1. Macmillan Research

Macmillan Research, a scientific research institution, discovered in 2012 that various individuals affected by cancer needed extra support with practical tasks like cleaning, shopping, and so on. Approximately one in four people diagnosed with new cancer in the UK lacked support from close family or friends (or roughly 70,000 people each year) at the time of this project.

To solve this, Macmillan devised a Team Up service. The goal was to create an accessible, intuitive online marketplace that would help those affected by cancer get the practical support they needed.

To accomplish their goal, Macmillan worked hard to ensure that Team Up was easy-to-use and accessible across many different devices. It also needed to recruit new volunteers plus appeal to a younger demographic of workers.

Thus, Macmillan faced two primary challenges:

• • Getting enough early adopters to test the earliest iterations of the service

• • Acquiring the new technologies needed to make the whole project work

Macmillan focused on customer experience by hiring a dedicated community manager. This community manager then worked with various local groups in order to sign people up for the prelaunch of the product.

Furthermore, Macmillan integrated data into its CX testing by running biweekly user testing sessions. These guaranteed that members of the community provided their feedback to the project early on, where it could still be incorporated easily.

Thanks to these CX practices, Macmillan was successful in its overall goal. The Team Up service exceeded its initial expectations and registration KPIs by approximately 40%. Most practical tasks for cancer patients had a turnaround time of fewer than three days overall.

2. CARFAX

The car sales company CARFAX always looks for new ways to leverage its extensive vehicle database and use its customer knowledge to make new, intuitive digital tools and solutions.

Among the most recent improvements that CARFAX has made to its product is CARFAX for Police, which is a mobile and web application that helps to streamline accident report filing. Customers can now use CARFAX to file accident reports with local police precincts, making the entire process much more streamlined and easier.

To develop this app, CARFAX needed to focus on customer experience. CARFAX did some research to learn about the challenges police officers face while on the job and the difficulties they experience when filing accident reports. Fortunately, the technology to incorporate a solution like this was already present.

CARFAX and its clients conducted extensive user research, including interviews, measuring application user patterns, and so on, with a handful of police officers. They also leveraged skilled developers and mobile app programmers to make navigable, easy-to-use systems that successfully led to a great app.

By the end, CARFAX’s focus on CX resulted in an app that enables law enforcement officers to reduce accident report times by about 50%, as well as capture more data in law enforcement systems.

3. PBS

PBS previously wanted to transition from a more traditional media company into a leading digital media giant. To do that, PBS recognized that it needed to discover new marketing channels and formats through which to deliver educational, informative content to audiences across all age groups. More broadly, PBS wanted to connect and unify its overall network of approximately 200 member stations.

The CX-focused improvements were multifaceted from the get-go. PBS constructed a new technical infrastructure to serve content on multiple channels. This made PBS content more accessible to its users, thereby improving their customer experiences.

Furthermore, PBS developed iPad applications and APIs to ensure that content could be seamlessly delivered on any channel. This required the construction of custom content management systems, too — a high initial expense, but one that ended up being very worthwhile in the long run.

PBS also pivoted into a digital-first culture across the board. This allowed its members to focus on delivering exemplary customer experiences to online users, not just individuals watching television programs.

4. Trex

Trex was a home improvement company that specialized in providing sustainable deck materials. It wanted to improve its customers' experiences by creating a deck design app through which customers could create photorealistic mockups or simulations of what their decks might look like after constructing them.

The deck app would solve a huge pain point by helping customers who had only themselves to rely on when designing and building a deck of their very own. In creating a photorealistic application, Trex could eliminate a lot of the time and costs required in outsourcing the design process.

Therefore, Trex focused on creating an intuitive, navigable app with a good UX experience. This involved performing very deep, comprehensive user testing, as well as designing and building an initial solution and providing it to testers before incorporating their feedback.

In the end, the final app was very user-friendly. Customers were able to upload an image of their deck spaces or backyards, input certain deck dimensions, and even share their preferences. The app then recommends various eco-friendly deck materials and products so they can design and build the deck of their dreams in no time.

5. Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook, a travel agency and operator, wanted to improve its direct relationships with its target audience members and expand its customer base to those who weren’t currently its customers. Thomas Cook also wanted to know more about online customer journeys, as well as better understand customer purchase lifecycles.

With so many disparate goals, Thomas Cook needed to focus on customer experience and data-gathering above all else. To do this, it launched a targeted lead-generation campaign in addition to a travel survey.

