Five Methods for Improving Your Customer Experience in Apps
89% of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience. The competition for customers has exponentially increased in the past several years and has become a critical component of company strategy within product engineering and product management. Consumers now have simple access to multiple choices for what and how they would like to buy or use and how and why they use what they buy or use. The beginning of the customer relationship starts with interaction with the consumer app.
The consumer app has replaced the traditional storefront and in-person experience. Consumers often choose applications to have an easy and simple way to interact with a company, a service, purchase a product, or receive information for research. If it is too difficult to access or complete a function or task, consumers will move to something else. There are multiple choices and consumers understand that.
Consumer apps can also be a mix of multiple applications, functions, and capabilities. This can be complex. Complex not only for the product management and engineering teams who have created the app, but also for the consumer who has concerns about speed, security, functionality, and ease of use. Consumers have become well aware, and also wary, about application performance. 49% of consumers have left a brand in the past year due to poor customer experience. If the application takes too much time to login, that’s an area of concern or an unsafe application. If the application loses data that has been entered or cart items have not been selected, it increases the frustration of the consumer. If the application has an error during the session, consumers will switch and download another application.
Studies show that the average consumer uses nine apps daily and up to 30 applications every month. Consumer options are plentiful. Companies are looking for an advantage for their application. Companies are looking to simplify the customer experience to construct a positive experience and to enhance brand loyalty and increase revenue through their applications.
Here are five ways to improve customer experience to increase your revenue, reduce your consumer security risks and concerns, and simplify your development effort for your team:
Set consumer and user experience performance goals through design thinking
Design thinking is the process of utilizing five steps to solve problems. Developing an application is solving challenges for the company and the consumer. It can be to increase revenue, improve customer service, simplify workflow, or develop easier ways to provide service and communicate. The steps of design thinking are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. By defining the performance goals that your company wants to achieve, your company now has the guidelines required to properly think through the design. Build toward the performance goals. Understand the consumer and customer. Evaluate the competition and other applications. The goals are the standard by which your company builds and develops. These can change as development occurs, but a cornerstone has been established.
Diagram the user journey and workflow in the application
The user journey and workflow is extremely critical to the success of the application and feedback received by consumers and customers. An early diagram and mockup session can help collaborative teams understand the aim of the application and can simulate the user path. Product managers and teams, remote or in-person, can employ the use of whiteboards to diagram the user behavior. Mapping each path or expected path can be instrumental in anticipating consumer use of the application. It opens eyes and provides insight into potential roadblocks or areas of conflict that may occur. The journey and results should align with the performance goals outlined in design thinking.
Outline and integrate the collaborative applications required
Applications can be a combination of source code, plug-ins, and applications to produce the final application. In most enterprise applications it is a combination of collaborative applications to provide an amazing user experience and consumer journey. As applications are designed with performance goals, they also must leverage other applications that create a frictionless experience for the user. Security and identity access and management is at the forefront of each consumer and customer. It’s important to utilize components and applications that simplify this engagement for consumers. $402 billion a year is left on the table by companies that fail to provide a simple experiences to their consumers. Developing a chain of collaborative applications that are integrated seamlessly can increase the revenue generated from the customers and increase brand loyalty.
Gather user feedback on application use and performance
User behavior is an important piece to any application design. Once the application is released, it is important to receive feedback directly from users, but also from the data retrieved from actual use of the application. Users will sometimes not openly share their feedback on the released application. Consumer survey response rates are typically between 20-30%. However, usage tracking of your application can be 100% with application performance monitoring and product experience tracking tools. This will give your company’s product team true insights into your consumer behavior, application performance, and next steps to improve your application.
Continuously improve the application to adapt to consumer behavior and their user journey
Product teams that digest user feedback and behavior information can make a significant difference in the performance of the business through improving the user journey within the application through analytics. Taking the feedback and information from users and planning follow up releases and enhancements to the application can help the company achieve its strategic goals. The approach of continuous improvement within organizations and teams is vital for ongoing success with applications. Company competition is ever-improving. Consumer behavior changes with technology, usage and buying trends, and security standards. Examining the user journey and customer experience as a core methodology can help companies surpass other applications in the market.
Final Thoughts
Building highly scalable apps is not only a function of how many concurrent users or consumers can use the application, but how many consumers actually enjoy the experience of the application. An application that is developed with the user journey and customer experience at the beginning has shown to have more success and better application retention rates. Application developers should aim to use simple, collaborative applications that focus on an easy onboarding and utilization experience by customers. Be secure and elevate security for your users. Engineer a fast performing application with minimal steps for users to access the right information. Consistently poll your consumers and customers for application feedback and capture usage data from the start to use the data for improvement. As your company continues to develop applications, focus on the customer experience and consumer behavior to ensure your application is useful for company initiatives and your customers.
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