Improving customer experience (CX) has been a primary focus for many companies for years, so it’s not a surprise that there are a plethora of customer experience solutions that aim to help businesses better understand their customers to deliver exceptional experiences.

And that makes sense – CX is a competitive differentiator for most companies, and to maintain an advantage, many are turning to sophisticated customer experience solutions to engage customers, collect solicited and unsolicited customer feedback, and translate CX data into actionable insights. In this blog, we’ll discuss the importance of positive CX and how to select the best customer experience solutions for your business’s needs.

Whitepaper

CallMiner CX Landscape Report

Discover how practitioners around the globe using data, analysis & AI to improve customer experience based on this landmark survey from CallMiner.

Read on to learn:

• Why is customer experience important?
• What are the different types of customer experience solutions?
• What to look for when choosing customer experience solutions
• How to get the most value from your customer experience solutions
• Frequently asked questions

Why is customer experience important?

CX has long been recognized as a competitive differentiator. According to Gartner, two-thirds of marketers responsible for CX reported that their companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience. Additionally, 81% of marketers reported that they expected to be mainly or solely competing on the basis of customer experience within the following two years.

Another survey conducted by SuperOffice found that 86% of buyers are willing to pay a premium price for a premium customer experience. For luxury and indulgence services, consumers willingly pay price premiums up to 13% – sometimes as much as 18%.

It works the other way, too: About one-third of consumers would walk away from a brand they love after a single negative experience.

While the focus on CX isn’t new, growing awareness of the importance of customer experience means that many companies are stepping up their game. However, companies continue to face challenges related to collecting customer feedback and effectively leveraging this data to improve CX. According to the CallMiner CX Landscape Report 2023, 50% of organizations lack effective cross-departmental collaboration when aligning on customer feedback and CX data, and 84% of survey respondents say they believe company leadership should be making better use of CX data.

In order to maintain a competitive edge, companies must continuously refine and improve the customer experience to increase customer loyalty and retention and drive revenue. With customer experience playing such a significant role in a company’s success, investing in the right customer experience solutions is vital.

What are the different types of customer experience solutions?

#GenerativeAI is impacting a range of industries, including the contact center and #CX.

CallMiner CMO, Eric Williamson, shared stats with @CMSWire from our CX Landscape Report that indicate #AI velocity will need to be paired with responsibility in 2024: https://t.co/1hML4OZKHL

— CallMiner, Inc. (@CallMiner) December 19, 2023

Customer experience solutions encompass a variety of tools and strategies aimed at enhancing the interaction between a business and its customers. These solutions are designed to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement. Some of the most commonly used CX solutions include:

• Conversation intelligence solutions
• Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions
• Customer feedback and survey tools
• Customer support and helpdesk software
• Social media management tools
• Customer journey mapping tools
• Chatbots and AI assistants
• Customer experience analytics
• Customer loyalty and rewards solutions

What to look for when choosing customer experience solutions

1. Look for a CX solution that offers omnichannel customer experience analytics. “Omnichannel customer experience analytics collects and analyzes data from multiple channels, such as social media, call center interactions, email, and more. By analyzing multiple data sources at the same time, companies gain valuable context that isn’t available when a single data source is analyzed in a silo.

“In other words, omnichannel customer experience analytics provides a more comprehensive view of customer data, making it possible to derive actionable insights and make data-driven business decisions to optimize performance, from providing better customer service to informing market expansion and new product development.” - What is omnichannel customer experience analytics, and how should you use it?, CallMiner; Twitter/X: @CallMiner

2. Evaluate your current situation to determine what you need from a CX solution. “A good starting point will be to ask yourself: Is my current state of customer service helping or hurting my business? What are the different ways in which my customers come in contact with my brand? What is the level of experience they have at each of these contact points? How can I improve my processes to be more customer-focused? What will be my new rules when dealing with customers? How can I measure the effectiveness of such a program?” - Deployment of Customer Experience Tools, Customer Experience TouchPoints Group; Twitter/X: @CXTouchpoints

3. Look for a customer experience solution that’s easy to configure. “Can you do it quickly without having to dig into the code? Do you have access to software developers and designers to implement your survey program?

“If a system is too complicated to implement, it can keep your team away from the work that they were hired for.

