Boost Your Brand With Customer Experience Optimization

TL;DR:

• Learn about customer experience optimization through the lens of the customer journey. 
• Build awareness with attention-grabbing, engaging content tailored to your target audience.
• Leverage zero- and first-party data to nurture prospective customers through the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.
• Use personalization to motivate shoppers to buy — and make the user experience seamless during checkout.
• Create a great customer experience with excellent products, customer service, and customer feedback to boost loyalty and bring up retention rates.

In many industries and niches, competition is stiff. You may be facing competitors that offer products similar to yours, featuring just as much quality, and at a similar price point, too. 

So how do you get out in front of them? 

You might think the answer is to market harder or smarter, but that isn’t necessarily true. Instead, the difference between coming out ahead and lagging behind might all come down to customer experiences. That’s why we’re going to show you several customer experience optimization strategies — and how to leverage zero- and first-party data to pull them off.

What Is Customer Experience Optimization?

Customer experience optimization is the process of finding ways to improve customer interactions so that they prefer your brand compared to other options. That’s why it’s crucial to optimize your customer experience: It encompasses every interaction that customers have with your brand. To understand this process, it’s easiest to view these experiences through the lens of the customer journey, which goes like so:

1. Awareness: The point at which the customer realizes they have a need, and in looking for ways to fulfill that need, they discover your brand.
2. Consideration: Now the customer is shopping around, comparing your brand to others to see who can best fulfill their needs.
3. Decision: Cha-ching — the customer makes a purchase (hopefully from you).
4. Retention and loyalty: Having purchased and used the product, happy customers in this stage of the journey come back for more. Super happy customers take it a step further — they’re loyal enough to leave positive reviews and talk up your brand among friends, family, and colleagues.

Each of the five steps above paints a picture of the important customer touchpoints along the user journey. All of these steps represent key touchpoints within the customer experience. 

How to Optimize Customer Experiences at Every Stage of the Journey

Ready to start optimizing? There are improvements you can make at every stage of the customer journey — and for this task, you’re going to need customer data. We’ll show you how you can use this data to create the kinds of personalized experiences that will hook your consumers and keep them coming back.

1. Awareness

At the awareness stage, it’s all about creating engaging content that speaks to your target audience’s interests and needs. This type of content can come in a variety of forms:

• Blog posts and articles
• Social media posts
• Paid ads that lead to landing pages
• Instructional videos

These types of content all share two things in common: They’re meant to be discovered, and they’re meant to introduce new customers to the ways your brand can meet their needs or solve their problems. 

For example, someone searching for a way to clean stubborn grime from grout might end up finding a video from a brand that sells cleaning supplies — and in this video, the brand shows the prospective customer how to clean grout using their product.

Zero- and first-party data comes into play here because this information is what you’ll need to identify your target audience and then craft the kinds of introductory messages that will be successful in drawing them in. 

You can see how this works through the experiences that A&W Restaurants created through Jebbit. Each experience, like the Collector’s Mug Logo Vote, has been designed specifically to speak to A&W’s target audience, which includes people who love traditional American food (and collectibles, too). 

Since this was part of an omnichannel campaign, A&W shared it across social media platforms, which allowed them to get it in front of both existing fans and potential new customers. It proved to be a rousing success, with a 96% completion rate, an 85% lead capture rate, and a 77% customer engagement rate.

2. Consideration

Customers have discovered your brand — but why should they buy from you when there are all these other brands out there offering similar things? That’s the main thing that consumers are thinking here. Customer experience optimization efforts at this stage should focus on doing everything possible to show people what makes your brand the best fit for their needs.

Types of content that are useful here include:

• Product comparisons
• Case studies and whitepapers
• Personality, style, or product match quizzes
• Free offers, such as samples and trials
• Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence

Naturally, it’s essential to showcase your brand’s offerings during this part of the process. Some of the best customer experience strategies here lean heavily on personalization.

Take the example of AI-powered chatbots. You can use them in real time — kind of like a personal shopping assistant. Customers visiting your site to investigate your products can converse with the chatbot. Along the way, the chatbot gathers zero-party data, which it can then use to make personalized product recommendations.

Here’s another example that will show you how personalized content can work its magic when it comes to customer experience optimization. The skincare brand CeraVe partnered with Jebbit to create a product recommendation quiz. 

To create this quiz, CeraVe used zero- and first-party data to understand what their audience segments need from a moisturizer — then created a quiz that speaks to those needs. Customers can work through the quiz to receive a personalized product recommendation, which they can then go on to purchase. 

Along the way, CeraVe got to collect even more zero-party data from users who interacted with the quiz. Since 38% of consumers who completed the quiz also submitted lead info, CeraVe can now retarget these people with personalized email marketing content designed with their needs in mind.

