The thinking behind a Customer Experience Audit

Customer experience (CX) refers to the sum of all the interactions a person has with an organization, regardless of the touchpoint. It starts with a customer’s initial contact with a brand and continues during the product purchasing process, the customer care given after purchase, right up until the product is discarded. 

During its first year, Amazon invested 100 times more into customer experience than into advertising.  So, if you also believe in the importance of CX and would like to find out how people think about your brand, the best way to get started is with an experience audit.  

Such an assessment will provide you with a clear overview of how customers and prospects interact with your brand and enable you to find out how to improve CX on a short-, medium- and long-term basis. 

An experience audit is an effective way to analyze CX by: 

  • Reviewing your solution with “objective eyes” to detect possible bottlenecks and flaws in interactions 

  • Defining opportunities and improvements 

  • Identifying sustainable strategies going forward 

Reasons why an experience audit is necessary 

Here are some reasons why you may need to consider carrying out an experience audit: 

  • Your e-commerce or website is a few years old. 

  • Data indicates that traffic has decreased or has a downward curve in various areas. 

  • Your e-commerce or website has never been tested or involved with CX in the first place. 

  • Your organization does not have internal resources for CX. 

  • A user-centered approach has not been a natural part of development, requirements or testing in your existing working methods. 

  • Your solution does not perform as expected and does not provide a satisfactory ROI. 

  • Your solution ranks well but converts poorly. 

  • You want your solution to grow in line with your business plan. 

  • New user flows (paths taken by users to complete tasks) have been added. 

  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization) requires change to support new strategies. 

An experience audit is designed to help you find out where you are today and how you can quickly get better (both in the short and long term) based on several areas including design, communications analysis and content. It is therefore aimed at brands who have a well-established digital presence, but with an ambition to constantly improve.  

What’s involved in a CX audit? 

The type of experience audit you choose should be adapted to meet your specific needs. You can choose to follow the entire process from start to finish, or to select from the areas below that you see as the highest priorities. 

  1.  Customer Journey Map 

  • Find out which contact areas you have with your customer, how they play a role in the different stages of the purchasing process, and how to illustrate it. 

  • Carry out customer interviews to see how an actual user experiences your website. 

  • Review overall suggestions for improvements - not just where a “buy” button should be placed or whether you should work more with video on YouTube, but rather the customer emotions you need to act on. 

  • Discuss your target group – what the demographics look like among those who shop. 

  1. Data 

  • Map out what data is currently available (Goggle Analytics, Clickstream analysis, conversion analysis and more). 

  • Draw conclusions based on this, on an overall level. 

  • Develop suggestions on how to work with data in the future and what sources should be added and how it can be monitored over time. 

  1. Channel 

  • Map which digital channels you are in such as social media, newsletters, paid ads and more. 

  • Draw conclusions - what works well, what works less well from a purely analytical perspective. Ask what media generates how much traffic and, together with step 2 above, try to see how much revenue an organic and a paid visit generates. 

  • Look at Marketing automation. What communications can be automated and what recurring mechanisms can we find? 

  • Develop actual suggestions for improvements. What is underutilized today, what feels pointless to continue with, what should be added? 

  1. UX  

  • Map out the existing solution.  

  • Work with experienced UX designers to go through your current solution based on the most important business and use cases. 

  •  Base your work on best practices for existing interactions and design principles and identify critical factors such as key pages, elements and interactions. 

  1. Content  

  • Build content that is mainly based on the Customer Journey Map and the key pages identified by the UX team and the data analysis team. 

  • Focus on content based on three chronological areas - communications before purchase (the channels your data analysis could identify), communications during purchase (content on the actual site) and communications after purchase (order confirmations, delivery notes, communications during the physical shipment phases, newsletters and more). Also look at cancelled purchases, abandoned carts, retargeting, return and handling. 

  • Develop several fictitious purchasing trips and record these either with random people or with yourselves commenting on what you see and what you think should be improved. 

 

The methodology used for your customer experience audit should be practical and effective and enable you to identify small improvements that can be made quickly, allowing you to make a difference and create a clearer picture of what you should aim for in the longer term.