“When vetting a solution, consider the internal resources at your disposal. A self-serve experience management software platform might be what you need to get your program off the ground.” - How to choose the best customer experience management software for your business, Delighted by Qualtrics; Twitter/X: @delighted

4. Customer experience solutions that offer automation can help to streamline your workflows. “Automation and workflow management features in a customer experience software enable businesses to streamline repetitive tasks and processes. For instance, tickets can be routed to the right person in the right department based on their skill-set.. Automations reduce the workload of your agents so they can complete their tasks without feeling stressed. This directly impacts the quality of support your customers receive and the kind of experience they have.” - Aryan, 10 Best Customer Experience Software in 2024, Hiver; Twitter/X: @hiverhq

5. Consider a customer experience solution with predictive capabilities. “Best practice calls for three guiding principles to help optimize customer-experience measurement:

Measure the customer experience at the journey level, rather than at the level of touchpoints or overall satisfaction.

Invest in hardwired technology that captures feedback on a daily basis from multiple channels, integrating survey results and other data into comprehensive dashboards.

Cultivate a mindset of continuous improvement at all levels.

“Depending on the level of CX adoption within an organization, consider the power of predicting CX, which can help you stay ahead of customer churn and dissatisfaction. Why? Survey-based systems alone don’t necessarily meet the needs of today’s companies; they’re limited, reactive, ambiguous, and unfocused. Predictive customer insight may unlock more powerful insights to improve customer experiences.” - What is CX?, McKinsey & Company; Twitter/X: @McKinsey

6. Understand the customer first to inform technology purchasing decisions. “By understanding the customer first, you can set the stage for higher adoption and greater scale when the company does invest in new technology. To drive positive impact in the form of customer loyalty and financial returns, progressive CX leaders ask the questions: ‘What customer objectives do we need to support? How can we use technology to support those objectives? And what types of skills are needed outside of technology?’” - Drive Loyalty and Growth With an Effective, Sustainable CX Strategy, Gartner; Twitter/X: @Gartner_inc

7. Choose a customer experience solution that helps you collect customer feedback. “You may know some theory behind what makes good and bad CX, but for it to make an impact on your business, you need to have a reliable method of collecting insight from your customers so you can take action and make impactful changes.

“Customer feedback is information you collect from your customers about their experience with your product, service, website, or business as a whole. You can use this feedback to improve customer experience by removing or reducing areas of friction, cultivating positive touchpoints, and creating pleasant in-store or digital experiences.

“You're probably already collecting customer feedback without realizing it: when a customer sends an email, calls your customer support team, or leaves a review on social media, that's feedback. The problem is, if that feedback and other valuable customer data is not measured and analyzed, you're missing out on the opportunity to use it to improve customer experience and leverage its growth potential.” - What is customer experience and why you should improve it, Hotjar; Twitter/X: @hotjar

8. Look for a customer experience solution that leverages AI and data analytics. “These tools improve data interpretation, customer segmentation and help create more personalized experiences along the customer journey.

“Such strategic processes are key to helping brands respond to the more intensive demands of customers in our present consumer climate. According to the 2022 Digital-First Customer Experience Report, 95% of consumers believe customer service impacts their brand loyalty, rating easy access, self-service and professional customer service agents as important factors.

“However, this is no surprise. Customer loyalty is intrinsically linked to a seamless customer experience, which can now be tailored and customized to suit the needs of individual shoppers by leveraging an AI customer experience solution strategy.” - Joanna Clark-Simpson, AI Customer Experience Solutions: Using Emerging Technologies, CMSWire; Twitter/X: @cmswire

9. Choose a customer experience solution that offers insight into customer effort. “Besides the overall satisfaction with your product or service, there are countless daily interactions your customers have with you. This is where the Customer Effort Score comes in as part of your customer experience strategy.

“CES measures how difficult a task is to perform within your product or service. In other words, how much effort your customers have to put in to resolve their problem or achieve something with what you offer.

“You can measure the CES:

• during onboarding
• when launching a new feature
• when a customer tries a core part of your product or service
• after getting in touch with the customer service team
• at any other touchpoint.

“When measured correctly, CES shows you whether you’re doing a good job with your UX, UI, timing, and your customer service team.” - Mile Zivkovic, 6 Great Customer Experience Goals To Set and Aim for in 2023, Survicate; Twitter/X: @Survicate

10. Consider CX solutions that help you map the customer journey. “The best customer experience strategy focuses on providing an exceptional experience throughout a customer’s journey with you. From the moment a target buyer discovers your product, to how they interact with your sales and support team—each touchpoint plays a significant role in winning a customer.

“But you can’t deliver a seamless customer experience if you don’t understand how customers interact with your business from start to finish.

“Creating a customer journey map gives you a visual overview of how customers learn about your product or service, and how they interact with your brand—which helps identify which business aspects support a good customer experience, and which touchpoints need improvements.

