If your company is working hard to improve the customer experience (CX) as a way to differentiate your brand and your products, it is imperative that you pay attention to every phase of the customer journey.
And that means focusing on the experience your customers have after the time of purchase. It also means finding ways to improve their experience even if they aren’t satisfied with their purchase or if the product fails in some way.
How Businesses are Working to Improve CX Today
When polled, marketers almost universally agree that the best way to set their brand apart from others was to improve the customer’s experience. The way marketing professionals believe they should accomplish this goal included steps such as:
- Improving the quality of our products
- Making the shopping and purchasing experience easier
- Providing more convenient ways to purchase
- Expanding the number and variety of product offerings
- Making the shopping and purchasing process more fun
- Offering the best possible pricing
- Improving website accessibility and function
Marketers traditionally map out the customer journey and carefully evaluate each phase of the process, to identify ways they can improve that experience. The phases of the journey that most marketers take into account are consideration, evaluation and purchase.
Once the prospect makes the purchase, the process is done, right? Wrong!
CX and the Fourth Phase of the Customer Journey
The customer journey has a fourth phase that is, sadly, being largely ignored by even the largest, most successful businesses and expert marketers. That phase is characterized by enjoyment of the purchase, advocating for or recommending the product or service, and bonding with both the purchase and the brand.
Because marketers often confuse the customer journey with the path to purchase, it’s easy to see why they abandon their concern for CX at the point of the sale. But, not only does the customer’s experience continue well beyond the third phase of the journey, the fourth phase is quite possibly the most important phase of all.
If the customer has an exceptional experience after the point of purchase, you significantly improve your chances of retaining that customer – and we all know the cost and value of retaining an existing customer versus converting a new one.
How to Improve CX After the Time of Purchase
Some of the most common ways that businesses differentiate themselves during the fourth phase of the customer journey include providing free training and resources, providing easily accessible sources for getting post-purchase questions answered, and requesting (and listening to) feedback about products/services and the customer experience.
These are all potentially beneficial ways to improve fourth-phase CX. But each of these initiatives assumes that the customer is satisfied with their purchase, that the product works as promised and that the customer plans to keep the product.
Planning for the worst – and finding ways to improve the customer experience in that event – will help you provide exceptional CX at every stage of the journey.
ReverseLogix makes it easy to improve your customers’ experience after the time of purchase. By automating your reverse logistics and providing an intuitive, easy-to-use interface for your customers with returns, you not only enhance the experience for your customers but you can also reduce costs and allow you to unlock value from every aspect of the reverse logistics lifecycle.
Connect with us today to learn more about how our SaaS technology solution can help you improve CX, enhance your brand identify and increase your market share.