The point of both of these methods was to capture key data and information about customers' future buying intentions, as well as specific customer requirements (which could, in theory, affect whether a given customer might buy something).

Furthermore, Thomas Cook utilized a nurturing program to deliver individualized, highly resonating messages and bolster user engagement. After completing the survey, consumers were presented with several different headline offers or redirected to the primary Thomas Cook website.

Thomas Cook didn't stop there. It also displayed various retargeting tags in the marketing campaign, helping the brand deliver more personalized display banner advertisements to respondents. All in all, this marketing effort allowed Thomas Cook to gain much more information than before.

It also acquired over 15,000 leads, saw email engagement rates boosted by over 30%, and saw email open rates at over twice the UK national benchmark average. All in all, it was a very successful CX data-gathering campaign.

6. RS Components

RS Components previously needed a better user experience. Specifically, the CX here was not conducive to quick or efficient processing.

This was a big problem for RS Components, as its marketing campaign was doing well, delivering over 10 million visits to various associated websites per month. Unfortunately, 70 million of those prospective customers left the site right at the search stage over the year.

To bolster conversion, RS Components look to improve its online customer experiences. With 60 websites in the group, this was a monumental task.

To accomplish it, RS Components:

• • Collected customer feedback from online surveys, in addition to performing customer lab testing in the real world

• • Prioritized things like speed and ease of identifying products. RS Components aimed to make it easier for customers to find and purchase the products they wanted

• • Practiced search term correction

• • Made significant improvements to search result categorization and presentation

• • Emphasized and optimized its websites for mobile searchers

All in all, these efforts were highly successful. RS Components didn’t focus so much on changing its customer experience in terms of customer support or marketing. However, it did make a change in its CX in terms of searchability, website navigation, and product purchasing. This highlights how customer experience can incorporate and encompass many different elements of an online enterprise.

7. Vodafone UK

Vodafone UK wanted to develop an interactive, graphical representation of network performance. This was to be a first for the overall UK telecoms market. Unfortunately, Vodafone UK faced a significant challenge: making this rather technical and complex subject more accessible and simpler to understand for customers.

The primary objective was to create a tool to route queries into a call center using a self-service portal. Then, Vodafone UK aimed to develop a system to help communicate any planned outages to customers that would be affected. By the end of development, the tool needed to be very easy to maintain and be able to update itself in real-time 24/7.

To accomplish this, Vodafone UK focused somewhat on CX or customer experience management. Specifically, it:

• • Created a cross-channel working group that included different business areas and people in industries like network operations, public relations, technology, security, and more.

• • Carried out various usability studies with the public. This helped to validate its initial graphic design plan and user experience before implementing and improving upon it.

With this CX-focused approach, Vodafone UK successfully constructed a system where telecom information could be updated moment by moment by field engineers. The system was also linked to an email notification center, which enabled affected customers to immediately be notified of outages or changes in their coverage.

These days, users can still register their email addresses with the Vodafone UK telecoms system. This automatically sends an email if an issue is reported or if the network operations center has to impose an outage for technical or maintenance reasons.

The Impact of Customer Research on Customer Satisfaction

Many of these studies show how social media, digital transformation, and customer-centric optimization strategies can have a major impact. Using touchpoint analysis or leveraging contact centers can have an incredible impact on the bottom line.

Customer relationships — for both current and potential customers — only grow if you focus on world-class CX like these companies. Provide your customers with good day-to-day service in the online shopping world. Leverage automation where it makes sense, but don’t forget about the impact of a personal, human touch.

Chat With Awesome CX Today

As you can see, good customer experiences are absolutely vital for your brand. As you look to improve your CX overall, review your customer satisfaction metrics. Decide what pain point you can solve and anticipate the kind of improvements that loyal and new customers will most likely appreciate.

If the ideal way to make sure that your CX improvements are actually improvements and not just changes to your website or customer journeys for the sake of it.

Fortunately, if your CX philosophy needs a bit of work, there are partners you can turn to for help. Awesome CX is well-equipped and ready to assist with all of your CX needs.

In fact, we’ve assisted over 90 brands with their customer experience services, ranging from backend or office support to customer experience center aid and more. No matter what your industry happens to be, Awesome CX can help in more ways than one.

Send us a message today to learn more.

Sources:

Customer Experience | Tech Target

What Is Customer Experience? | Forbes

What is Customer Experience? | IBM