“A customer journey map also tells you: How your customer feels at the end of an interaction; How and when to follow up with customers to grow the relationship further” - How to build a customer experience roadmap for your CX strategy, Hotjar; Twitter/X: @hotjar

11. Look beyond traditional segmentation. “Creating a human and emotional connection is not simple. It requires companies to look beyond traditional segmentation to uncover the mindset, lifestyle, and broader circumstances of individuals. Luckily, there are powerful enablers that help companies zero in on what matters to, and resonates with, each customer.

“CX leaders invest in human-centered design and employ its techniques, such as engaging customers in the design process, to better understand the emotions that come into play and respond accordingly. They unleash data and AI to reveal the differences between customers and create more personalized experiences. And they know that creating and reacting to this deeper, more nuanced understanding of their customers is a dynamic process. So CX leaders continually test, learn, and iterate—in an agile way—to ultimately deliver the best solutions for each customer.” - Christine Astorino, Karen Lellouche Tordjman, Phil Gerrard, Dutch MacDonald, Julie Hess, Barbara Haen, and Rob Bell, Don’t Just Improve Your Customer Experience. Future-Proof It., Boston Consulting Group (BCG); Twitter/X: @BCG

12. Choose a customer experience solution that mines data from every interaction. “Every customer interaction should be tied to a business goal regardless of the outcome of the event. For instance, if a customer interacts with a call center and is dissatisfied, there is data to be collected for customer retention.

“At the same time, customers and prospects leave footprints each time they interact with a business. Whether it’s on a website, through an app or leaving comments on social media, marketers have the ability to mine their data and understand intent.

“After collecting a significant enough amount data, it’s easy to analyze the results for the customer. Are they likely to buy and less likely to use customer service? What is the best way to market to them based on interaction? Are they prone to upsells or are they more likely to need heightened support?” - The What, Why & How of the 360-Degree Customer View, Digital Marketing Institute; Twitter/X: @dmigroup

13. Leverage social listening solutions to create unique customer experiences. “Social media platforms are a great way for setting up amazing customer experience examples. It helps to engage with your customers in a conversational way and fetch consumer insights.

“By using various social listening tools like Hootsuite, brands can understand their customer preferences and can use them to enhance the customer experience.

“Tommee Tippee responded to a tweet that went viral for a sippy cup.

“What did Tommee Tippee cups do?

“Ben Carter, an autistic child used to drink only from the Tommee Tippee sippy cup. His father was looking for the replacement of a Tommee Tippee sippy cup that was a limited edition. He tweeted with a hashtag saying #cupsforBen and the tweet went viral gathering thousands of retweets and likes. Finally, Tommee Tippee declared to create a limited run of 500 of the discontinued cups, especially for Ben.

“How a simple hashtag can make things happen.” - Snigdha Patel, 10 Innovative Customer Experience Examples, REVE Chat; Twitter/X: @REVEChat

How to get the most value from your customer experience solutions

14. The right CX solution gives you insights throughout the customer journey. “Omnichannel analytics delivers intelligence about every touchpoint on every channel, allowing businesses to take steps to improve customer experiences throughout their entire journey. Omnichannel analytics also provides contact center agents with a complete picture of each customer’s interactions with the business.” - What Is Omnichannel Conversational Analytics?, CallMiner; Twitter/X: @CallMiner

15. Leverage your customer experience solution to provide a seamless omnichannel customer experience. “As your business builds out a variety of touchpoints (spanning mediums, locations, etc.), it takes on an omnichannel approach. This omnichannel customer experience can vary drastically in quality depending on the touchpoints that individual customers choose for interaction with your brand.

“An optimized omnichannel experience streamlines interactions between a brand and its customers across all touchpoints to create a seamless experience throughout the entire customer journey. Of course, this is often easier said than done. Each touchpoint your business builds its services around must be approached differently for it to be truly beneficial, all while keeping the customer journey consistent despite these necessary differences. Whether your business combines e-commerce with brick-and-mortar service or offers customer support over multiple mediums, planning out an omnichannel strategy is critical to its success.” - Understanding and driving omnichannel customer experience, CallMiner; Twitter/X: @CallMiner

16. Have a clear customer experience vision. “The first step in your customer experience strategy is to have a clear customer-focused vision that you can communicate with your organization. The easiest way to define this vision is to create a set of statements that act as guiding principles.

“For example, Zappos use their core family values and these values are embedded into their culture, which includes delivering wow through service, being humble and embracing change.

