When you think of CX you think of the experience a person is having when buying a car, clothes or a new home. However, what if this person is buying a toy? Moreover what if this person is 5 and not 50? 

Today’s blog will shed a light on an area of Customer Experience that perhaps is not as prominent as others. Toy stores, children’s museums, candy, comic book or game shops all target children. While adults will make purchases in these stores, customer experience needs to take into account that children now are able to make their own purchasing decisions and choose between different brands as well as largely influencing their guardians. 

Children becoming consumers

Not long ago children were considered consumers of the future. Any advertising of products that would ultimately be used by children, was directed towards their parents or guardians. Children, even when they received money, were only considered as ‘savers’. 

Their parents gave them pocket money that was to be saved up for some bigger purchase later on or to teach them financial responsibility. This resulted in children buying 10 cent candy and as such, being disregarded as a valuable customer. 

However, with the baby boom, came the realisation that all these children, who spend 10 cents, add up. Marketers and business owners began understanding that children – even though they wouldn’t be making huge purchases, make a difference.

As well as this James U. McNeal states in his article that, “Kids are marching toward adulthood at a much brisker pace than they used to and are wanting more mature things to go with this accelerated growth.” Parents want their kids to become financially responsible and therefore are giving their children opportunities to become consumers from an early age. 

NRF (National Retail Federation) concluded in a study that 90% of parents admitted that children influence their purchase decisions. On top of that, the most important decision that children influence is the choice of the brand. 

Chances are, that even if children are not the direct target audience, they will influence your potential customers (ie. their parents or guardians).

Children as Target Audience – What to think about? 

If your target audience are children, ensure that you do the same amount of research into what they need as you would with a specific adult group. 

Shawn McCoy, VP of Business Development, from JRA, lists core design philosophies that he uses when designing the experience in children’s museums. 

Children’s Museum Design Philosophies

• Provide familiar, inviting, and fun physical context
• Let the child be the hero
• Assist the child in facing the world around them
• Introduce the child to the world beyond them
• Incorporate challenge and reward
• Accommodate various personalities, learning styles, and attention spans
• Provide experiences that children and caregivers can enjoy together

Many if not all of these points can be directly applied to customer experience strategies for any target audience. However, it’s immensely important to ensure they are thought of when designing for children. 

For example, “Let the child be the hero”, pretty obvious. One of the most important aspects of CX is to keep the customer at the centre of all decisions – this can be easily translated to – the customer is the most important. 

The customer is always supposed to be the main protagonist of the story, you as a business are merely there to help them achieve their goal. 

When you adapt this to a child, you give your business a chance to gain the best advocate ever known. Remember: If a child has a positive experience (no matter how small) they will tell everyone and they will have a stronger influence over their guardians/ parents decisions later on. 

A good example of a company who successfully perfected their CX strategy to their target market (kids) is Build-A-Bear. 

Their in store experience of creating a child’s own bear is based on the ideology that they ‘don’t sell products, they sell smiles’. Even if the parent doesn’t have enough money to purchase a bear, the company offers the children a sticker sheet or a pin. 

This is combined with their website Bearville.com where children can create virtual versions of themselves and their animals and interact with each other online. On top of this they introduced ‘Bear University’ where kids can learn how to manage money amongst other subjects. 

Build-A-Bear also brilliantly executes a point from the list, ‘Assist the child in facing the world around them’. 

Children can be distracted easily, they can forget things – let’s face it – they are not the most responsible beings. To combat this the company attached a unique barcode inside of each bear when it’s made. The bear is given a ‘birth certificate’ which can be used to contact the owner. Found bears can be returned to the store and through this system reunited with the child. “More than 6,000 lost animals have been reunited with their owners over 16 years.”

Children as Influencers – Don’t forget about them

Teens and young adults increasingly support companies that they trust. The decision of whether a teenager trusts your company will be based on what you promise, and what the teenager expects you then to deliver. More and more, trust is based on sustainability and looking after our planet. If profit is your only purpose in business you’re going to have a tough time with the Generation Z or post millennial generation!

It’s also very easy to forget about the customers that don’t actually make any purchase or spend any money. However, as a business owner you need to remember that they do in fact have the power to influence what their parents buy as well as the power to make purchases themselves. 

A good example of this is in the tourism industry. If you’ve ever been on a plane, you know how difficult it is for the mothers and their babies to travel. Children are famous for being very impatient. So what if an airline adjusted their service to accommodate for this? CathayPacific provides a ‘children’s fun-pack’ to 3-6 year olds to entertain them during the flight. It’s something very simple but does make a difference. 

