Customer Experience Analytics: A Definitive Guide

No matter your industry, competition is always evolving in the e-commerce space. As new brands emerge and retail sales grow, companies will need to find a way to offer extraordinary customer experiences to stand out. One way to do that is by conducting customer experience analytics (CX) to understand consumer behavior and improve brand interactions.

The question is, how do you conduct CX analytics? And what are the benefits of this process to your business? This definitive guide will teach you the basics of customer experience analytics and how you can use it to tweak your brand for better engagement and brand development.

What is customer experience analytics?

Customer experience analytics refers to obtaining customer data and using that to provide more meaningful shopping experiences. Such data includes customer feedback, satisfaction, social media comments, survey responses, and more. When you learn more about your customers, you can tailor your products/services according to their needs. Opportunities open up, allowing you to guide your team towards the right action to satisfy your customers fully.

We live in the consumer age where they have easy access to buying options, giving them the power to choose any product they desire. The challenge now is to position yourself as the primary option, which you can achieve by closing the customer experience gap.

Here are a couple of advantages that CX analytics provides to your business:

• Create a buyer’s journey that maintains customer interest throughout all stages.
• Address pain points more effectively.
• Adopt the latest trends and integrate them successfully with consumer touchpoints.
• Provide a clear overview of the ideal buyer journey to the whole team.
• Identify which actions deliver the best ROI.
• Build brand loyalty.

All these things combined lead to a personalized buying experience that customers will grow to associate with your brand. As a business, you must listen to what your core audience wants/needs since 65% of people find positive experiences more influential than common advertising.

How do you obtain data for customer experience analytics?

To perform CX analytics, you must obtain the right information from your customers. There are a couple of ways to do this, and here we’ll list the five most common methods of acquiring meaningful customer info.

1. Customer surveys

Obtaining qualitative data is key to CX analytics, and one way to gather this is through customer surveys. Here, you evaluate customer opinions based on how effective your service is or how satisfied they are with their experience. Personal feedback gives powerful insights into how a customer interacts with your brand, allowing you to make the necessary changes to improve those aspects.

You can implement customer surveys in various ways, but the most commonly used methods are through checkouts and customer communication channels (chatbots come to mind). When formatting your surveys, avoid the generic questions and create ones that provide answers to specific areas of improvement.

For example, if you find your cart abandonment rates are high, you can ask your customers what they think about your checkout process. Is it too complicated? Is there a lack of payment options? If they answer yes in the survey, you may want to rethink your checkout process to suit the preferences of your consumers.

It’s also a good idea to keep the questions short and simple. If they can finish your survey within 2-3 minutes, there’s a good chance you’ll get detailed answers from your customers. Remember, people have short attention spans on the internet, so it’s best to create a survey with straightforward questions.

2. Customer ratings

Customer ratings are a good indicator of how satisfactory your brand experience is to your target audience. A simple click from the customer is enough to give you information on three key metrics, which are:

• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
• Customer effort score (CET)
• Net promoter score (NPS)

CSAT scores indicate the customer’s level of satisfaction. On the other hand, CET scores indicate how much effort the customer exerts to acquire the product/service they need. Lastly, NPS scores indicate the likelihood that a customer recommends your brand offerings to others. You can implement these ratings with numerics or emoji rating scales, whichever feels convenient to use for your customers.

Most brands utilize customer ratings at the checkout process, but you can implement it on other areas of your website, like the product page or the FAQs page.

3. Social listening

Thanks to social media, consumers are more vocal about the brands they support than ever before. To provide unique shopping experiences, you must be aware of what people say about your brand on the internet. This is where social listening comes in. By analyzing the public’s perception of your brand, you can identify their pain points and develop solutions that best meet their needs/expectations.

Many social listening tools like HubSpot and SproutSocial keep track of mentions about your brand. Using these apps to get a pulse on what your customers want and monitor your brand’s online reputation is a wise choice that will help your CX analytics greatly.

4. Customer support

Your customer support team plays an important role in CX analytics, as they routinely handle feedback from your customers. Talk with your support team to find out the most common complaints people have about your product/service. Doing so will uncover core issues that lead to poor brand experiences and enable you to take the necessary action.

Support tickets are also crucial to CX analytics as these indicate how well your customer support team performs. Remember that customer support greatly impacts your brand’s overall image, so make sure your team consists of excellent staff members.

5. Cookies

Cookies help web developers better understand how customers interact with your website. HTTP cookies, in particular, streamline web experiences in session management, personalization, and tracking. For example, cookies help recognize site visitors and remember their login information and preferences, thus providing relevant content that meets their specific interests and needs.

Cookies also help with personalization by displaying custom ads to your site visitors. They’ll be able to view certain pages of your site with targeted ads that align with their preferences. Lastly, cookies can also track previously viewed items on your site, allowing you to recommend relevant products/services as your customers continue shopping.

How do I use data obtained for customer experience analytics?

Now that you have the information you need for your CX analytics, your next goal is to turn them into actionable business steps. Here’s how to do that:

1. Create an action plan

An action plan is critical to CX analytics as it’ll help focus your efforts on things that require utmost attention. Start by highlighting the problems that your core audience experiences. What are the pain points that affect their online experience? List them according to the significance and tackle the main problem areas first.

Next is to develop a solution to those pain points. What steps do you need to take to provide a seamless buying experience? For example, if customers find your website too complex to navigate, you can benefit from a simplified user interface to help them find the information they need faster.

The last step is to continue monitoring the changes for progress. As with most aspects of e-commerce, there is no permanent solution. You must adapt to consumer behavior to enhance customer sentiment and satisfaction rates. A thorough A/B test will guide you on which changes are working and which ones are not.

2. Make data benchmarks

Another way to use data from CX analytics is to make benchmarks. For example, you can compare the number of survey responses you had in the past six months to the numbers you have now. These numerics will help indicate your audience’s engagement when responding to surveys. The more detailed responses you get, the more you can optimize your brand to suit your audience’s interests.

3. Keep an eye on industry trends

If something isn’t working for your customers, you can look to industry trends as an inspiration to enhance your products/services. Keeping up with the latest trends allows you to identify new opportunities to use to your advantage. Implementing fresh new ideas to your brand helps maintain consumer interest, which can benefit your brand in the long term.

Say you have a high bounce rate and your landing pages aren’t meeting your customer’s expectations. You can look at successful brands within your niche and take notes on how they craft their landing pages. Does their content look superior to yours? How do they implement their CTAs?

By keeping an eye on industry trends, you can maintain relevance in your industry and appeal more to your loyal consumers.

In summary

Customer experience analytics is crucial to making data-driven decisions. Consumer behavior changes over time, and the more knowledge you gain about your customers, the easier it is to keep them satisfied with your brand’s offerings. Take advantage of the information you acquire from CX analytics to provide a superior experience that customers will love from your business.

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