3. Decision

Customer experience optimization at the decision-making stage is a mix of two things:

1. Refining the purchase process to make it as easy as possible for customers to make the purchase
2. Providing the kind of content that will motivate them to make that purchase 

First-party data in the form of website browsing information can help you do a lot to refine your website’s purchase process. 

For example, if customer behavior data reveals that people are abandoning a potential purchase during the portion of the checkout that reveals the shipping costs, then you’ll know that either shipping costs are high enough to scare a lot of customers away, or there is something about the functionality of the page that makes it too difficult to navigate, which leads to customers leaving without completing the checkout.

As to content that can drive a purchase decision, this can include:

• Marketing emails
• Product recommendation quizzes and other interactive experiences
• Product demos
• Coupons, discounts, and other offers

By this point, you’ll have hopefully collected a lot of zero- and first-party data as prospective customers have browsed your website and interacted with emails and any personalized experiences you’ve provided. Put that information to work to create powerful personalized content that can motivate the purchase decision. Think in terms of sending out discount offers for a specific product to people who have expressed interest in that product or emails about abandoned shopping carts that encourage users to come back and complete the purchase.

The routine builder from the skincare brand REN is the perfect example of personalized content that can motivate a purchase decision. REN is a brand who knows their customers — and one thing they know about those customers is that many struggle to create a well-rounded skincare routine. It’s tough and time-consuming to sift through dozens of products to pick everything one might need to address a unique set of concerns. 

The REN routine builder experience directly addresses that pain point by doing the work for the customer. All they need to do is answer a few simple questions to get a list of products to include in both AM and PM skincare routines. Easy peasy — and customers loved it so much that the brand saw a 55% lift to their average order value. REN also saw a 75% completion rate and collected 173,000 data points that they can use to further refine their marketing efforts. 

4. Retention and Loyalty

The overall customer experience doesn’t end just because someone made a purchase! Last come the retention and loyalty stages, which happen at the same time. The idea is that building brand loyalty helps you bring up retention rates and reduce churn. 

Customer churn cost U.S. businesses $168 billion in 2020 — and companies can save an estimated $35 billion through boosting customer retention. That’s because it costs less to keep your existing customers happy than it does to go through the process of finding and nurturing new customers into sales over and over again. The longer you can retain existing customers, the higher your customer lifetime value metrics will soar.

Here, too, it’s all about customer experience optimization. Part of this is making sure that you’re providing quality products that meet and exceed customer expectations, and another part of it is providing excellent customer service. For example, if customers need to make an exchange or replace a broken item, make the process as easy and seamless as possible so that customers have an overall positive experience. 

Zero-party data is crucial here because that’s what will help you identify pain points that may be keeping customers from returning. In particular, pay attention to customer reviews and feedback to learn about complaints people may have with products, customer support, or other aspects of your brand. 

But don’t focus only on the negative experiences. Positive feedback represents things you should keep on doing in addition to any improvements that need to be made.

In terms of content that can help, here are a few ideas:

• Email marketing to encourage repeat or additional purchases
• Onboarding emails
• FAQs and resource centers
• Customer surveys and feedback forms
• Rewards and special offers for returning customers

Howes Products is a brand that sells high-quality diesel additives — and like most brands, they want to keep their existing customers happy. One way they’ve tackled this challenge is through a survey that they created using Jebbit. The survey gathers details about their target audience, including their needs and preferences regarding fuel additives. This is the kind of experience that can boost customer loyalty. It gives customers a chance to leave feedback, which can help people form a more personal connection with a brand.

Not only do customers have the chance to feel heard, but Howes reaps a lot of benefits, too. Up to 51% of people who have clicked on this survey have engaged with it, which has led to the collection of more than 12 million attributes. This gives Howes information that they can use not only to refine their marketing efforts, but also to develop and sell the types of products that their customers want most. 

And giving your customers what they want? That’s one of the big secrets behind attracting them and keeping them.

Let Jebbit Help Your Brand Create an Optimized Customer Experience

Follow along on your customer journey map to discover all the different touchpoints along the way where customers can interact with your brand. Each point represents instances where customer experience optimization can help you boost conversion rates and increase overall customer satisfaction. 

Incorporate zero- and first-party data into your optimization strategy so that you understand exactly how to speak to customer needs and preferences during the awareness and consideration stages. Data can also help you discover how best to motivate purchase decisions or where your checkout process may need improvement. Lastly, you can rely on experience optimization strategies to build lasting customer satisfaction that builds loyalty and retention.

Through it all, Jebbit can help you create the kinds of personalized content that you need for a fully customer-centric experience. On top of that, each Jebbit experience gives you the chance to collect even more zero- and first-party data that you can channel back into your optimization efforts for better and better results. To learn more, book a demo now!