What is customer experience?

We’re not marketeers but customer experience (CX) is an area that we’re pretty focused on. We know it’s important in business – whatever your business does. That’s why we thought it would be interesting to share some of what we’ve learned along the way in the hope that it helps you.

person in white shoes standing on gray concrete road
Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash

Asking Google what customer experience is brings up about 204,000,000 results. Results include articles, research, strategies, reports…..the list goes on. As it turns out, the definition is pretty broad. Here are just a few examples:

‘Customer experience is the impression your customers have of your brand as a whole, throughout all aspects of the buyer’s journey.’

‘Customer experience, also known as cx, is your customers’ holistic perception of their experience with your business or brand.’

‘Customer experience is the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company.’

‘Customer experience is a cognitive, affective, sensory and behavioural consumer response during all stages of the consumption process.’

‘CX refers to how a business engages with its customers at every point of their buying journey’

Customer experience (CX) is absolutely all of those things, but to put it simply: It’s how your brand makes people feel. We all know that emotions, not rationale, leads decision-making and emotional CX is grounded in how a brand’s interactions make people feel. That’s why frustrated customers are quick to leave bad reviews and happy customers remember to recommend to others. As it turns out, Maya Angelou’s well- known quote ‘people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel’ is pretty spot on. You’re more likely to forget what it was that triggered the emotion (i.e., content or a poor customer journey) than the actual emotion itself. And, emotions stick! Each and every one of us are wired to pay attention to our emotions and, as it happens, we do!

The goal with any CX strategy is to produce great experiences across the entire customer journey and to fully identify and analyse key areas where CX could really be improved. That applies to any industry and it’s important for our firm too.

Happy customers stick around. They don’t look elsewhere and they’re likely to notice you’ve gone if one day you were to suddenly disappear. Equally, new customers are more likely to choose you over a competitor. The reality is that there is no straightforward solution that can be implemented for immediate results. It’s a hard slog and one that requires long term commitment (and investment) from leaders and employees alike – everyone should be on board. Customer feedback and analysis, journey mapping and ideating are all part of the process but the rewards, if you get it right, could be huge!

At Tend Legal, we’re passionate about getting it right for our customers. We take time to listen to feedback and implement ideas and strategies that put our customers at the heart of our decision making. We like to think we’re great at communicating with our customers and that’s the first and most important step in our CX strategy, but it doesn’t end there. The way our customers feel about their experience with us is the single most important thing and our team go out of their way to ensure our customers are always happy.

We hope this blog serves as a nice reminder that we’re just as focused on our customers, as our customers are focused on theirs.

Neelam Narshi, Tend Legal, London