the collaboration of other teams) creates to provide the most pleasant customer experience at all a business’s touchpoints before, during, and after conversion.
Customer-centred strategies satisfy customers in every way possible during their conversion journey, fostering strong customer brand loyalty. A brand may have a top-notch product that works, but if it fails to deliver the experience that customers remember it by, then it’s highly unlikely that customers will remain loyal to the business.
A common misconception in the industry is that customer experience (CX) design is the same as User Experience (UX) design. While both eventually serve the user, they differ in their scope of work. CX design goes beyond what UX covers.
Initially, User Experience was defined to encompass all aspects of a person’s interaction with a business. However, this term was introduced in an era when computers were the primary form of interaction; user experience began to associate with only one form of interaction: digital.
So, UX is usually defined as the users’ experience with a business’s digital products, such as an app or a website.
To move beyond this limited perspective, a new term emerged: Customer Experience (CX), which defines a customer’s entire experience with a business. CX takes a more holistic approach, covering all the brand touchpoints a user will interact with, from initial awareness to conversion and ultimately retention.
Customers should feel prioritised at these touchpoints so that they perceive the brand as customer-centred. To make customers feel heard, a brand must focus on advertising campaigns, customer service and consistency.
CX Ecosystem: How Everything Connects in CX
CX is an ecosystem that spans different organisational departments. Here’s how different departments come together to form a unified CX.
Design
You want a service or product, so you approach a business. You can look them up on the internet and find their website or app, where you can learn more about the business.
A digital product becomes the first point of customer contact, so it’s super important to invest time, effort, and money into designing it well. Incorporate user-centred thinking and create user journeys with the least amount of friction. UI UX design should always prioritise accessibility, inclusivity, and seamless navigation.
Operations
Operations are the engine behind the scenes. This department may not interact directly with customers, but it executes the plans developed by all the other departments. They manage essential activities, including inventory management, delivery timelines, pricing structures, and process efficiency.
The operations department directly ensures that everything behind the curtains runs smoothly. They ensure fast and reliable service delivery, as well as smooth internal alignment across teams.
A delay in operating tasks can ruin the best efforts made by other departments, such as marketing, sales, and customer service. It is also responsible for how much the business’s infrastructure eventually scales.
Customer Support
93% of customers are more likely to remain loyal to companies with loyal support. After becoming a customer, customer support is the most important aspect of the user’s interaction. Whether they have issues with a refund request, a technical glitch, or a shipping issue, how fast, empathetic, and relevant your response is, along with the help you provide, determines the customer’s opinion of your product.
Customer support is a great way to turn a frustrated customer with a one-star review into a loyal fan. Build confidence with new customers and restore it with ones who have lost faith in your business. Use different mediums, such as live chat, help centres, and social media, to make support easy and accessible.
Marketing
Marketing builds brand perception; it’s the first point of contact for most customers with your business. It doesn’t just introduce you but also keeps the conversation going. It tells them what to expect and what your business stands for, and forms the foundation.
Follow the practice of underpromising in your marketing and overdelivering with your product. Ads, newsletters, and campaigns are how customers are most likely to find you, so make sure you do them well.
Building Blocks of Customer Experience
Along with the departments of an organisation, some elements form the foundation of an effective customer experience.
Marketing
Brand perception is how people perceive, feel, and think about a brand, whether they are customers or not. Every small and big thing, such as visuals, values, tone of voice, public reputation, and customer reviews, weaves and shapes brand perception.
For instance, what do you feel and see when you look at Apple as a brand? Emotions like reliability, class, and durability usually come to mind. These emotions influence expectations even before the product is used.
In the world of CX, this position of emotional first impression builds trust and curiosity. On the contrary, a negative brand perception can lead customers to be uninterested in even considering the product, even if it is of high quality.
Product Usage
Attracting a prospect to convert them into a customer is a different thing but keeping them for the long term is a different ball game altogether. Ease of product usage takes centre stage and matters the most.
After customers become loyal, the product is king; you can’t focus on making other things without prioritising the supremacy of the product. Whether it’s a digital or physical product, it should be easy to use, solve the intended problem, and be pleasing for users to use.
If it’s a digital product, make the UI/UX intuitive with clear instructions and a seamless onboarding experience. With physical products, what matters is the product’s packaging, usability, and durability.
