20 Ingenious Ideas to Transform Customer Experience (CX) in 2020

The customer journey is no longer confined to the process of completing a transaction. It spans the journey from the moment when a prospect hears about your brand until they become your customer and it goes well beyond that.

Customer experience (CX)Opens a new window is an intangible that sets your brand apart from the competition. As we head into 2020, here are 20 clever ideas to help you transform your CX and stand out.

1. Do What David Ogilvy Would

In 1957, David Ogilvy wrote a headline for Rolls-Royce that boosted their car sales by 50%. After three weeks of research, David Ogilvy proposed the iconic headline that simply read, “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

Image Source: swiped.coOpens a new window

David Ogilvy’s Renowned Print Ad for Rolls-Royce

If you want to deliver a memorable CX, speak the language of your buyers. Learn how your buyers phrase their problems and use this information to formulate your product and messaging. This is what David Ogilvy did and recommended:

“I don’t know the rules of grammar. If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.”

2. Depict the Hero’s Journey

The hero’s journey is an effective storytelling technique, popularized by Joseph Campbell, an American Professor of Literature. It is a series of 17 stages that the hero goes through to emerge victorious.

Image source: WikipediaOpens a new window

The Hero’s Journey

So, how can you use the hero’s journey to deliver amazing CX? Make your customer the protagonist of the story.

Here’s a succinct four-step framework on how businesses can use the hero’s journey and the attention, interest, desire, and action (AIDA) model:

Step 1: The call to adventure/awareness
 

In this stage, the buyer identifies a problem/pain area, or are tired of following the status quo. They, therefore, start looking for new ways to do their job effectively.

Step 2: Meeting the mentor/interest
 

This is where you step in, and your aim is to help your buyers accomplish their goals efficiently, ideally through content. The term content is used loosely here, and it could mean anything that you offer that helps them do their job better. Your objective should be to make them think, “This brand knows what I’m looking for!”

Step 3: The road of trials/desire
 

The buyer is evaluating various alternatives available while developing a strong inclination toward your company. They might even buy another product only to realize they need what you have.

Step 4: The ultimate boon/action
 

The customer achieves their goal by using your products/services.

While using this framework to tell stories, you can also develop compelling social proofs using the hero’s journey.

3. Create a Memorable Brand Experience

Let’s look at an example from music. Beethoven’s 5th symphony is a distinguishable piece of classical music for its memorable four-note motif.

Beethoven’s 5th Symphony Has a Distinct Four-Note Intro

Great songs have hooks that grab attention. Memorable guitar solos are the ones that you can effortlessly hum. In the same way, people remember events that appeal to them emotionally. To make your brand memorable, make people associate the brand with an emotion. Here is how you can do it:

1. Compose the message: How would you like your audience to perceive you? If you’re an e-commerce store that lets people customize your products, make sure that you convey it in your messaging.
2. Amplify your message: Share your message across crucial touchpoints such as email, social media, and ads.
3. Give them something memorable: When people buy from you, offer them a unique experience or free merchandise that they’ll associate with your brand. It could be as simple as giving a customized bookmark when people buy a book.
    

Learn More: What Is Customer Experience (CX)? Definition, Design, Management, Trends, and ExamplesOpens a new window

4. Value User Feedback

Customer listening is an essential component of customer service and experience. Customer listening follows two approaches:

1. The inbound approach: Emails, social media queries, complaints, support tickets, etc.
2. The outbound approach: Surveys, polls, net promoter survey (NPS), etc.
    

Practice social listening to know what people say about you on social media.

You’ll get plenty of suggestions related to product/service improvement through these approaches. Although it won’t be feasible to work on every suggestion that comes your way, make it a point to respond to each query. It’s not about implementing every suggestion but letting your customers know that you value their opinion.

Here is an example of Slack, an instant messaging tool, demonstrating empathetic and proactive listening via Twitter:

Slack Ensures That Every Query Receives an Honest, Empathetic Response

5. Send Personalized Video Emails

CX thrives on personalization. Marketers are using sophisticated tools powered by AI and machine learning (ML) to deliver personalized experiences to their target audience. One effective way to spice up your email marketing efforts is to use personalized video emails.

Personalized videos are customized according to the characteristics of the audience segment. Integrate personalized video marketing platforms with your marketing automation platform that can do the legwork for you. This will make personalized video email campaigns unbelievably easy, while providing a novel experience to your customers.

Example of a Personalized Video

6. Read Customers’ Minds

There are some instances where product users know that a specific feature would drastically improve the product/user experience, but can’t put a finger on it. The same could also be about your website, content, or customer service. If there is a gap, you need to find and address it.

It would be helpful if you keep analyzing data to find areas of improvement. For example, if users are dropping off a particular page, you can use qualitative analytics tools (heatmaps, session recordings, etc.) to identify and rectify the problem. Similarly, if you see a high average ticket resolution time or a high number of interactions per ticket, you know that there’s an issue that needs attention.

