A customer who has a positive experience with a business is more likely to become a repeat and loyal customer. In fact, a Walker study found that by the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
The study found that 86% of buyers will pay more for better customer experience.
While this is likely not news to you, understanding a consumer’s buying pattern and creating an effective customer experience strategy around this behavior is a common challenge facing businesses today.
By utilizing different market research methodologies, businesses of all industries receive a full customer experience analysis to guide their customer experience (CX) strategy.
Learn how to build your customer experience strategy around detailed CX analysis found through these 3 types of market research methodologies.
Customer Experience Strategy #1: Customer satisfaction surveys
Customer satisfaction surveys are an easy and low-cost CX strategy in which companies uncover whether or not their products or services are well received by customers.
A simple customer satisfaction survey sent to a segment of customers of your business can unveil some incredible insights.
Using advanced statistical analysis techniques like regression helps a brand understand true drivers and motivators which impact their customer experience analysis.
Regression helps brands understand the underlying drivers to CX and ensure their customers remain happy and loyal. Think about it this way – keeping loyal customers is a lot cheaper than finding new ones.
According to this article on eCommerce Statistics, The probability of selling to a new customer is 5%-20% while the probability of selling to an existing customer is 50%-70%. In addition, it costs about $109 to acquire a new customer.
Learn more about regression analysis as a common market research technique.
Customer satisfaction survey example
How exactly can a regular customer satisfaction survey and regression analysis help create your CX strategy?
Here’s a great example.
A retail store hired a CX market research company to test both the customers’ level of satisfaction and level of importance regarding factors such as:
- Cleanliness of the store
- Friendliness of the staff
- Wait time to available changing rooms
In the satisfaction survey, customers stated the cleanliness of the store was not important.
However, after reviewing further regression analysis, the customer experience company saw the cleanliness of the store had the largest impact on overall customer satisfaction.
Regression helps identify these hidden trends through the correlation of data points.
In other words, customers who were least satisfied with the store’s cleanliness also had an overall low satisfaction rating of the retail location.
Without regression analysis, the retail location may have put less importance on cleaning the store by reading the survey data at face value.
They may not have realized this directly drives an extremely positive or extremely negative customer shopping experience.
Customer Experience Strategy #2: Mobile Diaries
What better way to collect customer experience analysis than to do it in-the-moment? Mobile devices open up a whole world of feedback and data in natural environments.
Mobile diary market research asks participants to capture moments in real-time of their daily routine by self-reporting their opinions using smartphones or other mobile devices.
This also allows researchers to collect personalized and accurate feedback, often difficult to obtain through other traditional research methods.
The use of mobile diary market research can help create a CX strategy.
For example, a shoe brand is looking to understand the in-store customer experience of trying on shoes at a retail location.
With this goal in mind, the shoe brand conducted mobile diary research in which customers were asked for feedback via their smartphone, immediately during and following trying on a pair of shoes.
As part of the mobile diary, they were asked to take pictures and document their experience as well.
The analysis provided real-time and accurate sentiment about the experience from users, rather than sending customers an online survey 3 months from now.
The experience would not be fresh in the user’s mind and result in misleading data, therefore corrupting your customer experience strategy.
Customer Experience Strategy #3: Journey Mapping Focus Groups
Focus groups are an excellent way to craft a customer experience strategy by exploring the CX analysis for path to purchase.
A group dialogue leads to perceptive conversations around how users interact with the brand and a variety of touchpoints.
This targeted group of individuals is able to offer insight into how the larger market would react to these same CX strategies.
Specifically, a journey mapping focus group focuses on the steps a customer goes through in order to accomplish a goal.
Think about the number of touchpoints to explore in a CX airline focus group as part of a journey mapping exercise.
A focus group moderator could ask participants questions like:
- How do you go about researching airline tickets on third-party websites? Do you browse on airline websites as well?
- How was the process of booking tickets and your checkout experience?
- Did you receive any confirmation or reminder emails? Did you like or dislike the frequency of these emails?
- What did you like and what did you not like about the baggage drop-off process?
- Was the airport staff friendly when you checked in at the gate? Were they helpful?
The list could go on, and on. No, really – those were just the possible pre-flight experience questions.
By conducting a journey mapping exercise with a focus group company, an airline is able to pinpoint areas of improvement from the beginning to the end of a customer’s buying journey.
The answers to these questions allow an airline, or any industry, craft a perfect customer experience strategy and keeping happy customers coming back for more.
Here is an example of a journey map!
Contact Our Customer Experience Company
Drive Research is a market research company located in Syracuse, NY. Our team has the knowledge and tools to design a robust market research study, should it be the right fit for your business.
Interested in learning more about our market research services? Reach out through any of the four ways below.
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