Customer experience dimensions refer to the main areas that should be considered when developing a great CX strategy. These dimensions should be the focus areas for building customer experiences that will be great for your consumers. As a result, your business will flourish with a cohort of loyal customers.
We all know that there is a lot that goes into CX. From the infancy and planning stage, even afterwards where you need to review it. This intricate list of customer experience dimensions should help to guide you to the factors to consider as your foundations of CX.
The range of customer experience dimensions is never-ending
Customer experience comes with many different considerations and layers – especially successful ones. While each experience has different end goals and targets to hit, the overall achievement is universally shared as customer satisfaction. For every customer experience dimension you encounter, customer satisfaction should be underpinning them.
Every other source out there on the internet lists different customer experience dimensions. These include elements such as ease, perception, breadth, and many more varying dimensions.
Everyone defines these dimensions differently, and cites different ones as their top priorities. And while there is an extremely large range of dimensions cited by many, it’s important to note that they are not isolated categories. All customer experience dimensions and elements to great CX are intertwined, and help each other to work to serve their main purpose.
However, there are some dimensions that are common across these many lists. Those are then the factors that are considered as the main drivers of a great customer experience.
CXM’s list of the top 4 customer experience dimensions
With all this in mind and the awareness of how many lists are out there, it can be overwhelming and daunting. To help you, we’ve created a list that encompasses the most common and significant customer experience dimensions to keep in just one handy place.
If you want to know the top drivers of a great customer experience and what you should be considering, keep reading. Here are the top 4 customer experience dimensions:
1. Goals & purpose
A purpose and meaning that comes through at every touchpoint is important to customers. They should always be aware of your brand goal, and how easy it is for them to reach their goals with your assistance. How will your team achieve this?
If your goal with a certain experience is to create customer loyalty, you need to build strategies. A customer success competency model is a good place to start. Plan from the early stages, and see what it takes to reach that end goal.
For your customers, too. Make sure they get the most out of their time with you. If they have a purpose in mind of reaching out to your company and choosing you, make sure their experience is streamlined and simple to achieve their goal. To help this, again, planning their journey with you is key.
2. Empathy
This dimension simply refers to your organisation’s ability to understand their customers. 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs, and will turn elsewhere if they feel misunderstood by their favourite brands. To retain your customers, you must understand how they feel and what they need from you. By doing this, you can address their concerns and assure their experience is always a successful one.
Personalisation is very often a key player in achieving the empathetic customer service approach. It customises their interactions in line with their preferences and needs – highlighting that you’re in tune with what they’re asking of you. 75% of customers are more likely to buy from companies when they’re acknowledged, remembered, or receive relevant, personalised recommendations.
Empathy, at least on the business side of things, is about understanding the full emotional impact a company has on their customers. In today’s climate, correctly understanding empathy’s role in customer service is more important than ever before.
3. Touchpoints (and their pathways)
In CX, touchpoints refer to the points of customer interaction. This is where they directly or indirectly come into contact with your brand, and ultimately make up their customer journey. These touchpoints are critical as they’re opportunities for direct connection to your customers. Forbes even defines customer experience as the “cumulative impact of multiple touchpoints”.
Understanding the moments that your customers go through and experience with your company are key to helping you improve. Further, improving and building on each touchpoint based on invaluable customer feedback will here to create a tailored approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all mindset. Qualtrics has referenced the following three points as identifiers in your customer touchpoints:
- Before – how did they find out about you?
- During – which channels and what did they do?
- After – what happens after the interaction?
In this, pathways are also important to look into. Pathways refer to the transitions between these touchpoints. This looks at how to lead the customer smoothly through their journey with the company. Pathways should also be on top form to enhance the customer experience and make it perfect in all areas.
4. Measurement
Don’t stay stagnant – constantly improve by measuring what’s working and not working for your customers. Some overall measures of satisfaction and ease include NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction), and CES (Customer Effort Score). But there are many more metrics to choose from. These, as just a small example pool, can include:
- Customer churn and retention rates
- First response time
- The volume of unresolved customer service tickets
- Preferred communication channel
- Customer lifetime value
How involved your organisation will be with your customers in this experience will help you to improve. Measuring CX will guide you in furthering your understanding, to fix their pain points.
It’s clear to see that customer experience dimensions feed into each other and do not operate alone. Each of these 4 incorporates elements of the others. No matter which list of customer experience dimensions you choose to look into and base into your strategy, there is one key point. Customer experience is heavily built into the foundations of your business. Everything you do should circle back to that, and their customer satisfaction.
This guide is offered as a pointer in the right direction of which customer experience dimensions should be your starting point. Will you work on them today?