Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
What is Customer Experience?
Providing a positive Customer Experience is essential for any business. It can lead to increased sales, happier customers, and greater success. It’s important to put the customer’s needs, wants, and desires at the heart of all your activities, including your digital marketing strategy. However, Customer Experience encapsulates more than simply ‘customer delight’ and involves a lot more than call center scripts. Customer Experience, or CX, is the combination of all the interactions an individual has with an organization.
In the interest of clarity, User Experience (UX) shouldn't be confused with Customer Experience – they are related but different concepts. UX is a part of CX which is the larger subject, and CX goes beyond functionality of websites and mobile apps, which is the sole focus of UX. As Customer Experience is the outcome from all of the interactions an individual has with an organization, organizations need to look at CX holistically, across the whole business and across every channel and customer touchpoint.
CX is something every organization manages, whether intentionally or not. They need to consider how CX ‘feels’ for the customer, as well as what is done for the customer. Good CX is also intrinsic to a successful omnichannel strategy, which aims to unify the experience across all channels and customer touchpoints. There are no hard and fast rules about what you must do. It’s about understanding several interconnected processes that combine to deliver an experience.
Organizations that create exceptional customer experiences know that managing experience is an ongoing process and also a mindset for the entire organization than just the responsibility of a couple of employees. While all departments of a business have a role in the process, the areas that are most involved with optimizing the customer experience include marketing, sales, and customer service.
The three elements of CX
There are three main elements of Customer Experience and all three need to be considered when building a CX strategy. There is the Organization element, which describes the organization’s business priorities. There is the Brand element, which relates to how your brand can stand out from the crowd. And there is the Customer element, which involves satisfying the customers’ functional needs and goals; minimizing friction in the purchasing journey; and providing services to meet their emotional needs as buyers.
It can sound like a simple tick-box exercise to satisfy each of these three items, but you’ll quickly discover they can be in tension with each of these elements. For example, what your customer demands may not necessarily align with your commercial ambitions. And at times, these can be polarized – so, organizations need to effectively manage CX at all times and find the sweet spot for all three, Organization, Brand, and Customer.
CX management goals
The goals of effective CX management include managing customer expectations, and balancing customer demands with the reality of complex - multi-step, omnichannel, offline and online - customer journeys. This requires a continual CX optimization mindset that recognizes CX management is ongoing, and not just a one-time activity
CX management also aims to increase awareness for your organization by generating recommendations and word-of-mouth marketing. It can act as a defense for your organization, protecting margins and holding on to customers when new players enter the market.
In your bid to attract repeat purchases, CX management can also increase customer retention and loyalty, differentiate your business from your competitors, and help deliver a personalized, friction-free experience. Ultimately, CX management is about building trust and empathy with your customers based on the experience you offer.
The impact of social on CX performance
It’s important that digital strategists and leaders monitor the customer experience across the entire buyer journey and at all customer touchpoints. One of the best tools for managing CX in real time is social media, as people engage and discuss brands, products, and experiences with each other on social channels.
Social can impact CX performance by:
- Creating brand communities on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even TikTok.
- Harnessing the power of influencers, including customers, to share positive CX stories.
- Engaging with customers, which visibly demonstrates care, empathy, and trust.
- Creating visible comparisons with how competitors perform in similar circumstances.
- Delivering real time, immediate responses, which reduces frustrations and improves CX outcomes
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
Bill Phillips
Bill is an international facilitator, trainer, and team coach. He has successfully coached CEOs, board members, directors, executive teams, and team leaders in public and private companies, NGOs, and UN organizations in 15 countries across four continents. He is also the creator of Future-basing®, a highly potent process for building strategy, vision, and cooperation.
Will Francis
Will Francis is a recognized authority in digital and social media, who has worked with some of the world’s most loved brands. He is the host and technical producer of the DMI podcast, Ahead of the Game and a lecturer and subject matter expert with the DMI. He appears in the media and at conferences whilst offering his own expert-led digital marketing courses where he shares his experience gained working within a social network, a global ad agency, and more recently his own digital agency.
Cathal Melinn
Cathal Melinn is a well-known Digital Marketing Director, commercial analyst, and eommerce specialist with over 15 years’ experience.
Cathal is a respected international conference speaker, course lecturer, and digital trainer. He specializes in driving complete understanding from students across a number of digital marketing disciplines including: paid and organic search (PPC and SEO), analytics, strategy and planning, social media, reporting, and optimization. Cathal works with digital professionals in over 80 countries and teaches at all levels of experience from beginner to advanced.
Alongside his training and course work, Cathal runs his own digital marketing agency and is considered an analytics and revenue-generating guru - at enterprise level. He has extensive local and international experience working with top B2B and B2C brands across multiple industries.
Over his career, Cathal has worked client-side too, with digital marketing agencies and media owners, for brands including HSBC, Amazon, Apple, Red Bull, Dell, Vodafone, Compare the Market, Aer Lingus, and Expedia.
He can be reached on LinkedIn here.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Discuss the impact of customer journey stages in a marketing strategy
- Identify the key touchpoints, channels, and tactics in an omnichannel strategy
- Assess the impact of customer experience (CX) on business performance
