CX Principles.
Tailoring experiences to demonstrate an understanding of the customer’s needs. This can include knowledge of past behaviour and preferences. It is increasingly important to get the balance right between service tailored to the individual and intrusion.
Customers are increasingly looking for convenience and frictionless service. The ease of buying a product or an interaction and the time it takes are crucial to the experience. Effort is made up of four dimensions: time, cognitive, physical and emotional and their relative importance to customers varies by interaction.
Integrity centres on trust and demonstrating trustworthy behaviour, both at an organisational and employee level. Building trust is about being reliable and ensuring beneficial outcomes for both the customer and the brand. Key to this is delivering on promises, managing expectations and acting in the customer’s best interests.
Empathy is about emotional intelligence. Demonstrating an understanding of the customer needs and circumstances. This means putting yourself in the customer shoes and seeing the experience through their eyes – in terms of priorities, hopes and concerns.
The way issues are handled is crucial. It is important to customers that a brand shows ownership, urgency and a clear solution in a reasonable timeframe. How an issue is handled has the power to reverse a poor experience into one that exceeds expectations. All companies will have things go wrong and what is key is how the problems are dealt with.