“Once these principles are in place, they will drive the behavior of your organization. Every member of your team should know these principles by heart and they should be embedded into all areas of training and development.” - Steven Macdonald, How a Customer Experience Strategy Helps Scale Revenue Growth (and Achieve Profitability), SuperOffice; Twitter/X: @SuperOffice

17. A dedicated customer experience solution helps to bridge silos. “Customer experience management involves a huge quantity of information that must be managed and acted on 24/7. What you learn from your CX program must be turned into action and used to make positive change, often in a very short timeframe. In addition, doing CX well means working across a broad range of business areas, from customer service to logistics to marketing.

“Having a dedicated customer experience management platform in place gives you the means to bridge across those silos and connect the right people to the right information at the right time in a strategic manner, leading to increased revenue and happier customers.” - Your guide to customer experience management software, Qualtrics XM; Twitter/X: @Qualtrics

18. Real-time data helps you resolve concerns before they become major issues. “ CX software instantly notifies businesses when customers raise a concern or give feedback. These real-time alerts help solve grievances on time. For instance, if a customer has given negative feedback, companies can apologize immediately and offer gift vouchers or discount coupons to prevent churn.” - Customer Experience Software Buyers Guide, Capterra; Twitter/X: @Capterra

19. Use CX solutions to increase customer loyalty and foster brand advocacy. “When customers have positive experiences with your business, they are more likely to become loyal advocates who promote your brand to others. Customer experience software helps you nurture these relationships and foster long-term loyalty.” - Vilma Estrellado, 10 best customer experience software to use in 2024, Outsource Accelerator; Twitter/X: @outsourceaccel

20. Push beyond traditional CX strategies. “To remain relevant and compete in today’s ever-changing world, customer experience strategies need to be top of mind for every stakeholder in your business. From management to marketing to sales to service, everyone across front- and back-office functions needs to be invested in delivering a life-centric customer experience.

“By taking the company’s existing assets (such as talent, data and technology) and rewiring them for more coordinated action, internal operations become simplified in pursuit of a common goal. Internal alignment lets companies pursue an external strategy that maximizes customer experience.

“This is a pivotal moment for the C-suite. Leaders who push beyond traditional CX strategies and redefine their organizations, not just by which products or services they sell and offer, but with a life-centric approach to understanding and meeting customer needs, will emerge stronger and ignite growth in their organizations.” - Introduction to customer experience, Accenture; Twitter/X: @Accenture_US

21. Find areas to automate while understanding where human interaction is key. “Look for touchpoints where automation can provide a better customer experience. Take a close look at the interactions you have with customers. Which touchpoints benefit from human interaction? Which could be improved with automation?

“Years ago, if one of our customers had an error or failure in their data center, they would have to pick up the phone and call for service. The support specialist would open a ticket in our call center, and an engineer would follow up with the customer to review the issue and identify the next steps. Now we’ve digitized the entire process. Our customer’s technology is directly connected to our monitoring solution. When their equipment has a problem, our system automatically diagnoses the error, creates a ticket, and pages the engineer to call the customer — all without the need to pick up the phone or send an email.

“The human connection is essential for certain interactions. For instance, customers want to talk to a person and not a bot during an emergency outage. We give each customer the option to automate their support or speak to a human when they want to.” - Todd Piper, How To Improve Customer Experiences With IT Solutions, Forbes; Twitter/X: @Forbes

22. Create feedback loops for both customer and employee feedback. “Customer feedback loops are when businesses use the feedback they get from customers to improve their products or processes. This can illuminate what’s working well and what needs improvement. Asking for feedback provides valuable insight into customer expectations and how you can better meet them. Acting on that feedback shows your customers that you value their opinions.

“Additionally, businesses can create internal employee feedback loops that make it easy for agents to combine and share feedback—actions that can shine a light on any challenges in delivering great customer service. For example, there could be policies or processes that don’t suit customer needs or friction between siloed teams that slow down issue resolution.” - Heather Wintermantel, Customer experience: A comprehensive guide for 2024, Zendesk; Twitter/X: @Zendesk

23. Automate repetitive tasks to give your team more time to develop and strengthen customer relationships. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a critical component for nearly all enterprise-level business technologies to remain competitive. The results of a recent McKinsey study showed that businesses leading in the deployment of AI keep investing in it, and budgets are expected to increase by another 10% to 15% in 2022. The most common use of AI we see is the automation of menial tasks. When deployed in CRM applications, AI can handle simple, repetitive tasks so the sales team can focus their time and effort on developing customer relationships and ensuring they’re getting what they need.

