Our Community’s Most Important Customer Experience Goals for 2023

To kick off 2023, we surveyed our customers across various service industries, as well as  customer experience experts in our community to report on their biggest CX learnings of the previous year and their plans for the year ahead. We asked about the best ways to measure CX, the most successful methods of coaching and recognizing frontline teams, their biggest focus, learnings and challenges and goals. In this series, we’ll be diving into the survey results to provide new ideas on how you can make 2023 the year your business wins on customer experience.

When it comes to customer experience, it seems like there is a never-ending to-do-list to get through. Ultimately, there's always something else you can do to improve. However, brands known for the best customer experience don’t try to tackle everything all at once – they prioritize specific goals, nail them, and move onto the next. But what are those goals? 

With a ton on your to-do-list it can be challenging to know what to focus on. After some inspiration and guidance? We asked our community what their most important customer experience goals are for 2023, and here’s what they had to say… 

Improve the Employee Experience

Every year, the employee experience is becoming more and more crucial for improving the customer experience. With the competition for talent soaring in 2023, brands who have the best customer experience are those who invest in their frontline teams, equip them with the tools they need and put practices and initiatives in place to ensure they’re thriving in their work (and therefore providing excellent experiences to their customers). 

When asked about her top CX goal for 2023, Anna Egan, CX & Business Development Manager of A1 Air Conditioning and Heating says “Leveling up my team members to be the best version of themselves for the client, the business and most importantly themselves.”

Stacy Armijo, Chief Experience Officer at Amplify Credit Union says “The war for talent was real, especially for our roles that require employees to show up in person (like in our branches), and early in the year we were not winning. Even when we did find success with employment offers accepted, we realized our training function wasn't ready to onboard and equip employees at the volume and speed we needed, so we spent the year improving those processes and hope 2023 will be a year of excellence in how we equip our employees to deliver for our customers.”

How do you make 2023 the year of excellence in equipping frontline employees to deliver to customers? Here are a few hot tips to get you started: 

• Invest in strong frontline coaching program.
  
  
• Prioritize recognition and appreciation – a simple ‘thank you’ can go a long way.
  
  
• Make sure your teams have the tools and technology they need to thrive in their work.
  
  
• Provide opportunity for growth and advancement – make it clear there is advancement on the horizon (and follow through with it!) 

Nurture Your Existing Customer Base 

When looking at the customer experience, it’s all too easy to get caught up with NEW customers. New leads, new business, new opportunities. However, a big part of improving the customer experience is about dealing with those right in front of you: your existing customer base. And when done well, the very act of nurturing your existing customers brings in new customers via referrals. Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer, so it makes sense to make nurturing your existing customers a priority in 2023 and beyond. 

Josh Wise, CEO of GrassRootsTurf says “Our main focus is nurturing our existing customer base and growing through referrals.”

Don’t forget to ask your biggest brand advocates for referrals, and even provide them an incentive to do so. For example, refer a friend for a discount. 

Provide More Opportunities for Customer Feedback 

We all know by now that awesome customer experiences are fuelled by customer feedback. 

Another survey respondent from Bupa Healthcare says his main goal for 2023 is to “Increase the amount of opportunities to provide feedback for our customers, and provide them with more feedback channels so they can provide feedback easier.”

Despite how many service businesses approach it, feedback shouldn’t be something that’s captured every quarter in the form of long, boring customer surveys. The most effective feedback is easy and accessible for customers to engage with on a regular basis. 

When it comes to customer feedback: 

• Keep it short (surveys of no more than 5 questions)
• Keep it instant (ask for feedback immediately after a service is completed) 
• Keep it consistent (ask after every customer interaction) 
• Keep it accessible (make it easy for customers to engage with)

Measure Success & Grow the Metrics 

Another popular goal among our community was to start properly measuring the customer experience, and grow various metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, NPS and revenue. 

“Our biggest focus is growth of the business via individual clinic performance and revenue growth.” says Beni Jay from HealthActions Physical Therapy

Stacy Armijo, Chief Experience Officer of Amplify Credit Union says her goal is “to maintain a customer satisfaction score of 4.5 or higher (out of 5.0)”. 

Armijo also shared that another goal for Amplify this year is that they “want to see more of our customers compliment us with their actions (i.e., put more of their dollars on deposit with Amplify)”. 

In order to bridge the gap between where you are, and where you want to be, you need to start measuring the customer experience. 

Some of the most useful metrics for measuring the customer experience include: 

• Net Promoter Score - NPS 
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
• Employee Efficiency 
• Revenue growth 
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
• Customer churn 
• Customer retention

To Recap… 

When setting your customer experience goals for the year ahead, consider the following recommendations from our community: 

1. Invest in the employee experience – they are the very people responsible for delivering awesome experiences to your customers. 

2. Nurture your existing customer base – don’t forget about the folks right in front of you. Make sure they have experiences so good that they just have to tell their friends and family about it.
   
   
3. Make it easy and accessible for your customers to provide feedback – in order to know what matters most to your customers, you need to be asking for their feedback on a daily basis. 

4. Measure success and set clear metrics goals – set clear targets for customer satisfaction, NPS, revenue growth and more.