/ #customer experience 

Customer Experience: Top Resources To Design the Best Strategy For Your Business

Deliver the best CX with these tools and resources to acquire and retain more customers.

Customer experience (CX) is surpassing price and product selection as the key differentiating factor that affects consumers’ purchasing decisions.

An outstanding CX can help increase customer acquisition, improve retention, cultivate advocacy, and boost profit.

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If you’re wondering how to get started with designing an effective customer experience strategy, here are some useful resources that will take you from foundation to execution:

Templates and articles

These templates and articles will help you wrap your head around the basic components of a successful customer experience strategy and set a solid foundation:

The Fundamentals

The articles below provide a solid overview on customer experience to help you design a CX strategy that works for your business:

  • 3 Fundamentals of Better Customer Experiences
  • Getting Customer Experience Strategy Right: Best Practices of CX Leaders
  • Designing and Starting Up a Customer-Experience Transformation
  • How to Design a Customer Experience Strategy
  • Build a Great Customer Experience Strategy
  • 7 Ways to Create a Great Customer Experience Strategy
  • Customer Experience Strategy: Meeting Expectations and Changing Dynamics in Service
  • Mapping the Customer Experience: Innovate Using Customer Experience Journey Maps
  • CX Journey Mapping Workshop - Intro & Activity
  • CX Playbook
  • How Human Insights-Focused Organizations Become CX Leaders
  • Demystifying UX, CX and Digital Transformation

Buyer Persona

The foundation of a successful customer experience strategy is a clear understanding of your target market and the buyer’s journey (or customer lifecycle stages.)

Such customer-centric approach is supported by a series of buyer personas, which help you understand the pain point, challenges, preferences, and desired outcome of your customers.

You can use Hubspot’s Buyer Persona Generator or download these templates from Hubspot, Digital Marketer, and Marketo to help develop your buyer personas.

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Customer Lifecycle Stages

As customers start to become aware of your brand and interact with your content, they move through different stages – from awareness and consideration to decision and advocacy.

Understanding customer lifecycle allows you to deliver the best experience at each touchpoint so you can progress customers along the sales funnel.

Here are a few useful resources:

  • What is customer lifecycle marketing? (This article includes useful diagrams that illustrate the various stages, touchpoints, and marketing activities.)
  • Customer Lifecycle PowerPoint Template
  • Effective Email Marketing for Each Stage of the Customer Lifecycle

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Customer Journey Mapping

To deliver the best CX, you need to be in the right place at the right time with the right information.

At each stage, your customers have different priorities, questions, or concerns regarding the problems you solve or the solutions you provide.

When you understand what your ideal customers are thinking and feeling at each lifecycle stage, you’ll be able to deliver the right content that leads to a better customer experience.

Here are five essential components for creating an effective customer journey map and a few good examples to illustrate customer journey mapping best practices.

In addition, you can download this content mapping template to get started.

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Courses, webinars, presentations, and white papers

Ready to take a deep dive? Online courses, slideshows, videos, webinars, ebooks, and white papers can help you gain a complete view and delve into the specifics:

Online Courses

You need to take a holistic approach when designing a CX strategy so you can account for all the various touchpoints and how they complement each other.

Educational programs that show you the nuts-and-bolts of designing an end-to-end customer experience can help you wrap your head around the big picture and learn about the specifics:

  • Customer Experience Essentials Certification Course
  • Customer Experience Strategy
  • Maximizing the Customer Experience
  • The Secrets of a Successful CX Program

Videos and webinars

There are many aspects in designing a CX strategy. Webinars and videos are great resources to help you hone in on specific topics or broaden your perspective by learning different approaches:

  • 10 Awesome Customer Experience Strategies You Should be Using
  • Customer Experience as Competitive Advantage
  • Driving More Value from Your Customer Experience Strategy
  • Customer Experience Strategy Webinar
  • Creating a Powerful Customer Experience Strategy

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Slideshare Presentations

Want to crawl into the heads of customer experience experts and get the inside scoop? Many thought leaders post their presentations on Slideshare. You can pick their brains and get the latest in CX by reading their decks:

  • Customer Experience Strategy: Meeting Expectations and Changing Dynamics in Service
  • Mapping the Customer Experience: Innovate Using Customer Experience Journey Maps
  • CX Journey Mapping Workshop - Intro & Activity
  • CX Playbook
  • How Human Insights-Focused Organizations Become CX Leaders
  • Demystifying UX, CX and Digital Transformation

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White Papers and eBooks

White papers and ebooks are great resources if you’re ready to delve into the nuances of designing customer experience strategies:

  • Customer Experience Strategy and Implementation: Enterprise Customer Experience Transformation
  • Customer Experience Strategy Best Practices
  • Implementing a Customer Experience Strategy
  • Journey Mapping: An Outside-In Approach to Delivering Great Customer Experiences
  • Sample Action Plan: Customer Experience Strategy and Design

Platforms and software applications

Talk is cheap if you aren’t putting your CX strategy to work. After defining your strategic direction, it’s time to make it happen.

Competitive Research and Analysis

By understanding what works and what doesn’t for your competitors, you can design the most effective CX strategy without having to reinvent the wheel.

Although there’s no “CX spying tool” (quite yet!) you can glean insights from what and how your competitors are doing in SEO, social media, and content marketing to figure out what makes your ideal customers tick.

Check out these lists from Kissmetrics, Neil Patel, and Sprout Social for the best “spying” tools.

Customer Data Management

You have to know your audience in order to create the best customer experience. By collecting and analyzing customer data, you can deliver the most relevant content and offer it to the right people in the right place at the right time.

A centralized customer database is essential for delivering a personalized user experience. Any interaction with your brand will be updated in real time so you can effectively facilitate a prospect’s progression along the buying journey.

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Here are some of the top customer experience management software, customer relationship management software, and contact management software to consider.

Omnichannel Marketing

Effectively managing customer interactions through a variety of touchpoints, such as email, social media, phone, and live chat or messenger, is the key to delivering an outstanding customer experience.

Here are some software applications that can help you manage CX on various channels:

  • Top Email Marketing Platforms
  • 17 Best Social Media Management Tools
  • Best Live Chat Software

Last but not least, in order to deliver a seamless customer experience across all touchpoints, you need a centralized system, such as Omnicus, to manage all the interactions so you can effectively handle all the customer interactions without missing a beat.

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Author

Eivind Jonassen

Eivind is the co-founder and CEO of Omnicus. He is building Omnicus to help businesses optimize and streamline contact center operations through automation, and smart routing across messaging, voice & video.