Learn More:

Top 7 Customer Experience (CX) Trends for 2020Opens a new window

7. Gamify the Customer Experience

Habit-forming products use gamification. Gamification boosts engagement by providing rewards that lead to the release of dopamine – the feel-good chemical – in the brain, keeping the user returning to your product. While rewards, loyalty points, and discounts are common examples of gamification, here are a few out-of-the-box gamification ideas to take your CX game up a level:

1. Rather than making it a competition, use gamification to build a community. Design the rewards in a way that would require individuals to seek help from each other. Collaboration helps you create the network effect.
2. Use gamification to make onboarding easy. Award badges to signify progress. Send out push notifications frequently to entice users to take on new quests, i.e., to explore different product features.
3. Build an online forum or community to encourage users and customers to come together and discuss your product.
    

8. Deliver Eureka Moments Throughout the Experience

Eureka or Aha! moments are instances where your customers make an unexpected discovery in your product. Many brands make it a priority to deliver such moments during onboarding to encourage users to discover the product value early on. Since people use the same product for different needs, segmenting your audience based on various criteria and charting a tailored path for each segment will create eureka moments.

You can also deliver Aha! moments by providing value when they need it the most. For example, if you see a massive influx of search traffic based on a specific query or a new trend impacting your industry, publishing a comprehensive piece of content on that topic could be a great idea.

Learn More: 

Top 5 Customer Experience (CX) Conferences In 2020Opens a new window

9. Give Them Something They Didn’t Know They Needed

Recently, Grammarly launched a simple yet powerful feature that lets you know the tone of the email you’re writing. I’ve become quite reliant on this feature, and I had no idea that I needed it.

Grammarly’s Tone Detector Helps You Understand How Your Email Sounds

Steve Jobs said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” The absence of certain features or experiences appear unnecessary or won’t change how your customers perceive you, but their integration will dramatically improve the CX. This is what converts satisfaction into delight. Your job is to identify and bank on such opportunities because, as Henry Ford famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Learn More: What is an Omnichannel Customer Experience? Definition, Journeys and ExamplesOpens a new window

10. Develop Multichannel Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs)

The rise of conversational commerce has led to chatbots becoming a crucial part of creating great CX. Brands have been primarily utilizing chatbots via messaging apps, websites, mobile apps, collaboration tools, and digital assistants.

Businesses can deploy IVAs across multiple touchpoints to improve customer service. This requires businesses to take a holistic and customer-centric approach to develop IVAs that appear coherent across various channels and throughout the buyer journey. Such multichannel IVAs can enable brands to provide consistent customer service, personalized responses, updates, and seamless CX.

11. Use Immersive Technology to Elevate CX

Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and all kinds of extended reality (XR) are changing the world by combining the digital and real-world environments. While these technologies are still in the initial stages of their development, here’s how brands can use them to elevate CX:

1. Help customers understand the product by providing an interactive buying experience. Enable them to try products virtually or view product demos via 360-degree simulations.
2. Use gamification to turn the otherwise formal interaction into a fun and memorable experience.
3. Deliver cutting-edge, in-store experience using AR/VR to help customers navigate the store and find information. This can also help employees deliver faster solutions and better experiences.
    

12. Use Recommendation Systems to Deliver Content

The internet has made it easy to find any information one wants within seconds, and this comes at the cost of dwindling attention spans. If you want to retain users, you need to provide contextual and personalized content continually. Netflix and Amazon understand the perpetual need for instant gratification; therefore, they keep pushing out content you like to keep you on their platform.

Marketers can utilize content-based recommendation systems that understand content users’ consumption preferences and send out content tailored to individual preferences. Such CX will not only retain your existing customers, but they’ll also be more receptive to your upselling and cross-selling offers.

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13. Reverse Engineer CX Success

Reverse engineering CX success requires you to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Identify vital CX touchpoints such as your website, blog, mobile app, retail store, and customer service. Perform all the steps a buyer would before purchasing from you, such as visiting your website, reading the blog and online reviews, visiting your store, etc. to understand the overall experience.

If something seems off, fix it. Involve focus groups to double down on the reverse engineering process.

Often, organizations, unknowingly, create jarring experiences that appear seamless on the surface. Unless you try them out yourselves, you will not be able to eliminate such issues.

14. Use Predictive Analytics to Help Customers

Although it is quite difficult to predict churn, customers ceasing to use your product is a sign of potential churn. When a user decides to stop using your offerings, they’ll show different sets of behaviors depending on your product and industry.

Provided you have heaps of user data, predictive analytics can help you find out why people stop using your product. Here are three practical ways you can retain customers when you see the early signs:

1. Initiate a drip email sequence that helps them learn how to use the product. This is especially powerful during the onboarding stage.
2. Simplify the buyer journey. For instance, for e-commerce stores, don’t make it mandatory for users to register to complete a purchase.
3. For high-ticket, enterprise-level software users, offer one-to-one consulting sessions and high-level support.
    

