Buzzwords Defined: Customer Experience Primer

As my colleague Kelly Barlow recently noted, no matter the industry, there are terms thrown around that mean something in one workplace that would be met with stares of confusion in another. Customer experience – CX for short – and its related terms are no exception. If you work in the federal government, you are likely hearing more about CX than ever thanks to the President’s Executive Order. As a result, we’re seeing an increased focus from federal leaders.

Similar to Kelly’s thoughts around workplace jargon, I am going to help you get a handle – and offer some insight – on some of the most common CX buzzwords so you can stay a step ahead of the customer experience game.

Omnichannel: Providing a seamless experience across various communication channels, such as web, mobile, social media, and in-person.

Prioritize Collaboration Across Departments: In an omnichannel approach, multiple channels and touchpoints are involved, such as marketing, sales, customer service, IT, etc. To ensure a seamless customer experience, break down departmental silos and foster collaboration. Encourage teams to work together, share insights, and coordinate efforts.

Customer Journey: The entire lifecycle of a customer’s interactions with a brand, from discovery to purchase and beyond.

Context Matters: Create detailed customer journey maps that outline every step a customer takes, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. Identify pain points and opportunities for enhancements to the journey.

Customer-Centric: Placing the customer at the center of business strategies and decision-making.

Make customer-centricity a core value within your organization: Ensure that everyone understands the importance of putting the customer at the center of every decision and action. Understand that you’ll need to continuously evaluate your customer as their needs will change over time.

Voice of the Customer (VoC): Gathering and analyzing feedback and insights from customers to make data-driven decisions.

Share VoC Insights Across the Organization: Disseminate customer insights across all departments. Provide regular updates, reports, and presentations to keep everyone informed about what customers are saying. Ensure that the VoC becomes a central reference point for decision-making.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): A metric used to measure how satisfied customers are with a product or service.

Invest in Training to Enhance Your Organization’s Problem Solving Capabilities: Encourage a proactive approach to problem-solving. Instead of merely addressing customer complaints, empower your team to identify and resolve issues before they impact customer satisfaction. Equip them with the knowledge and tools they need to effectively address customer needs and concerns.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): A metric to gauge customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend a brand to others.

Link NPS to Employee Engagement: Help your team understand the connection between NPS and their roles. When employees see that their efforts directly influence NPS scores, they are more likely to be engaged in improving the customer experience.

Customer Feedback Loop: A system for collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback to improve the customer experience.

Select the Right Feedback Channels: Determine the most appropriate channels for collecting feedback based on your business model. This might include online surveys, comment cards, social media, customer reviews, or direct customer interactions. Ensure these channels are easily accessible to customers.

Customer Effort Score (CES): A metric that measures how much effort a customer has to put into resolving an issue or achieving a goal with a brand.

Integrate CES into Key Customer Touchpoints: Identify critical customer touchpoints where CES can be measured. These might include, such as customer support interactions, purchase processes, onboarding experiences, or product usage. Ensure that your team is actively collecting and analyzing CES data at these key moments.

More on Customer Experience

As customer expectations evolve, customer experience must as well. Navigating it – and its ever-changing terminology – is likely to become more complex. Our team of CX experts are ready to help you develop a strategy to stay ahead of the curve and your customers. Reach out anytime – we’d love to chat through your challenges and opportunities. In the meantime, take a look at our Ideas & Insights page for more thought leadership from our CX team.