Customer Experience: What is it and how can it benefit your business?

What is Customer Experience (CX)? It is about improving the human experience as a fundamental ingredient od business strategies. To establish an effective CX, a comprehensive analysis is essential, offering an unbiased view of the market to align the business with its fluctuations and sustain a competitive advantage in an ever-evolving landscape.‍

‍

THE IMPORTANCE OF CX ANALYSIS

Distinguishing from the competition and achieving success today depends not only on product quality, innovation, or competitive pricing. To gain a significant advantage, it's essential to place the customer at the center of business strategies.

Leading B2B companies in the industry respond to intensifying global competition by prioritizing customer-centricity and experience in their strategy. This is already evident in companies like IBM, Adobe, and FedEx.

This concept is defined as Customer Experience (CX): "How customers perceive their interactions with the company," as researchers Manning, Bodine, and Bernoff describe it in the book "Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business" (2012).

In more detail, CX encompasses all emotions, sensations, and perceptions customers experience throughout their journey with a company, including physical, virtual, and human touchpoints. This broader definition underscores the importance of considering every aspect of the interaction between the customer and the company to create positive and lasting experiences.

Implementing a B2B Customer Experience program brings about notable benefits, such as a substantial decrease in churn rates and enhanced business growth.

Research by McKinsey & Company highlights that companies efficiently organizing and managing customer experience can reap valuable outcomes. Notably, there is a 20% improvement in customer satisfaction, a 15% increase in sales conversion, a 30% reduction in service costs, and a 30% boost in employee engagement.

Moreover, a 2022 study by Forbes Insights and Glassbox underscores the strategic importance executives place on Customer Experience. According to "The Leading Edge Of Digital Customer Experience," 83% of executives recognize a "clear" positive correlation between optimizing Customer Experience and increasing company profitability. Even more noteworthy is that 77% of these executives actively invest in improving CX to boost overall company performance.

However, developing an effective Customer Experience strategy poses a significant challenge for companies. The analysis of CX levels is influenced by numerous factors, making the evaluation process complex. The lack of a structured strategy, in particular, is one of the main obstacles to achieving full corporate realization in terms of profitability and loyalty, negatively impacting product quality and customer relationships.

CONCLUSION

Customer Experience is a human-to-human interaction journey, where the customer relationship with the company and the related interactions take a forefront role in the corporate strategy. Success stories of the mentioned companies emphasize the importance of innovation and increased investment in managing and analyzing their CX.

In the era of digitization and hyper-personalization, customer interactions become increasingly non-linear, requiring the consideration of ever-diversifying needs. The interaction between people and businesses is bound to grow, becoming more complex and multi-channel.

Improving Customer Experience is a corporate goal that can no longer be deferred if a company aims to grow its business and prevent customers from swiftly switching to competitors.

SOURCES

• Forbes (2022) The Leading Edge of Digital Customer Experience
• Forrester (2022) Your CX Management Balance Sheet
• Marketing Science Institute Working Paper Series (2015) A Framework for Understanding and Managing the Customer Experience
• Harvard Business Review (2013) Touchpoints matter, but it's the full journey that really counts
• Journal of Services Marketing(2015) [PDF] Fresh perspectives on customer experience | Semantic Scholar
• Measuring Customer Experience(2014) Your CX Management Balance Sheet
• Sana(2023) 6 Essential Pillars For A Seamless B2B Customer Experience (CX)
• Harvard Business School (2010)  Understanding Customer Experience
• Harvard Business School (2022) Beyond Net Promoter Scoreù
• Harvard Business School (2007) Companies that systematically monitor customer experience can take important steps to improve it-and their bottom line.
• Harvard Business School (2013) The Truth About Customer Experience
• Harvard Business School (2023) 8 Best Practices for Creating a Compelling Customer Experience
• Harvard Business School (2023) Executives Need to Invest in Understanding the Customer Experience
• Klaus, P. (2015) Measuring Customer Experience. How to Develop and Execute the Most Profitable Customer Experience Strategies
• McKinsey&Company (2023) Why CX leaders use an experience-led growth strategy
• McKinsey&Company (2017) Finding the right digital balance in B2B customer experience | McKinsey
• McKinsey&Company (2020) The human touch at the center of customer-experience excellence | McKinsey
• Smart Carrot (2022) 8 Inspiring B2B Customer Experience Examples - SmartKarrot Blog
• Automazione Plus (2017) Thyssenkrupp: un esempio applicativo per la realtà aumentata HoloLens di Microsoft - Automazione Plus
• Crm Partners Customer Experience B2B: come si sta evolvendo questo trend del futuro!

‍