Many of the most successful companies in the world are known for how well they treat their customers: Take Zappos, Apple, and Disney, just to name a few. Following customer experience best practices is the best way to ascend to greatness. Delivering a great customer experience is crucial, regardless of the size of your business or the number of customers you serve. Below, we share seven customer experience best practices you can put into place to stand out from the crowd and impress your customers.
1. Have a customer experience vision or mission
Before diving into setting up your CX, you need to define what you want your customers to feel when they interact with you. Do you want them to feel calm, challenged, inspired, supported?
Defining your mission — or CX vision — will help you make choices as you develop your customer journey. Without a compelling, unifying vision, the various teams involved in executing your CX strategy will be stuck in reaction mode rather than working together.
“Quick fix solutions for executing a customer experience vision will not be as beneficial as a holistic view,” says Accenture Interactive’s Jeannie Falcone. “Align your leadership team, incentives, metrics, and operations to a customer-obsessed agenda.”
Need examples? The USS Midway Museum customer experience vision is to “Preserve the historic USS Midway and the legacy of those who serve; Inspire and Educate future generations; and Entertain our museum guests.” This vision played out has made them the top-rated tourist attraction in San Diego.
Southwest Airlines’ mission defines its customer service style: “Southwest delivers quality customer service via a sense of warmth, friendliness, and individual pride.”
Use these examples to define your own customer experience mission statement to rally your organization around.