More strategic-minded marketers might talk about the other three P’s as well: their role in product development, pricing and the places, channels or locations through which their products are distributed. These are the levers that they have been taught to pull to drive growth for their businesses.

Where does customer experience fit into all this? In the minds of most marketers, it doesn’t — at least if they’re being honest. They might throw “CX” into a few keynotes or panel conversations. But actually designing, shaping and taking responsibility for what happens when somebody interacts with the business? That is a complex remit that they have been happy to leave to customer-facing teams.

Suddenly, this is changing. Customer experience is rapidly becoming more designable, more accessible and more creative. It is also impossible to ignore its importance to marketing. Experiences are what people buy, what people remember and what people talk about. They are fundamental to the product and the way it is promoted. They build brands.

Nobody understands this better than small businesses, so it is no coincidence they are driving a new experience-led approach to marketing. These organizations have an instinctive feel for consistently delighting customers, making the experience itself a reason to come back and a reason to recommend to others. What has changed is that they now have the tools to design and deliver experiences like this at scale.

How SMBs are redefining digital customer experience

As a result of the COVID-19, many SMBs have had to find ways to do more with less, and one result is they have embraced automation. However, they have not done so through the big, legacy tech stacks that have dominated automated customer experiences in the past. Instead, they are using a new generation of nimble, accessible plug-and-play automation tools that are inherently flexible and easy to express themselves through.

Over the past year, people have come to expect businesses to remove as much friction as possible from the experience of visiting them. Rather than just dropping by a local nail salon or a hardware store, customers can get in touch via any number of channels (such as Facebook Messenger or live chat on a website), make a private appointment for a specific time or order a product they can pick up in a socially distanced way. Customers feel more confident and comfortable and, crucially, more engaged.

In the past, often when dealing with larger organizations, people have been forced to put up with automated customer experiences. They were a barrier that customers desperately tried to figure a way around when trying to speak to an actual person. But when designed and delivered by smaller businesses, automation is making it …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron