Here’s how you can develop an effective customer experience strategy as an SME in Malaysia to attract your target audience.

Wait. First, what is a customer experience strategy?

In our last post, we discussed what customer experience (CX) is and the essential factors that can help you stand out. A customer experience strategy is a list of the actions that you can take to create an amazing experience for your customers.

There is no single size for everyone, unfortunately, but you can easily create a customer experience journey that is specific to your business and industry. That is what we are going to try to help you do.

1. Know your customers

Before you can even begin to start to plan any strategies or customer experience frameworks, you must know who you are doing it for. What do your customers like? Where do they live? What do they do in their free time? How do they talk? Why do they need the service that you provide? What challenges do they have?

We are not asking you to stalk them. You just need digital tools like Google Analytics to understand who your customers are and build a persona — a fictional representation of your typical customer.

2. (R)evaluate your brand mission

If you have not done so already, create a business brand. This is who you are as a business and what customers can and should expect from you. This is part of the experience that you will deliver and it should focus on helping customers solve at least one problem that they have.

3. Create an emotional connection

This might seem impossible if you have a lot of customers. But even brands with millions of customers achieve this part of the strategy. The good news is that social media makes this easier — the idea is to make each customer feel special, recognised and like they are part of a community.

4. Map out your customer experience journey

Start at the end of the customer experience with the customers, and work backwards. Make a list of points where customers experience your brand and aim to make a great impression at each point. The focus should always be on solving a challenge that the customers have.

5. Listen to your customers

Social media has made it extremely easy for businesses to listen to what their customers are saying. Whether it is about your brand or about trending topics, this is an opportunity for you to understand and use that knowledge to meet or exceed the experience your customers have.

6. What’s the competition up to?

Research your competition and know what they are doing. You can then better understand if they are a threat to your business, what gaps they have that you can fill, and how you can attract their customers to your brand. You can use an established framework like the SWOT analysis and add it to your customer experience strategy.

7. Use digital tools

We already highlighted using social media to understand your customers better. Other digital tools easily available now can help you provide a world-class customer experience. It can be something as simple as the unifi SurePay POS™ Package that allows you to easily attend to your customers and meet their payment needs anywhere and anytime. You can start with a free package today and upgrade when you need more features.

Once you have a customer experience strategy and implement it, that should not be the end of the journey. Reach out to customers online and offline and talk to them about their experience with your brand. Use this information to adjust the strategy as and when necessary. Remember that trends and customer behaviours change, and you should be flexible enough to adjust when required.