Post-purchase Journey
Acquiring a customer is still manageable, but retaining them is what determines your business’s survival. In the post-purchase journey, a one-time customer becomes a loyal, long-term customer. Nurturing this relationship involves sending follow-up emails, offering loyalty programs, providing onboarding tips, conducting surveys, and even sending thoughtful thank-you messages.
Who doesn’t like it when a business sends you a caring SMS or a WhatsApp message? When they don’t meet your expectations once or twice, receiving that text makes us feel that we are not invisible to the business’s CEOs.
Why Growth-Oriented Brands Invest in CX Design
But why all the fuss around customer experience when the product that we’ve created is kickass? Here are the reasons why you should bother about it at all,
Business Growth
There is a direct link between customer experience (CX) and business growth, as a good customer experience directly translates to business growth and profitability. Businesses that focus on customer experience (CX) see their profits soar by 60% and achieve sustainable success.
When customers have a positive experience, they are more likely to return and make another purchase, as well as refer your business to other customers. This leads to increased sales through word-of-mouth marketing.
Consider Amazon and Apple, which excel at proactively delivering a delightful customer experience. Most of their revenue comes from repeat customers. Companies skilled in customer experience (CX) outperform their competitors and set market trends for others to follow.
Retention Over Acquisition
It’s easier and less expensive to retain a customer than to find a new one. Competitors can copy your product, the price structure you follow, and marketing campaigns, but your competitors can’t copy a strong customer service culture.
According to a study, a 5% increase in user retention can lead to a 25% to 95% increase in profits. Returning customers return more often and spend significantly more per transaction, while spreading free and effective word-of-mouth marketing to attract other customers.
Real-World Example: You may be surprised to learn that 91% of Amazon Prime users renew their membership annually. Their one-click purchase offers a frictionless experience, and not just this, but they have simplified every touchpoint.
Brand Differentiation
As the famous author Maya Angelou once said,
“People will forget what you said, forget what you did, but never forget how you made them feel.”
CX design is not a commodity; it’s an experience. It’s about how you make people feel, about how you turn a commodity into a loved brand. According to PwC, 73% of consumers say that the experience is a key factor in their purchasing decisions. Still, only 49% say companies deliver a good experience.
Look at this gap as an opportunity that you could fill and benefit from while designing the CX of your company.
Real-World Example: In less than a decade, Airbnb has established a strong reputation through its unique experience. It doesn’t just provide cheap accommodation, but also a smooth app interface, personalised host messages, and an entire journey of belonging.
The Data Loop
If you’re designing for customers, build several feedback loops that can help you gain insights into user behaviour. Every customer touchpoint presents an opportunity to learn, and there are several possible touchpoints, including chatbot queries, NPS scores, and user reviews.
The data gathered can be used to make more informed decisions when designing the customer experience. Data can be gathered through various methods, including journey mapping, integrated analytics, and real-time feedback mechanisms.
Real-World Example: Netflix has a data loop that helps it gather behavioural data, which it then uses to refine its recommendations and personalise the platform. They don’t stop at tracking passively but track every scroll, click, and watch time. Continuous data gathering fosters a perpetual cycle of improvement.
The Metrics That Define Great CX
There’s no point in assuming customer satisfaction and loyalty to gauge the operational efficiency of the business. You can use metrics to measure the customer journey and identify both qualitative and quantitative metrics to determine how satisfied customers are with the business.
Metrics that you can track include,
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customers rate a business on a 1-5 or 1-10 scale after an interaction or transaction they make. It’s a quick transactional survey which works on the formula,
CSAT = (Sum of positive responses ÷ total responses) x 100
This can be measured, ideally for support tickets, checkout experiences, delivery timelines, or any touchpoint where satisfaction is measurable at the moment.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Businesses don’t run on new customers; instead, they find stability with recurring customers and referrals. Hence, NPS measures how likely a customer is to recommend your brand to others. Customers respond on a scale of 0 to 10.
Promoters (9-10): Loyal customers who liked your business and will refer it to others to boost growth.
Passives (7-8): Customers who are satisfied, but not to an extent that makes them enthusiastic about referring to other people.