“Children not only influence the purchase of products that are directly consumed only by them, but a much wider range of products for use by the entire family” Children are increasingly becoming major influencers of parents’ decisions, including purchasing choices. 

Therefore, as a brand owner you should always have in mind your target audience. If they include parents, guardians or children you need to take the above into consideration, at every stage of designing your CX Strategy. 

If you would like to learn more about Customer Experience and how to achieve CX Excellence enrol in our Professional Diploma or Certificate today.

If you missed any of the tips, please find all of them below gather in this handy blog post for your convenience.

Tip 1: Focus your resources in the ‘Delight’ stage of the sales funnel.

In the recent years there has been a growth in referrals by existing customers among their friends, family and colleagues. Investing in ‘Delight’ motivates customers remain loyal, to buy more and refer your company to others feeding the sales funnel at a fraction of what marketing costs. We call it Organic Customer Acquisition!

Tip 2: Design your customer journey from the beginning of the relationship.

It is the first time a customer is likely to hear of your customer promise and you need to make sure to meet or exceed your promise from your initial marketing right through to a heroic resolution after a complaint is made.

Tip 3: Don’t over-promise.

Trust can be affected when the customer expectations differ from the delivery. If you over promise and under-deliver, it creates a negative customer experience. If you under-promise and over-deliver, it creates a positive customer experience.

Tip 4: Do The Right Thing!

Always do the right thing for the customer. What’s good for the customer is good for the company.

Tip 5: Create a highly motivated CX Action Task Force.

Ensure that the CX Action Task Force is made up of dedicated staff, from different department and different seniorities. To deliver great CX, arm them with key benchmarks on how the company is currently performing in the eyes of the customer.

Tip 6: Design a clear Customer Promise.

The Customer Promise should not just engage the customer but is also motivating to all staff within the company.

Tip 7: Use CX for Differentiation.

CX is now the only way companies can differentiate themselves from competitors. Where customers can’t differentiate between the offerings, they will make their decision based on who offers the best experience.

Tip 8: When handling an issue, listen intently and solve the customer’s problem exceptionally.

When a company listens, the customer feels valued, respected, understood and their trust in the company grows. All of this leads to increased loyalty and a deeper emotional bond.

Tip 9: Turn problems into opportunities.

A Harvard Business Review study showed that that the customers who received an appropriate response to their negative tweet, were willing to pay more for a product or service from that company after the fact.

Tip 10: Empower Staff

Provide the right tools and empowerment for your staff. This creates trust which is a great motivator for them to carry out their tasks exceptionally.

Tip 11: Delivering CX Excellence Reduces Costs.

Acquisitions Costs, Costs to Serve, Recruitment and Training costs are all reduced when you invest in CX.

Tip 12: Keep your language simple.

When companies use complicated words and jargon, customers may start to believe that the company they are dealing with have something to hide.

Tip 13: Personalise Customer Experience (CX).

Using the customer’s name, actively listening and making the customer feel special will help build trust and loyalty.

Tip 14: Customers are busy, so make their time with you as pleasurable as possible.

Ensuring that customers don’t have to do all the work themselves, keeping the process down to three steps and letting the customer speak to someone after no more than 2 minutes will have a great impact on customer satisfaction scores.

Tip 15: Show Empathy at every step of the customer journey.

Understanding each customer’s circumstances and being able to deliver the right emotional response to improve things for the customer, will build a strong emotional bond.

Tip 16: Educate your staff about timings.

When you educate your staff about timings for different processes and empower them to inform the customers of updates, there is confidence and consistency in how they inform and manage customer’s expectations, which creates trust.

Tip 17: Utilise feedback to your advantage.

Customer complaints and feedback offer a huge opportunity for companies to identify issues and design better solutions.

Tip 18: Invest in Employee Experience.

When you invest in EX you will ensure that your employees are happy to help customers, stay with you longer and recommend the company to their friends and family.

Tip 19: Don’t Overuse Technology.

Technology is there to make it easier for the customer and not for the company!

Tip 20: Get the CEO Buy-In

The first stage for any company to deliver CX Excellence is the CEO Buy-In. CEOs need to support CX Excellence, understand that CX can help differentiate the company and that it increases profitability.

If you would like to learn more and become a high;y skilled, fully qualified CX professional, enrol today in our Professional Diploma or Certificate course. 

The CX Academy Framework helps organisations deliver CX Excellence. If you are trying to figure our how your company can improve the CX strategy, the template below can easily identify  where there is room for improvement. 

