4 Quick Win Focus Areas for Enhancing Customer Experience

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Customer Experience (CX) touches many parts of an organisation, particularly marketing. VML South Africa’s customer experience director Sandra McDiarmid and chief growth officer Astrid Ascar share four quick wins that brands can implement without blowing the budget.

CX is not just one department's responsibility because audiences interact throughout their purchasing decision with a brand; so CX by definition should be a concern for multiple departments. The focus in this article is on the kinds of questions marketers should be asking regarding marketing activity contributions to overall Customer Experience.  Just like a small frustration can damage a client’s perception of a brand, quick wins can significantly shift the needle without incurring massive costs or necessitating major overhauls. Here are four key focus areas that can enhance customer experience with immediate effect.

#1 Think About How You Might Leverage First-Party Data

While leveraging mature-state first-party data to offer true personalisation in and of itself is not a quick win, the quick win relates to how we think about the value of first-party data from a marketing and not purely a sales perspective.

First-party data is a treasure trove of insights that can enhance customer experience right from the awareness stage. You need to have a marketing plan for the kind of information you want to gather through the campaigns you run, either to supplement existing profiles on a database, or to start gathering first party data from scratch.

Even if you have the table stakes of a name, a geographic location and a preferred method of contact in place, think about which information is relevant for you to cross-sell or upsell products and services. Brands can start by integrating simple methods to collect such additional data. Tactics like quizzes, polls, and surveys not only engage consumers and make them feel heard, but they can also ask questions that tell marketers how consumers prefer to digest content. Knowing if they prefer video, audio, or text, for example, adds a valuable piece of information to a profile and can also inform how to direct future spend on creating content.

A common challenge for marketers is having a clean database to work from. The quick win here is to add a segmentation filter that separates your audience into four main “buckets”. Distinguish between those who are highly active (they would expect personalised communications) from the active – the latter open perhaps only every second or third message. Separate out dormant customers and plan only to send them highly targeted messages, and as for “ghosts” – those from whom you have not seen any activity for at least two years – remove them from your database.

A really quick win is to use database segmentation insights to help refine lookalike audiences for paid media activity.

#2 Effective Use of Search Data

Search data holds immense potential in shaping marketing messages and strategy. 

The key is not to focus only on top-of-funnel keywords but to delve into the language and phrases that customers use across multiple channels and platforms. 

Importantly, brands should look beyond traditional search engines like Google – social search is on the rise and brands would do well to consider search insights from the likes of YouTube and TikTok, and even shopping portals and voice search. By analysing search terms across multiple platforms marketers can ensure that both paid and organic search efforts are aligned with actual consumer interests.

Ultimately, a nuanced understanding of search data helps in crafting messages that resonate more deeply with audiences, thereby boosting both awareness and engagement. Search is a tool customers use throughout the various stages of their purchasing decision journey or marketing funnel, so it’s not just something we should focus on as a keyword or keyword phrase for SEM top of the funnel awareness.

An additional point worth making is not to look at paid search and organic search as separate streams of work – search insights should inform both approaches and will help to move away from a reliance on branded search terms.

#3 Content

Marketers should be seeing content as a way to move customers from awareness, through the funnel, to conversion and ultimately advocacy.

Effective content strategies require a mix of formats to cater to diverse audience preferences. This includes text, infographics, videos, and podcasts, increasing the chances that your messages reach audiences in their preferred medium. Conducting a content format assessment is a quick way for brands to identify potential gaps and opportunities for improvement.

Look out for thin content by conducting an SEO audit – anything less than 500 words can be penalised by search engines. Beyond length of content, grammar, language and tone are equally important. With voice search on the rise, writing conversational copy that uses normal language and expressions in advertising copy and on-site can positively influence search results and user experience. 

Something that’s often overlooked is the part that destination URLs play in campaign user journeys. When including URLs in hyperlinked ad campaigns, digital brochures, or on social media, or even in a newsletter, be conscious of what page the URL is taking the customer to. Defaulting to the homepage of your site will likely create a broken journey – instead, link to a page where the first copy seen by the user relates to the messaging in the asset they clicked on. 

#4 Design and Copy

Design isn't just about aesthetics – it’s about seamlessly guiding users through their journey. Simplified navigation, logical layout, user-friendly language and an information architecture that mirrors how customers think about products and services are all critical components of CX-centric design and copy.

Typical problem areas include forms that are not practical, using different language for the same call to action, having multiple call to action buttons for the same CTA scattered on different areas in a page layout, and loading content without compressing file sizes. These are basic oversights that damage a user experience and reduce conversion rates, and they don’t need to have massive projects approved to fix. A high-level user experience audit would surface basic problem areas that are quick fixes.

Another way to elevate design is through consistency – ensure that terms and navigation labels are uniform on the website and across platforms. Consistency not only enhances usability but also strengthens brand recognition. For example, don’t call a service offering “finance” on a CTA button and “financial solutions” in a hamburger drop-down menu – pick one term and stick with it.

With a significant portion of consumer interactions occurring on mobile devices, ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is non-negotiable. A responsive design that adapts seamlessly across devices can significantly enhance user experience, reducing bounce rates and increasing engagement. Interestingly, Google traditionally ranks websites on the health of their mobile site, not desktop, so it’s important that every page on the site is responsive.

Ultimately the quick wins boil down to conducting the right kind of audit as part of a regular marketing-focussed hygiene check. It does not need to mean a complete overhaul, but it will certainly surface quick win problem areas that can be fixed with relative ease. Database, SEO, content, and design and copy audits will also surface bigger areas for improvement – this helps to inform how one allocates future project budgets to drive customer experience ambitions. The quick wins are a good place to start.