Last updated on Aug 3, 2024

How do you audit your customer experience in 5 steps?

Customer experience (CX) is the sum of all the interactions and emotions that your customers have with your brand, products, and services. It can make or break your business, as it affects customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, and advocacy. But how do you know if your CX is effective, consistent, and aligned with your goals? That's where a customer experience audit comes in. A CX audit is a systematic evaluation of your current CX strategy, processes, and performance, using data, feedback, and best practices. It helps you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your CX, and the opportunities and threats for improvement. In this article, we'll show you how to audit your customer experience in 5 steps, and how to use the results to optimize your CX.

1 Define your CX goals

The first step of a CX audit is to define your CX goals. What are you trying to achieve with your CX? How do you measure your CX success? How do you align your CX with your business objectives and values? Your CX goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, you might want to increase your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) by 10% in the next quarter, or reduce your customer churn rate by 5% in the next year. Having clear and realistic CX goals will help you focus your audit and prioritize your actions.

Add your perspective

Rick Mans

Making Complexity Understandable | Delivering Value through Digital Transformation & Customer Experience for over 20 years
Report contribution
You are as good at CX as the customers that stay with you. Successful CX helps your organisation, and customers achieve the most they can. Hence, your goals should be split between what success means for the organisation and customer success. Your customer's success is not in your hands, though the road towards success is something you influence on. Hence try to escape the single metric goals of a CSAT or NPS, they are indicators, but a higher score means nothing if your competition is even higher. Look at meaningful actions and concrete improvements, and focus on comparing yourself to the competition. You want to deliver delight to your customers, not a slightly less mediocre experience than the competition.

Like
Abdelhamid NIATI

Business Coach & Mentor 🚀I help entrepreneurs in Growth 🚀| Digital strategy | Scale according to values . See you at the top! 📈 2400 entrepreneurs supported 📈 2240 people trained 📈 Growing activity on 4 continents
Report contribution
Un audit CX commence toujours pas la définition d'objectifs SMART. Ces objectifs permettront de mesurer l'efficacité de votre CX. Définissez les points clefs où le client entre en contact avec l'entreprise (site web, social medias par exemple). Utilisez les données et les retours clients pour mesurer la satisfaction client. N'attendez pas le feedback : demandez le avec des questions ciblées pour servir vos objectifs. Evitez les questions génériques ou trop larges. Citez votre marque dans vos questions.

Translated

Like

2 Map your customer journey

The second step of a CX audit is to map your customer journey. A customer journey map is a visual representation of the steps that your customers take from awareness to loyalty, and the touchpoints, channels, and emotions that they experience along the way. It helps you understand your customers' needs, expectations, pain points, and motivations, and how your CX influences them. To create a customer journey map, you need to segment your customers into personas, based on their demographics, behaviors, and preferences. Then, you need to collect data and feedback from various sources, such as surveys, interviews, analytics, reviews, and social media, to fill in the details of each persona's journey. A customer journey map will help you identify the gaps and opportunities in your CX, and how to enhance it at each stage.

Add your perspective

Abdelhamid NIATI

Business Coach & Mentor 🚀I help entrepreneurs in Growth 🚀| Digital strategy | Scale according to values . See you at the top! 📈 2400 entrepreneurs supported 📈 2240 people trained 📈 Growing activity on 4 continents
Report contribution
Cette étape est également indispensable. Je l'ai abordé dans mon commentaire précédent. Définissez les points clefs où le client entre en contact avec l'entreprise (site web, social medias par exemple). A chaque contact, votre client vit une expérience. L'expérience doit être conforme à vos objectifs et être cohérente pour construire votre univers de marque. Identifier les points où le client est susceptible d'avoir des bonnes et de moins bonnes expériences. Les points de frictions identifiés sur la cartographies vous permettent d'agir sur ces points pour réduire les points de friction. Utilisez vos personas (clients cibles avec données précises). répondez aux commentaires et avis.