Detractors (0-6): Unhappy customers who weren’t satisfied with the business at all, and may damage the reputation of your business with negative word of mouth.
NPS can be calculated with a formula,
NPS = % Promoters – % Detractors
Customer Effort Score (CES)
CES measures how easy it is to solve customer problems and how much effort customers put into completing tasks, such as making a return, performing a transaction, or logging in.
According to Gartner studies, 96% of customers with high-effort experiences become more disloyal, compared to only 9% with low-effort experiences. Based on a 1–7 agreement scale, lower scores reflect higher effort.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customers stick to a brand not just for a one-time purchase experience, but also for the value it provides over the long term. Over time, revenue also affects the brand. CX doesn’t just affect satisfaction; it affects revenue over time. CLV is calculated with a formula,
CLV = Average Purchase Value × Purchase Frequency × Customer Lifespan
Bonus Metrics to Check
Other secondary metrics that you should consider checking are,
- The churn rate is the percentage of customers who leave the platform in the middle of their usage due to some friction.
- First Contact Resolution (FCR) refers to the percentage of issues that are resolved during the initial interaction.
- Average Resolution Time (ART) refers to the time it takes to resolve an issue.
- The Social Sentiment Score tracks brand perception among customers across various platforms and what the brand image evokes in them emotionally.
How to Build a Winning CX Design Strategy
Some methods and strategies can help you empathise with customers and effectively design your company’s customer experience (CX).
Empathy Mapping and Personas
To design for customers, you must put yourself in their shoes, and methods like empathy mapping can help you understand their needs and expectations. Empathy mapping is a technique that helps brands visualise and empathise with what customers see, think, feel, hear, say, and do at different stages of interaction.
Personas are imaginary characters designed to signify your target audience so that it’s easy for designers to design the customer experience for this particular person. Designing a persona eliminates the tendency to assume what the customer wants and design for a vague personality. Designing a persona includes demographics, goals, frustrations, and behaviours.
Journey Mapping
Mapping out the customer journey helps you visualise what customers experience at each step, from initial awareness of the brand to post-purchase customer support. A customer journey map usually includes steps/phases like,
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Purchase
- Retention
Designers should consider the actions customers take at each stage and the emotions and thoughts they experience while doing so. The customer journey varies at different touchpoints, including ads, websites, emails, and chatbots. Hence, the pain points of every stage will be different.
Omnichannel Design Principles
When customers are interested in a business, they don’t stop at one platform; they move fluidly between various channels, including Instagram, websites, and even physical stores. Providing them with a consistent and omnichannel customer experience across channels becomes vital.
But what does an omnichannel customer experience entail? Its tone, content, visuals, and functionality must align with the brand. Whether someone engages with a business through mobile, desktop, or in-person, a consistent customer experience builds brand trust and eliminates confusion.
For instance, Nike’s centralised CRM and data systems provide a unified experience with integrations like Nike Run Club. Customers can get a cohesive experience across the website, app, and physical stores without losing context.
The CX Design Bottom Line
Customer Experience Design isn’t a department, but it’s a mindset that should be reflected in every step of your organisation. Every team works in synchronisation and works effectively to deliver a customer experience that they remember you with.
In a world where any business idea can be copied, what your competitors can’t copy is how you made your customers feel. Empathy is the true differentiator. Don’t ask questions like “What more can we sell?” if you don’t have the answers to questions like “How better can we serve?”.
Contact the Yellow Slice team to learn how you can design a customer experience that sets you apart from your competition.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What are the top CX design tools and software used by professionals?
Commonly used tools that are used by designers and are efficient include
- Hotjar is used for creating heat maps, recording sessions, and conducting feedback polls.
- Qualtrics is best for advanced customer surveys and experience analytics.
- Adobe XD is used for wireframing and prototyping interfaces.
- Miro is efficient in collaborating with remote teams.
This combination of tools can be used to design a customer-centric experience.
2. What common pitfalls should organisations avoid while designing customer experience?
Most organisations make mistakes that can undermine their customer experience (CX) efforts. Siloed teams in a business operate independently with little collaboration and fail to provide a cohesive CX experience.
Inconsistent branding and tone across platforms can confuse users and form a poor brand perspective. Over-automation can make customers feel impersonal and robotic. CX thrives on human connection that empathises with customers.
