When competition is relentless, customer experience (CX) plays a critical role in shaping a company’s future. From influencing brand reputation to driving customer loyalty, it can have a significant impact on business growth.

But the way people interact with brands has changed drastically over the past few years, with customer service evolving from in-store and telephone customer service to self-service apps and generative AI.

Here, we’ll look at the rapidly changing world of CX, the benefits of having a strong CX and the strategies that will ensure your customers keep coming back.

Driving consistency across a multichannel customer experience

Ten years ago, CX was a one-to-one in-person experience. You walked into a bank and engaged with a teller or a wealth advisor. As technology has advanced, so has the availability of multiple channels, from in-store to online and mobile. This has allowed customers to define what is most important to them within the customer service experience. Businesses need to embrace the fact that customers will use more than one channel and must provide them with a seamless and consistent experience across all channels.

Some companies see technology as an opportunity to disintermediate the relationship between a business and a customer. But whether you’re providing a new service or supporting an existing product, the key to a great CX is to fulfill a customer’s need quickly and flawlessly across any channel, and this goes deeper than finding the right technology.

Understanding your customer

Being able to respond to your customers’ needs at speed means being able to anticipate what they might be looking for next. For example, if you're a retailer, providing customers with the option to apply for a store credit card at the point of purchase streamlines the process and improves customer satisfaction. In the same way, offering financial services that are closely aligned with your core products or services will enhance the overall CX, and will make customers less likely to switch to competitors if they can conveniently access financial services through your platform. This increased loyalty translates into repeat business and long-term relationships.

Whether you're a bank serving your customers or an online retailer, you need to start by building a relationship with your customers. Ask yourself:

• Who is my customer?
• What are they going through when they’re looking at buying my product?
• How do they want to interact with my business?
• What are their preferences now and in the future?
• What kind of insights or expertise do they need?

Some customer relationships are transactional, and a customer might just want you to service a product. But most customers care deeply about personal connections and relationships. You need to get to know your customer, understand their environment and provide a personalized experience.

One of the easiest things to overlook is asking for customer feedback. With the client experience, it’s not about the size of your budget as much as it is about knowing which channels are the drivers of successful interactions. You need to continually listen to customer preferences and act on them, so you can understand what they want now and in the future. Then, with every decision you make, you should always ask yourself, “What will this mean for our customers?”

Every interaction counts

Customers need to see the value of a relationship manifest itself in every interaction, no matter how small or big the ask is, and this will ensure they keep on coming back. Your customers need to know they can rely on you whether they have a specific requirement, a rough idea of what they need or a problem to solve.

Let’s say you walk into a store for the first time to buy a pair of eyeglasses, and the optician gives you an upgrade without charging you extra. You feel appreciated before the store has even taken a dollar from you. You’ll leave the premises feeling like the store wants your business for the long term. This is a technique that may only cost a relatively small amount, but it shows appreciation for the customer. And this is what keeps customers coming back.

Deepening customer relationships

Consumers are looking for a more personalized service than ever before. It’s no longer one size fits all. Today, thanks to the proliferation of available data and advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, you can analyze and predict customer behavior quickly and tailor their experience to their specific preferences. As a company, you must prioritize investing in talent and specialized roles in data analysis so that you can take the mass of data that is available and turn it into actionable insights. This will allow consumers to feel that the business knows who they are and what is most important to them. In turn, this will enable you to build a trusted relationship with your customers, ensure they come back and allow you to keep driving growth.