Published on 02/27/2025 – Last Updated on 02/27/2025 by OTC
These fundamental steps to a customer experience strategy will help sure long-term loyalty for your customers.
Organizations know they need to provide experiences that build loyalty among customers and employees, but until now, measuring the return on their experience investments has been fragmented and difficult. The Return on Total Experience Framework gives organizations the resources and road map they need for a holistic view of experiences, outcomes, and ROI on their experience investments, so they can make data-driven experience decisions going forward.
Think about the last time you chose one service over another… Was your decision driven by price, product quality, or convenience? No matter the reason, the overall experience was likely the deciding factor. Isn’t it? When done right, it fosters trust, loyalty, and advocacy. However, when neglected, it drives customers to competitors, increasing churn and acquisition costs.
Here’s the crux: customers are 3.5 times more likely to recommend a company that delivers valuable experiences.
So, as a business leader, the question isn’t whether you need a customer experience strategy — it’s whether your current people-first approach delivers a positive impact. Maybe it’s time to rethink it not as a collection of disconnected initiatives but as a core element of your business model that influences every aspect of your operation. This blog post outlines five actionable ways to create a customer experience strategy.
Let’s be honest: understanding what your customers truly need isn’t always straightforward — sometimes, they don’t even know themselves. But that’s okay; it’s not their job to spell it out for you. It’s yours to uncover what drives their decisions.
Imagine walking in their shoes.
What’s their experience like when they interact with your business? Is it smooth, or are there bumps along the way?
While interviews and surveys are effective starting points, they aren’t enough to bridge the gap between what customers want and what you provide. Therefore, shift from generic questions to scenario-based ones to prompt meaningful responses.
For example, instead of asking, “How satisfied are you with our service?” try this: “If you had an issue with your order, what would a quick and ideal resolution look like to you?”
Evaluate your customers’ experience at every stage—where might they face friction? For example, if you’re selling on Etsy, could abandoned carts stem from unclear shipping costs? Or are your customization options confusing?
Once these insights are in place, set SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound — to address pain points effectively.
One could be to “reduce cart abandonment by 15% within the next three months by improving shipping cost visibility.” This would tie your CX efforts to a tangible outcome rather than more assumptions.
Equip your customer service team to create wow moments
A single bad experience can drive away a third of loyal customers. Prevent this by fostering your team’s competence and confidence across every channel. Give them the right skills and tools to handle any complex queries. Develop programs that help them adapt their communication style to each platform’s expectations, such as using concise and friendly language in chat while adopting a professional and empathetic tone on calls.
Investment in online training software is essential to help your team learn the nuances of different customer service contexts through customizable modules, real-time feedback and scenario-based learning. You can even take it a step further by supporting them with undergraduate or graduate student loans to encourage them to pursue professional education. This approach allows your business to benefit from up-skilled employees and shows your employees that your business is invested in their professional growth.
Don’t just stop at training.
Use AI-powered tools to make their job easier. Verizon, a telecom provider, uses generative AI to improve customer service and reduce churn.
Predicting why a customer calls with 80% accuracy connects them to the right agent from its 60,000-strong team. This reduces call handling times and makes the experience smoother for customers.
This approach was expected to help Verizon retain 100,000 customers in 2024 by addressing issues faster, offering personalized support, and saving about seven minutes per store visit.
Design customer incentives that go beyond the obvious
Price isn’t the sole driver of loyalty. Customers stick with businesses that align with their values, combine at-scale and personalized experiences, and offer meaningful rewards. Let’s look at this from a B2B marketplace perspective.
Review your customers’ journey from start to finish and find moments to surprise and delight them.
Could you offer tiered pricing to encourage bigger orders?
Or perhaps reward early payments to improve cash flow for both sides?
What about returns? Instead of seeing them as a headache, can you make this process frictionless for your customers?
Holger Sindbaek, serial entrepreneur and the founder of the brain training platform Online Solitaire, says, “In an industry where every app offers the same ‘points for play’ incentives, standing out is a challenge. I quickly realized that traditional rewards weren’t enough to keep players engaged — they were just going through the motions.
“So, we shifted our focus from generic incentives to creating personal milestones that genuinely matter to our players. We introduced unique in-game challenges that rewarded players for reaching personal achievements, not just for time spent. This approach turned playtime into a journey, sparking deeper engagement and reducing churn. Players weren’t just collecting rewards but experiencing real progress and satisfaction,” Sindbaek said.
The takeaway? Incentives that reflect your customers’ priorities create deeper connections than discounts ever could.
Team up with partners, suppliers and tech platforms
You can’t just think about winning customers by outperforming your competitors. You must take advantage of your ecosystem’s strengths. Whether you want to expand into new markets, adopt cutting-edge technology or optimize your logistical operations, the right partnerships can help you achieve your goals faster and more effectively.
Take Starbucks as an example. When entering India, a tea-dominated market, they partnered with Tata, the country’s largest business conglomerate, to leverage their supply chain, distribution and fulfillment networks and market-specific research expertise. Meanwhile, they partnered differently in China, using insights from regional collaborators to position themselves as an aspirational lifestyle brand for young, middle-class customers. They introduced tea-based beverages, incorporated local flavors into their menu and emphasized their stores as premium, social gathering spaces rather than just coffee shops.
Your business partnerships might mean working with a technology platform to streamline customer data management or co-creating products with suppliers for a broader market reach. Success lies in defining mutual objectives and ensuring alignment.
Measure business-critical CX metrics
How do you know your customer experience strategy is working? Guesswork won’t do any wonders here. You need to analyze proper metrics to gain clarity on what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus next, including:
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service.
Customer Effort Score (CES) evaluates how easy it is for them to achieve their goals when interacting with your business.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) tracks satisfaction with specific interactions or products, helping you measure changes in customer happiness over time.
Customer Sentiment Analysis uses AI to evaluate customer interactions, identifying positive or negative sentiments to help businesses understand customer satisfaction and areas needing improvement.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) measures the total revenue a business can reasonably expect from a single customer throughout their entire relationship with the company.
For instance, CLV is at the heart of delivering an exceptional experience. As one of the leading companies in direct-to-film transfers, they emphasize securing loyalty and repeat business.
To make it happen, they monitor customer reorders and participation in their “Rewards” program, which gives customers five times the points on every order and unlocks exclusive perks and promotions.
By combining insights from this data with direct feedback, ‘rewards’ can pinpoint its most valuable customers and fine-tune its offerings accordingly.
For someone who has been in the business long enough, you’ll agree there’s no shortcut to getting your customer experience strategy right. But what you can do is set clear metrics, collaborate across teams, and ensure your CX strategy evolves as customer behaviors and market conditions change. Your time and energy in your customers today will define their loyalty to you tomorrow.
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