Delivering an Outstanding Experience through the Customer Journey

3rd July 2019

Delivering an outstanding customer experience (CX) is a crucial factor in enabling success and creating brand loyalty, for the contemporary business. In order to achieve this, an enterprise needs to track and interpret the behavior of their customers and respond appropriately, insight fully and in a highly personalized manner. The best CRM solutions provide companies with the means to monitor customer behavior and provide services that enhance CX and brand loyalty. Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps businesses create the kind of personalized and engaging customer experience that addresses these goals.

The hyper-connected world of today has resulted in a marked evolution in customer expectations, when it comes to services and engagement. It has also generated multiple platforms through which these customers can exchange opinions with each other and share their brand specific experiences. With easy and instant access to the widest possible array of sellers available, it is often customer experience that results in the purchasing decision and brand loyalty. CX encompasses more than customer service or marketing based interactions, it includes every individual touch point between a business and its clients, as well as how the customer perceives these engagements. CX includes all communications between the customer and the business, across every medium and channel, all product and service experiences and the tone and content of all marketing campaigns.

Achieving best-in-class standards through consistency and customer focus

Aspects of CX that a business needs to focus on span the entire customer journey. These include personalized marketing, ensuring customer satisfaction across all interactions and engaging customers with a view to generate a long term relationship and loyalty. In practical terms, the CX initiatives of a business center on orienting the quality of products and services, internal processes and employee practices towards the goal of creating the most desirable customer journey.

CX and the customer journey, by definition, involve the end user’s perception of how well they have been served. A business’ efforts in this direction are largely about ensuring it has optimized enabling factors. In order for an organization to achieve this, it needs to have a unified vision and processes that are coherent with those overarching directives. It is important that an enterprise achieves a high standard of service and consistency of approach and quality across every touch point. Clear communication, synergistic processes and timely service, personalized for each customer, are the practices that generate lasting brand preferences and loyalty. Positive word-of-mouth customer advocacy should be the ultimate goal for a business. Not only does this generate bottom-line value for the business, it is also a great measure of how well the enterprise has engaged with their customers and ensured their desired outcomes. A single negative experience can undermine perception about the entire customer journey, consistent customer focus in service and engagement is the key.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help businesses achieve this standard of consistency in its promotions, loyalty programs and complaints handling procedures. Its ability to integrate with additional solutions in the MS Dynamics suite further enhance this capability. For instance, it can enlist Microsoft Dynamics for Customer Service to ensure a high degree of user enabled interactivity using portals and platforms, including self-checkout, assistance requests and chatbot queries. Solutions like Power BI and Dynamics 365 AI for sales can ensure that feedback, surveys and records of previous activity can be interpreted by overlaid AI to predict future customer behavior.

An optimal Customer Journey is significantly affected by your choice of CRM solution.

Delivering consistently across the parameters that ensure excellence in CX is best achieved through automation. Comprehensive CRM solutions that can assist in the delivery of a high quality, coherent and consistent customer experience across all platforms, media and channels should include the following salient features:

• Centralized storage of Customer Data. Fractured and decentralized storage of data relating to customer preferences and behavior across various touch point introduces inevitable inconsistencies. A centralized repository allows for the creation of actionable insights and consistent outcomes.
• Empowered decision making and coordination. An effective CRM solution aligns decision making and coordinates teams to address the organization’s desired customer experience outcomes. It also acts as a mechanism that disseminates insights accessibly to all stakeholders, harmonizing actions across teams.
• Enhanced and customized marketing. CRM solutions provide a data rich environment for the management of multi-channel, data driven and trend leveraging marketing that can be personalized for each customer. The ability to coordinate relevant messaging across social media and mobile platforms has been particularly effective in enriching customer engagement and experience, in recent years.
• Fully Integrated Customer Support and Relationship Management. Modern CRM solutions play a crucial part in enabling an organization to be responsive and proactive in its customer engagement. Timely and specific interaction plays a significant role in enhancing the perceived quality of customer experience.

Conclusion

Creating a best in class customer experience can significantly differentiate a business from its competitors. In a market that has empowered customers with limitless choices and instant access, well-coordinated, consistent and user specific customer experiences are a non-negotiable tool for enabling business success.

To understand how Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM can help your business deliver optimal customer experience, please reach out to us at marketing@levtechconsulting.com.