Translated

Like

3 Assess your CX capabilities

The third step of a CX audit is to assess your CX capabilities. Your CX capabilities are the resources, skills, and processes that you use to deliver your CX. They include your people, technology, culture, and governance. You need to evaluate how well your CX capabilities support your CX goals and your customer journey, and how they compare to the industry standards and best practices. You can use various tools and frameworks, such as SWOT analysis, maturity models, benchmarking, and gap analysis, to conduct your CX capability assessment. A CX capability assessment will help you determine the strengths and weaknesses of your CX delivery, and the areas that need improvement or investment.

Add your perspective

Abdelhamid NIATI

Business Coach & Mentor 🚀I help entrepreneurs in Growth 🚀| Digital strategy | Scale according to values . See you at the top! 📈 2400 entrepreneurs supported 📈 2240 people trained 📈 Growing activity on 4 continents
(edited)
Report contribution
L'évaluation des capacités CX implique l'examen de divers ressources pour identifier les forces et les faiblesses. Ressources Humaines : Structure organisationnelle : Vérifier l'efficacité des rôles et des processus internes. Technologies : Systèmes CRM : Évaluer l'efficacité des outils de gestion de la relation client. Outils d'analyse : Utiliser des technologies pour collecter et analyser les retours clients. Automatisation : Intégration de l'IA et de l'automatisation pour améliorer les services. Analyse SWOT : Identifier les forces, faiblesses, opportunités et menaces. Modèles de maturité CX : Évaluer le niveau de sophistication des pratiques CX. Benchmarking : Comparer les pratiques internes avec celles de la concurrence.

Translated

Like

4 Prioritize your CX actions

The fourth step of a CX audit is to prioritize your CX actions. Based on the findings of your CX goals, customer journey, and capability assessment, you need to define the actions that you will take to improve your CX. These actions can range from quick fixes to strategic initiatives, depending on the urgency, impact, and feasibility of each action. You can use various methods, such as the Eisenhower matrix, the MoSCoW technique, or the Pareto principle, to prioritize your CX actions. You should also assign roles and responsibilities, timelines and budgets, and metrics and targets for each action. Prioritizing your CX actions will help you create a realistic and effective CX action plan, and allocate your resources accordingly.

Add your perspective

5 Implement and monitor your CX actions

The fifth and final step of a CX audit is to implement and monitor your CX actions. This is where you put your CX action plan into practice, and track the results and outcomes of your CX actions. You need to communicate your CX action plan to all the relevant stakeholders, and ensure that they have the necessary support and guidance to execute it. You also need to monitor and measure your CX performance, using the metrics and targets that you set in the previous step. You should collect and analyze data and feedback from various sources, such as surveys, interviews, analytics, reviews, and social media, to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of your CX actions. You should also review and update your CX action plan regularly, based on the feedback and insights that you gather. Implementing and monitoring your CX actions will help you optimize your CX continuously, and achieve your CX goals.

Add your perspective

Rick Mans

Making Complexity Understandable | Delivering Value through Digital Transformation & Customer Experience for over 20 years
Report contribution
What you don't measure, you cannot improve. Actions and success are two different things. You can do significant actions without success and poor actions with success. You need to assess them both. Monitor and assess if your actions are the right ones. How did they resonate with customers, did they notice, and if so, what? Though also question Success. You might be successful, but do you know why? Since if you do, you can repeat this over and over again. Not successful? Is there an apparent reason for it, or was it a timing issue or a stroke of bad luck? Be analytical about what you do to learn and to increase your chances of success time over time again.

Like

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

Add your perspective

How do you audit your customer experience in 5 steps?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Define your CX goals

2 Map your customer journey

3 Assess your CX capabilities

4 Prioritize your CX actions

5 Implement and monitor your CX actions

6 Here’s what else to consider

Customer Experience

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

More articles on Customer Experience

More relevant reading

How do you audit your customer experience in 5 steps?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Define your CX goals

2 Map your customer journey

3 Assess your CX capabilities

4 Prioritize your CX actions

5 Implement and monitor your CX actions

6 Here’s what else to consider

Customer Experience

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

Explore Other Skills