Reframing Customer Experience
How well you understand your customers and how well you keep them close to business decisions determines whether your product expands or contracts. Keep reading to learn why centering your business around the customer experience matters now more than ever - and why a single approach to improving CX won’t get you there.
Who is considered a customer?
Customer insights can benefit tremendously from simply expanding the way you define your customers. Traditionally, the textbook definition of a customer is a person or organization that buys your product or service. However, this definition is quite narrow. Ask yourself… who am I building my product for? In addition to the customers that currently use your product, think about the customers you maybe once had (and want to win back), along with the customers that you would like to have, now and in the future. Using this broader framework ensures you are conducting the most comprehensive research that will drive real results with your audiences.
Research as a process, not a project
However, it’s important to note that research is not binary. It’s not “either or” and there is no one right approach. Instead, it’s best to think of research as a process, and one that involves continual iteration. Customers are changing everyday, which is why we must constantly get their feedback… fast.
Data delays and reduced speed to insight is a common pitfall. Executives aren’t getting the data they need fast enough and are often forced to make business decisions based on assumptions (in the absence of data). Why? Because they’re not asking customers questions and they aren’t approaching research with an agile mindset. If the goal is to build impactful and meaningful customer experiences, existing and future customers should be at the center of all business decisions, big or small. And the best way to keep up with the pace of today’s customers is with agile research.
Asking your customers the right questions on a regular basis will allow you to make informed decisions based on real insights and data, not assumptions. Plus, leveraging a CX platform like DISQO's ensures you can gather insights from customers as quickly as possible.
Connect and communicate
To understand customers in a way that is most impactful, it’s critical to collaborate with and align different teams in your organization that benefit from being closer to your customers’ experiences. Today, research work can be extremely siloed within companies, despite sharing a common goal of better understanding your customers to improve their experiences.
Nonetheless, without visibility into other teams’ research initiatives, you are actually limiting your present-day view on the customer experience and potentially missing out on valuable information. By first connecting internally with others who are also trying to learn more about your customers, you gain a better sense of the data that already exists and identify any gaps in understanding that need to be bridged.
For example, current purchase data on your customers tells you what they have done and the actions they have taken. Now, instead of asking them about their purchase history, something you already know, you can use that data to better target people, ask them fewer questions, and make the survey results more impactful by connecting with real data. (If you’re interested in running behaviorally targeted surveys with DISQO, download more information here).
The “X” factor
Understanding the different objectives, tools, and methodologies that cross-functional counterparts are using is necessary to see the full big picture, not just parts of it. You need to know how other people at your company are trying to understand customer experiences.
For example, the CX team might prioritize net promoter score and feedback from existing customers through transactional surveys, while others on the UX team focus more on pain points and solving usability problems. On the other hand, a market researcher might use research for market sizing and segmentation to enable better marketing, as opposed to someone on the business team who works with customers regularly and needs insights to drive commercial conversations and drive revenue, but may not have a research background.
Acknowledge the potential limitations of each individual method or process, and then decide how to combine these different approaches in a way that complements each other. As a result, the collective team is closer to customers and most importantly, the customers are closer to the business decisions.
Ready to take your customer experience research to new levels? Contact us.
Who is considered a customer?
Customer insights can benefit tremendously from simply expanding the way you define your customers. Traditionally, the textbook definition of a customer is a person or organization that buys your product or service. However, this definition is quite narrow. Ask yourself… who am I building my product for? In addition to the customers that currently use your product, think about the customers you maybe once had (and want to win back), along with the customers that you would like to have, now and in the future. Using this broader framework ensures you are conducting the most comprehensive research that will drive real results with your audiences.
Research as a process, not a project
However, it’s important to note that research is not binary. It’s not “either or” and there is no one right approach. Instead, it’s best to think of research as a process, and one that involves continual iteration. Customers are changing everyday, which is why we must constantly get their feedback… fast.
Data delays and reduced speed to insight is a common pitfall. Executives aren’t getting the data they need fast enough and are often forced to make business decisions based on assumptions (in the absence of data). Why? Because they’re not asking customers questions and they aren’t approaching research with an agile mindset. If the goal is to build impactful and meaningful customer experiences, existing and future customers should be at the center of all business decisions, big or small. And the best way to keep up with the pace of today’s customers is with agile research.
Asking your customers the right questions on a regular basis will allow you to make informed decisions based on real insights and data, not assumptions. Plus, leveraging a CX platform like DISQO's ensures you can gather insights from customers as quickly as possible.
Connect and communicate
To understand customers in a way that is most impactful, it’s critical to collaborate with and align different teams in your organization that benefit from being closer to your customers’ experiences. Today, research work can be extremely siloed within companies, despite sharing a common goal of better understanding your customers to improve their experiences.
Nonetheless, without visibility into other teams’ research initiatives, you are actually limiting your present-day view on the customer experience and potentially missing out on valuable information. By first connecting internally with others who are also trying to learn more about your customers, you gain a better sense of the data that already exists and identify any gaps in understanding that need to be bridged.
For example, current purchase data on your customers tells you what they have done and the actions they have taken. Now, instead of asking them about their purchase history, something you already know, you can use that data to better target people, ask them fewer questions, and make the survey results more impactful by connecting with real data. (If you’re interested in running behaviorally targeted surveys with DISQO, download more information here).
The “X” factor
Understanding the different objectives, tools, and methodologies that cross-functional counterparts are using is necessary to see the full big picture, not just parts of it. You need to know how other people at your company are trying to understand customer experiences.
For example, the CX team might prioritize net promoter score and feedback from existing customers through transactional surveys, while others on the UX team focus more on pain points and solving usability problems. On the other hand, a market researcher might use research for market sizing and segmentation to enable better marketing, as opposed to someone on the business team who works with customers regularly and needs insights to drive commercial conversations and drive revenue, but may not have a research background.
Acknowledge the potential limitations of each individual method or process, and then decide how to combine these different approaches in a way that complements each other. As a result, the collective team is closer to customers and most importantly, the customers are closer to the business decisions.
Ready to take your customer experience research to new levels? Contact us.
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