The CX Mistake that Could be Holding You Back

The customers of P.C. (pre-COVID-19) are not the same as customers of today. They’ve changed—and so have their purchasing habits. A quick example of this new behavior is the rise in e-commerce sales. In recent years, e-commerce had already been rising, but the difference in one year is startling. Comparing 2019 to 2020, e-commerce saw a $52 billion increase, and BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store) showed 195% growth in May 2020 against the previous year. And it looks like the popularity of this shopping method is going to remain. According to a recent Forbes article, “…online purchasing trends formed during the pandemic may see permanent adoption.”

Shifts in customer behavior like this have inspired organizations to rethink their digital customer experience (CX). As customer interactions become increasingly digital, many companies are turning to CX to create exceptional customer experiences and build brand loyalty. They are investing more time and money into creating data analytics dashboards to better understand how customers are buying, when they’re buying, and more. However, while these companies are on the right track, some are making a critical customer experience mistake: They fail to identify and define specific CX goals before determining what data needs to be gathered and analyzed, which is critical for measuring, analyzing, and continuously improving the customer experience.

Here’s how to set your organization up for success by defining goals and ensuring that you know what data is needed.

Why CX Goals Matter

CX is key to revenue growth, increased engagement, strengthened brand loyalty, and more, which explains why organizations are focused on improving their customers’ experiences. But they often don’t know what success looks like, or how to measure it.

One of the best ways to avoid making this customer experience mistake is to have a clear CX vision. To get started, your leadership team must clearly define what success looks like. For some, it’s building a loyal customer base, while for others it’s lead generation or conversions. Once leadership decides on a destination to work toward, you can work backward to establish the goals that will get you there.

Having a clear vision and defined goals is the first step toward improving your CX. Once you understand what success looks like for your CX, you’ll need to know how to leverage data to continuously improve the customer experience and work toward those goals.

Cultivate a Culture That’s Comfortable Testing CX and Pivoting Quickly

With clearly defined objectives, your company can create measurable targets and track progress using purposeful data that can be translated into actionable insights. For example, if your key goal is to improve customer retention through an optimized e-commerce experience, the team could experiment with post-purchase engagement programs. Looking at the data, you can determine what customers would want and then design, test, and adjust against that.

Organizations also need to be flexible and agile to give the customer the experience they desire and find ways to keep them coming back. There are core elements to every business model that stay true in the journey, but the rest can be modified and reinvented to create a CX that differentiates your company. Adidas is an exemplar company that has integrated an agile-CX framework to help it translate its objectives into reality through continuous testing and implementation. Through its efforts, Adidas reduces the risk of failure for its organization, encourages teams to frequently test, and learns ways to optimize the CX.

Overall, it’s important to create a culture that’s comfortable taking responsible risks and experimenting with new approaches. You need to build a team that can identify the right data to provide meaningful measurement toward your target goals and quickly pivot to improve the customer journey.

Take the Next CX Steps

Are you worried that you’re making a critical customer experience mistake? RevGen Partners can help your company create a data-driven CX strategy and give your teams insights into optimizing your CX. Connect with us today to design optimal customer experiences that deliver revenue growth.

Brittany Thomas is a senior consultant at RevGen Partners specializing in customer experience. She helps organizations build customer-centric teams and data-driven solutions that create positive experiences for both customers and employees.

Dana Watson is a manager at RevGen Partners with broad experience in business transformation, change enablement, and strategic planning. She is passionate about partnering with clients to help drive business value and improve customer experiences through transformation initiatives.