The Simplest Guide to Customer Experience and Customer Identity and Management

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The Simplest Guide to Customer Experience and Customer Identity and Management

Regardless of the time, day, year, or age we live in, and regardless of paradigm shifts, one rule for businesses will always remain the same: satisfy your customers to maximize revenues. However, the way businesses satisfy customers has changed dramatically since the Web economy's inception. Satisfying customers now entails taking their hand and leading them on a journey. What will satisfy them is not the journey itself, but the Customer Experience they have while on that journey. It may sound both extremely simple and extremely cryptic at the same time. That, however, is not a problem. This post is intended to be as straightforward as possible.

What is Customer Experience? is a good question to ask here. Whatever the answer to that question is, the obvious thing here is that businesses must ensure that the customer satisfaction is excellent.

However, simply answering that question will not make things easier for businesses. In fact, it may make things even more difficult. This should be followed by several more questions. How does one go about providing a great Customer Experience? Is it a difficult task? Is Customer Satisfaction solely about digital because all interactions with customers are digital? So, what are the essential tools for providing a great Customer Satisfaction?

We'll answer all of your questions, and you can be confident that once you know the answers, you'll be much better at satisfying your customers.

What exactly is Customer Experience?

For a long time, people who use software or interact with a business through a software product were simply referred to as users. So, whatever we're discussing here, shouldn't it be referred to as user experience? It's a fallacy because user experience and customer satisfaction are not the same thing. As absurd as it may sound, businesses in the Web economy are tasked with providing a human experience digitally. That is one definition of Client Experience, but it falls short. A user experience is the perception of an entity during a single event of interaction. For example, if a customer uses your mobile app and enjoys it, you have provided a positive user experience. However, it is only a small part of the Client Experience. User Experience, on the other hand, is the sum of all individual user experiences. Analysts at McKinsey and Company define Customer Experience as cumulative experiences across multiple touchpoints and channels over time. As the saying goes, the User Experience is defined by the entire experience over time, not by a single event. So, while businesses should avoid it, a single bad interface does not imply a poor Customer Satisfaction. Of course, when individual interactions improve, the summation improves as well. But that is not the only point. The key takeaway here is that not only should all touchpoints be perfected, but businesses should also perfect their processes. It's not enough to have a great mobile app, a great website, and a thriving social media presence. The processes must also be excellent. It is also necessary to perfect how these touchpoints interact with one another.

Is User Experience just about digital?

Just about digital means a website, a mobile app, emails, social media and any other form of interaction that is wholly digital and over the internet. But no. That's not all. Some things can't be done on a mobile app. Some things can't be done on a website. Some questions can't be answered over the internet. Touchpoints like the call center, the face to face meeting also need to be perfected which means Client Satisfaction is also about the blend between the online and real world. For instance, businesses moving from their brick and mortar stores to the Web must not ignore the former but form a blend of their physical and online stores. If a customer visits your physical store and makes a purchase, the transaction should be reflected on your website and mobile app. And, if desired, the customer must be able to return the purchased product via the mobile app. That is when the interaction is seamless and complete.

What are the essential tools to providing a Customer Experience?

If a company could only afford one tool to improve the User Experience it provides, it should invest in a Customer Identity Management platform. Because businesses do not interact with their customers face to face, the only way to learn about them is through data. As a result, data is customers. However, collecting and managing data can be difficult, and having a plethora of tools that cannot be used to collect or manage customer data makes no sense. Customer Identity Management platforms, on the other hand, have been classified as iPaaS, data, and cloud integration platforms, emphasizing their central nature even further. Customer Identity Management platforms aid in the most basic but crucial tasks in a marketing stack. They facilitate customer registration and login, then collect data, centralize that data, and integrate with other martech tools to ensure a continuous flow of data.

How exactly does a Customer Identity Management platform help?

A Customer Identity Management platform, at its most basic, aids in the centralization of data from various touchpoints and web properties. Single Sign-On, a critical component of it, aids in the creation of a unified view of each customer across all touchpoints and channels. A unified view of the customer is critical to providing a consistent and exceptional Customer Satisfaction. Because businesses fail in the first critical step toward providing a clinical Customer Experience without a unified view. It is impossible to improve the Customer Experience with a skewed and incomplete view of the customer from various web properties. Simply because each web property and touchpoint has different or incomplete data about a customer, they each have a different perspective on the customer.That is precisely what customers do not want. Even if you did that in real life, they could explain the situation to you and make amends quickly. However, this is not possible on the Internet. Customers can only think of one possible alternative: Exit.