“Automation of those simple tasks not only makes your team more efficient but also helps eliminate small mistakes sales team members can make. Eliminating human error from daily processes, such as the creation of custom quotes, creates a better relationship with your customers. An efficiently deployed CRM platform can improve customer relationships by helping make every procedure a smooth one.” - Khadim Batti, Using CRM Tools To Improve The Customer Experience, Forbes; Twitter/X: @Forbes

24. Cross-functional collaboration is key to delivering an exceptional customer experience. “Consistent delivery across the journey can be a challenge, often increased by a business’ siloed operations. Until the entire business understand their impact on customers’ experience, progress will be limited. For example, billing and credit operations might see themselves as removed from frontline delivery – but to a customer, difficult billing experiences can override positive store or digital experiences.

“Cross-functional experience governance helps the business to break down those silos and improve the customer journey experience in meaningful ways. Committing to a customer centric view helps to realign existing processes and allows the business to deliver improved experiences. An effective and productive customer experience strategy is built on that multi-disciplined engagement; making certain employees understand that each person in some way touch that experience.” - What is CX? Your ultimate guide to customer experience, Qualtrics XM; Twitter/X: @Qualtrics

25. Profile your prospective customers. “A solid first step for most customer-facing processes—not just CX—is to profile your prospective customers. Marketers, product managers, and user experience designers all frequently begin their process with some type of ideal customer profile, or ICP.

“An ICP gathers key demographic data and characteristics about your customer in one place, where it can be used to help teams better understand who their target customers are. An ICP for any team typically includes:

• A basic background
• Demographics (age, gender, income, job title, location, education, family, etc.)
• Common challenges or pain points
• Objectives or goals

“For example, if you invented a real-life Rosey the Robot, your ideal customer profile might be George Jetson, a middle-class working father who doesn't have the time to keep up with his house chores while also working overtime to fund his wife's inconvenient wallet-snatching habit. This is the information you would use to create the basic structure of your ICP.

“Beyond these basics, ICPs for different processes and different product types may include different pieces of information. For example, the CX team will want to add lifestyle information, like the length of George's commute and the fact that his car folds up into a briefcase. The user experience team, on the other hand, won't care very much about what George is up to outside of his direct interactions with Rosey.” - Amanda Pell, What is CX? Customer experience management 101, Zapier; Twitter/X: @zapier

Creating an exceptional customer experience begins with gaining an in-depth understanding of your customers and the customer journey. A robust conversation intelligence solution like CallMiner monitors 100% of customer interactions across channels. By delivering valuable insights gleaned from both solicited and unsolicited customer feedback, CallMiner provides a deeper understanding of your customers throughout the entire customer journey.

Frequently asked questions

What is a customer experience solution?

Customer experience solutions are tools, technologies, and strategies designed to improve and manage the interactions and experiences customers have with a business. A customer experience solution aims to enhance customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement by ensuring positive interactions at every touchpoint in the customer journey, from first contact to post-purchase support.

What are customer experience metrics?

Customer experience metrics are quantitative measures used to gauge how well a business is performing in the eyes of its customers. Some of the most commonly used CX metrics include:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer willingness to recommend a product or service.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Assesses how satisfied customers are with a product, service, or experience.
• Customer Effort Score (CES): Evaluates how easy it is for customers to do business with a company.
• Customer Churn Rate or Customer Retention Rate: Customer churn rate measures the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company. Conversely, customer retention rate measures the percentage of customers the business has retained during a specified period.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Predicts the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.

What is an example of customer experience?

One example of customer experience is a customer shopping online on an e-commerce website. The experience includes navigating the website, searching for products, reading reviews, making a purchase, interacting with customer service if needed, receiving the product, and any follow-up communication or support.

A positive customer experience in this scenario might include an intuitive website interface, helpful product recommendations, an easy checkout process, prompt delivery, and efficient post-sale support.

Who handles customer experience?

Customer experience is typically managed by a cross-functional team within an organization, often led by a Customer Experience Manager, Chief Experience Officer (CXO), or a similar role. This team collaborates closely with various departments such as sales, marketing, customer service, product development, and IT.

Each department plays a critical role in shaping the customer experience:

• Marketing communicates brand values.
• Sales provides purchasing experiences.
• Customer service offers support and resolves issues.
• Product teams ensure quality and usability.
• IT supports the digital aspects of the experience.

In other words, while there may be a dedicated team or individual overseeing the strategy, effective customer experience management involves the entire organization working together to ensure a positive, consistent, and seamless experience for the customer at every touchpoint.