What Does It Take to Create a Memorable Customer Experience?

When a user visits a website for the first time, a connection must be made almost instantly. To create the opportunity for this to occur between brand and customer, there is a lot that must be accomplished behind the scenes. From client management to strategy and design teams – getting to the end result requires multiple talents, tasks and layers to make it possible.

The one constant that each stakeholder in the process of a developing site should be working around is customer experience. Take note, as CX is something that will be a huge focus in 2016. A website can look great and function well technically – but it’s a customer experience strategy that can help to ensure longevity and a better ROI for the company and the site itself.

Though customer experience should be applied to all aspects of both design and development, there are a few specific areas that should be focused on to create the most seamless process and ultimate representation of a brand or company.

Integration

All touchpoints should provide integrated and consistent messaging to create a wholistic system that extends trust to the user. A cohesive experience is now expected across all devices and contacts – from mobile, customer service, chat, email, sales and fulfillment. This requires a fully collaborative and organized system to create a bridge from each department to the next.

Infrastructure

It’s not all about the front-end flash, imagery and content. The structure behind the scenes working to support the experience with intelligent data and analytics is paramount to customer experience. Utilizing smart data from resources such as Google Analytics and various sources can provide critical insights such as mapping,feedback and cataloging that can deliver a more intuitive experience for the user and better engagement for the site.

Personalization

Visiting a website doesn’t have to be a cold, impersonal pursuit. With the use of analytics, intelligent data and customer serivice, a company can now simulate an in store or in person experience by offering up  engagement opportunities. Its important for the user to know that the brand acknolwledges their presence or visit to the site by offering up familiar cues.

User-First

There are countless opportunities for engaging with the user – most of which go unused. Many sites have no connection with the user other than the exchange of an email (if they even get to that point), and even then the majority of companies don’t even utilize that simple data. If a user visits a site – chances are they want to engage with a brand. Gathering feedback from them about their experience to make it better in the future lets them know a company is thinking about them and wants to interact with them. Many times, just the connection of the company reaching out is enough to make the user come back again.

Make no mistake, customer experience is a multi layered pursuit that requires a great deal of organization and strategy. A company must have some sort of top-down system in place before working with a creative team to integrate this into their digital platform. For the team, critically listening to a clients goals and current challenges will begin to catalyze a system wide CX approach and ultimately deliver a delightful experience to the user.