When you think about how customers engage with your brand, it’s often with consideration for what they experience in the awareness and acquisition stages of their journeys. But what happens after the sale, and how do you ensure you are consistently delivering an excellent experience for your customers throughout the rest of their journey? Enter customer experience, stage left.

Customer experience (CX) is a holistic view of how customers are engaging with your business at every point of their journey. An effective CX strategy can help to distinguish your brand, foster customer loyalty and trust, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction ratings. And CX is no longer nice to have — it’s a necessity; 89% of companies that lead with customer experience financially outperform their competitors (Qualtrics).

So who is responsible for CX? Well, it can be anyone in your company who talks to customers, from sales and marketing to operations and support — and everywhere in between. Even though CX is a shared responsibility, many of the teams focused on it lack "critical skills like design thinking, inclusive experience design, survey design, journey mapping, data literacy, and storytelling" (Forrester Predictions 2023). And again, many of those teams are only focused on the pre-sales experience, putting in the effort to pull a prospect from awareness to acquisition.

How do you measure the experience once a prospect becomes a customer? How can you ensure that all stages of the journey are meeting (and exceeding) your customers’ needs? It's a great chance for UX designers to make an impact across the whole organization, since they already know how important research and insights are to making better experiences.

Here are a few tactics you can put into place to ensure you are delivering great experiences throughout your customers’ journeys.

Start by getting buy-in.

One of the challenges of creating an impactful CX strategy isn’t getting customers on board — it’s getting others inside your company engaged and on board. According to Forrester, 48% of CX leaders say that internal buy-in is their biggest obstacle to building a solid CX strategy. So don’t fly solo on this one; create a cross-functional working team of ambassadors. Help them understand your goals and mission, the value and importance of the work you are doing, and the role they can play to help. Then interview your leadership team and ask them to sponsor your efforts.

Next, do a deep dive into your brand.

What are all of the touchpoints that a customer might experience with you? Many think of digital touchpoints: social media, email, advertising, and your website — and those are great places to start. But don’t forget the physical aspects, too: your products, storefront, or service, as well as the employees your customer may engage with. Measure the impact of those touchpoints: do they align with your brand values, or is there work to be done?

Get comfortable getting uncomfortable.

Step outside of your department and spend some time talking to other teams within your organization. Shadow your sales team. Listen in on customer support calls. Monitor your chat logs. How are others positioning your brand throughout the customer journey? How might you help shape a better experience?

Talk to your customers.

Your brand isn’t what you say it is; it’s what your customers say it is. As every good experience design practitioner knows: you are not the user. So, talk to as many users as you can: the friends and the foes, the ambassadors and the skeptics. Ask the tough questions. Dig into a deeper understanding of their goals and needs, what’s keeping them up at night, and what is the overall sentiment of the experience you’re delivering.

Map the journey.

Once you have a better sense of your customers’ experience, map out their journey with your brand. Consider all of the touchpoints from their point of view: what are they doing, thinking, and experiencing at each stage? Highlight the potential pain points and opportunities to improve their experience.

Prioritize the opportunities.

Create an affinity map of the common themes and opportunities, and rank them on an impact/effort matrix. Then build a roadmap for the work to be done, starting with the low-hanging fruit, then strategize a plan for the larger tasks.

Playback your findings.

Now take all of that great work you’ve done, and play it back to your senior leadership / sponsor team. Give them the executive highlights: what was the work you did, what did you learn, what should you put into action, and what resources (people and financial) do you need to be successful?

Then, give yourself a pat on the back! You’ve made great strides in prioritizing your customers and will hopefully move the needle in delivering a better experience for them. They’ll be grateful to see that their voices are heard, their feedback is taken into consideration, and your business is prioritizing exceptional experiences.

Tools to get you rolling

If you’re new to using customer-centric methodologies to build better experiences, fear not: there are plenty of great tools and resources out there to help you get started.

• Visual collaboration tools: there are several wonderful products (Miro, Mural, FigJam to name a few) with company- and community-generated templates that cover everything from customer journeys to service blueprints, to prioritization and planning.
• Industry resources: there are also many thought leadership resources available to help deepen your practice and understanding of these customer-centric methodologies — Nielsen Norman Group, UX Planet, and LinkedIn Learning to name a few.

So get on it! Start finding those opportunities to delight your customers along all stages of the journey. And once you've done that, measure, adjust, and do it again. When it comes to providing outstanding experiences, iteration is key. After implementing some of your recommendations, reconnect with your customers to gauge your success and identify further improvement areas.