A Customer Experience Roadmap for Success

Your business appears to be thriving and growing. So, why exactly do you need a Customer Experience roadmap?

It’s simple. A CX roadmap is the best way to improve your organization, particularly when the market is crowded and competitive.

Improvement and investment in customer experiences translate into loyalty and dollars that go deeper than the surface. Such a significant component of your overall strategy is a win-win for both you and your customer base, now and in the future.

Reap the Benefits

It’s easy to see the importance of CX strategy in contemporary business culture. Businesses that invest in well-planned customer experiences are able to generate higher levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction. Additionally, CX-focused businesses have more customers that are willing to make continuous purchases over time.

These customers are also less likely to test the waters with other brands while maintaining a willingness to share, refer, and promote your organization. There are major benefits to having a reputable customer experience roadmap.

• Better alignment: When your team is aligned around common goals, it’s easier to deliver a memorable, impactful experience for your biggest fans.
• Top-level guidance: Think of your CX roadmap as a Google Map that guides you to a long-term destination in the most efficient way possible.
• Optimized delivery: A good roadmap outlines how you will deliver the best, most engaging experiences every step of the way, both in the short and the long term.

How do you go about building a successful CX roadmap? In the next section, we’ll explore the essential building blocks and principles of your customer experience roadmap for success.
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Building a Customer Experience Roadmap

When it comes to building a roadmap, focus on your core CX strategy. As a cohesive plan, this strategy needs to address two important concepts: how you’ll improve your CX and how you plan to hit benchmarks along the way.

Where do you begin? That’s easy—start with your customers. A roadmap that’s centered around a VoC (Voice of the Customer) strategy should consider four main action areas.

These action areas form the acronym LIRM: listen, interpret, respond, and monitor.

Listen to Your Customers

Gather Feedback/Talk to Your Customers

Don’t shy away from interviewing customers directly. Develop a system that offers an opportunity to gather continuous feedback throughout the customer journey.

In addition to listening to your customers in one-on-one environments, look at what they say in public. What reviews or testimonials do they post, and what information do they willingly share on social media? These tidbits provide clues to solving customers’ pain points.

Analyze What You’ve Gathered

Seek to understand the data

Once you’ve gathered reliable data from your customers and clients, look for commonalities, trends, and any “red flag” areas. In many scenarios, these are the areas that need the most attention and improvement.

As you comb through results and read honest feedback, strive for empathy with your customers. Think about where they might be coming from, what’s working for them, and what clearly isn’t. To map your CX strategy one step further, think about how to transform your data into actionable insights that improve the experience each customer receives.

Map the customer experience

Map the journey across all four customer stages (Discovery, Consideration, Purchase, and Retention). This involves having insight into your target audience, your company’s branding focus, and how key marketing messages are resonating.

As you visually build a “start to finish” customer experience, account for things like user needs, the problems you’re solving for, and actions users must take to accomplish their goals at each step.

At the end of the day, solutions should match up with key customer pain points along the journey. This alignment (between current frustration and ideal future solution) is why customers choose your business in the first place.

Respond To Issues and Make Your Plan

Identify your goals for improvement

Now it’s time to use constructive data and results for good. Rely on your feedback analysis to identify areas for improvement and build tangible goals around these ideas.

For example, let’s imagine that you want to have a strong nurturing program in place that lets customers know you care about their results. As you map the Retention phase, plan specific actions that brand reps can take to ensure that this goal is achieved.

Establish the timeline and metrics

As part of your CX roadmap, set relevant milestones and benchmarks. Determine both your short- and long-term goals, and always ask yourself:

• Which issues are most urgent?
• What can we implement immediately?
• Which improvements will have the most impact on CX?
• What improvements require more planning and prerequisites?

Then, think about how you will measure the results of your efforts. Remember: If it can’t be measured, it can’t be improved.

Monitor Your Results

Your CX roadmap isn’t a one-and-done proposition. You need to monitor the results of your improvement efforts consistently. This means having organized, reliable, and transparent data available to all personnel on your CX teams.

Because you should always be gathering feedback, new trends and discoveries will inform your customer roadmap as it evolves. One of the most important things in monitoring is that every responsible party has access to the same data and shares the same big-picture mission. The more aligned you are internally, the greater the positive impact you can have on your customers.

Conclusion

A well-planned CX roadmap takes modern consumer pain points, expectations, and business needs into consideration. If you exist to serve your target market, you simply can’t sweep CX under the rug.

It’s never too late to start. Place the spotlight on this strategy now in order to better understand your customers and accelerate your business success. Contact the 3Pillar Global team today to learn how we can help you craft a CX roadmap that works for your specific and unique business needs.