15. Optimize Content for Micro-Moments

The term micro-moments was coined by GoogleOpens a new window , and is defined as an intent-rich moment when a person turns to a device to act on a need – to know, go, do, or buy something in the middle of another activity. The ubiquity of smartphones has changed the way people look for information, and micro-moments is one such instance. Here are the four key micro-moments:

1. I-want-to-know: The user is in the early stage of the purchase journey and is not necessarily looking to buy.
2. I-want-to-go: The user is looking for local stores/venues to visit.
3. I-want-to-do: The user wants to learn how to perform a task.
4. I-want-to-buy: The buyer has made their decision and intends to evaluate various brand or price alternatives.
    

Image source: UX CollectiveOpens a new window

Graphic of Google’s Micro-Moments Signifying Intent-Rich Moments

To create a seamless CX, identify micro-moments that are relevant to your audience. Since micro-moments tend to be very specific, create content that matches customer search and expectations.

The content should ideally include instructional and FAQ style information in different formats. The intent should be to help your customers become successful. Lastly, the experience you provide should be uniform across devices and channels.

Learn More: Your #1 Goal Should Be Providing the Best Digital Experience—Here’s HowOpens a new window

16. Use Cognitive Biases to Design Your CX

Cognitive biases are systematic errors in our thinking that influence our judgments and decisions. Here are three biases you can use in sequence to drive user behavior:

1. The authority bias: In this bias, people are influenced by the opinions of experts. That’s why influencers, celebrities, and thought leaders are widely revered. The content you create should aim to position your brand as a leader in your industry.
2. The bandwagon effect: It is the phenomenon where people follow trends, and are prone to adopt beliefs and ideas or buy popular products. Use social proof wisely to convince users to take the desired action. You can also use the authority bias in this stage by seeking testimonials from power users.
3. The endowment effect: People are more likely to value and keep the things they own. To make users see value in your products, offer them free trials, discounts, or giveaways. Once they become your customers, cultivating relationships with them will be relatively easier.
    

17. Shorten the Buyer Journey Through Social Media

The majority of your customers are on social media, and you can use it to optimize the buyer’s journey. Besides using social media to distribute content and provide customer support, here are three ideas to shorten the buyer’s journey:

1. Use the native selling/shop feature offered by Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
2. Export various audience segments from your email marketing/marketing automation tool and create custom audiences on social media platforms to run highly personalized social ads.
3. Run remarketing campaigns to retain customers.
    

18. Offer a Post-Purchase Experience They’ll Cherish

Competing on features and pricing is a long and tedious battle. If you want to stay on top of your customers’ minds, give them something that’ll delight them.

The post-purchase stage is an excellent opportunity to provide such experiences. Use post-purchase touchpoints such as first purchase emails, follow-ups, training programs, and customer satisfaction surveys to understand your customers. Customers like brands that show their human side.

Three simple tips for delivering an amazing post-purchase experience:

1. Make customers a part of your community. Make them the first ones to receive free upgrades, new features, and discounts.
2. Sometimes, customers may not express their frustration right away. Speak to customers regularly to understand if they have any difficulty using your product, and resolve it promptly.
3. Segment your audience based on their hobbies and run campaigns that use their hobbies as themes.
    

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19. Reduce Customer Friction

One of the biggest challenges companies still face is improving the quality of customer service. Long waiting time on calls, clunky customer support technology, and apathetic or downright rude customer service staff are all indicators of a high-friction CX. And it doesn’t take much time for brands to gain notoriety once a handful of customers have bad experiences.

Take the following steps to smooth over any friction that can hold your organization back:

1. Train your customer support reps on personal, interpersonal, technical, and product skills.
2. If you’re using a chatbot, provide an option that allows customers to connect with a real person.
3. Ensure that there are no inconsistencies among disparate sources of information. Different solutions to the same problem in the FAQ section and via email will irritate your customers.
    

20. Design for Convenience

Another great way to reduce friction is to design for convenience. The design aspect could be for the UX part of your mobile app or the standard operating procedures (SOP) for customer service. As customers prefer to be self-reliant to save time, make their convenience a priority.

It helps to have SOPs as they provide a robust framework, but they shouldn’t get in the way of helping customers. There are so many examples where customers have to go through a series of unnecessary steps only to escalate a concern repeatedly. It would be effective in such cases to connect the customer to a higher authority at the earliest. Therefore, use SOPs as a set of best practices and not as gospel. Treat each query on a case-by-case basis.

Learn More: 

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Closing Thoughts on Great CX

A study by Forrester ConsultingOpens a new window reported that experience-driven businesses have 1.6 times higher brand awareness, 1.5 times employee satisfaction, 1.9 times average order value, 1.7 times customer retention, 1.9 times return on spend, and 1.6 times customer satisfaction rates.

Well-designed CX is not a one-time task or project. It becomes a part of an organization’s culture. When planning your marketing strategy, implement the ideas you find plausible from our 20 for 2020 list and track their impact on your CX all through the year.

All the best!

Which of these ideas did you like and plan to implement? Tell us on TwitterOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’re listening!