Customer Experience Consulting

Customer experience consulting is a process by which someone — external or internal — examines the customer experience a business provides and grants feedback in order to improve it. CX consulting is often outsourced to an external person or organization who specializes in improving customer experience, in order to get a more rounded approach. Those inside the business might have trouble seeing things from the customers’ perspective, so it can help to get a fresh perspective on issues.

CX consulting typically consists of two lines of thinking, that of the employees’ perspectives and that of the consumer.

When thinking from the customer end, it mainly focuses on their wants and needs, and how the business could potentially meet those better. Questions such as, “Do I feel a connection?”, and “Will I be likely to recommend this to others?” are examined and a route to improvement is constructed.

In terms of the perspective of the business itself, CX consulting places more focus on the internal workings — the side that customers don’t see. Could a certain process be sped up in order to assist your customers? Do your employees know the best way to help? All this and more can be analyzed and improved upon.

Typical expertise of a CX agency

A CX agency can have many areas of expertise; below are a few that are crucial to a CX consultation:

• Customer Journey Mapping: Planning out your customers’ journeys in order to identify problem areas and things which could be improved upon.

• Omnichannel Customer Experience: With multiple platforms and ways for customers to access your products or services, it’s vital that you provide a seamless customer experience between your different platforms. Omnichannel CX focuses on making sure that the differences are negligible.

• User Interface / User Experience Design: While you or your team (where appropriate) probably have a good grasp of any user interface that’s designed with customer interaction in mind, remember that you know all the ins and outs of your software and might miss some things that are problems for less knowledgeable users. UI design focuses on usability and maximising the user experience, while UX design focuses on how easy a service or platform is to use and how enjoyable that is. As a rough idea, UI focuses on aesthetics, UX on ease of use.

• Survey Implementation: You might know the data you want to get out of a customer survey, but not the right questions to ask to get there. A CX consultant knows how the consumer mind functions, so can help you put together the right way of getting your answers.