Below you will see key behaviours associated with each of the Six Emotional Drivers. For each behaviour think about your own company and rate how embedded they are – do they behave like this all the time, most of the time, occasionally or never. Based on your scores you can see where you need to focus and what you need to do. 

Score each of the behaviours:

3 = We behave like this with customers all of the time

2 = We behave like this with customers most of the time

1 = We behave like this with customers occasionally

0 = We never behave like this with customers

Being trustworthy in everything you do for customers

Treating customers as individuals, like human beings

Making it easy and effortless for customers to do business

Understanding customers circumstances and showing empathy

If you would like to get the full CX Framework Benchmarking Template Sheet along with actions to take depending on your score email kamila@thecxacademy.org

We are delighted and proud to announce today that our Professional Diploma in Customer Experience (CX) has been credit rated by Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU).

This is a significant, internationally respected and recognised educational body. GCU would be considered one of the UKs top universities and they have over 20,000 students and 1,600
administrative staff.

We’ve looked around and as far as we are aware no other CX courses are credited rated or accredited by an official university.

GCU were a natural fit for us. They understand business and have a well developed understanding of the ‘university to business’ mindset.

They know that programmes must be practical, accessible for professional learners and underpinned by solid theory.  They have been our partners during this whole process and we are delighted to be
working with them.

Now, the CX Academy’s Professional Diploma in CX is the first globally recognised, university credit-rated qualification for CX.

The programme is rated by the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) at Level 8 qualification which equates to a Level 5 in the European Qualifications Framework (EQF).

Please ask ana@thecxacademy.org if you want more information on the Professional Diploma in CX.

Thanks!

Everyone Benefits from investment in CX

[one_half]Companies that deliver CX excellence receive immediate and impactful benefits that filter throughout the whole business. Each of these benefits ultimately deliver greater commercial ROI and shareholder value.

These benefits can be realised by each business department or C-suite decision maker. Below, we outline which benefits are important to each department. It has been designed to help CX practitioners get buy-in from each department and the company as a whole, enabling a speedier focus on the customer.[/one_half]

[one_half_last]

The core benefits of delivering CX Excellence are:

• • Differentiation from your competitor

  • Greater customer loyalty and retention

  • More cost-effective acquisition of new customers

  • Reduction in cost to serve your customers

  • Greater staff motivation and longevity

  • Greater shareholder value [/one_half_last]

CEO

Shareholder value CX provides greater ROI for investors

Business differentiation Because most businesses today offer pretty much the same product at the same price, CX is now the only true way a company can differentiate its offering to its customers

Business reputation Companies that treat their staff and customers brilliantly earn stronger reputations in their communities and markets

Internal culture CX creates a positive internal culture and working environment

Motivated staff Happy staff = happy customers = happy business = happy shareholders

Investment arsenal Happy shareholders are quicker to invest and support a successful CEO with a successful CX approach

The Financial Director

Profitability Greater profitability due to less price sensitivity as customers are happy to pay more for great CX

Increased revenue Positive word of mouth delivers greater repeat sales and further opportunities for cross and up selling. It also stimulates strong acquisition of new customers

Cost savings Happy customers are less likely to tie up service lines/contact centres with queries resulting in cost savings. Investment in expensive marketing acquisition programmes are reduced

The Operations Director

Reducing time & effort CX helps operations by making it easier and more enjoyable for customers to do business with us

Reducing costs to serve By removing hurdles customers are less likely to engage the company with queries and therefore reduce the numbers of calls into a call centre

Customer promise Operations can now deliver on the customer promise because they are part of its creation

The Marketing Director

Customer promise Allows marketing to deliver a powerful customer promise that differentiates the company from its competitors

Acquisition of new Customers Lower acquisition costs

Retention of existing customers Stable customer base willing to pay more for better CX

The Sales Director

Acquisition of new customers Cost effective acquisition as a result of increased positive customer advocacy

Higher margin Happy customers buy more product more often and at higher prices

Up and cross selling existing customers Easier to convert existing happy customers to buy more from you

The Commercial Director

Profitability Higher margins created from higher prices and lower costs to serve

Less price sensitivity Customers are happy to pay more for a great customer experience

The HR Director

Purpose Staff feel they have more input in a customer centric organisation

Motivation When staff are clear on their roles and how they impact their companies success they become more motivated

Longevity Great CX companies hold onto their best staff for longer

Rewards Best in class CX champions reward their staff for CX rather than sales

The IT Director

Improved ROI Technology investments based on customer feedback can result in increased usage and reduced costs

Making it easier for staff to deliver customer promise Utilising technology will help internal staff support front facing staff deliver greater CX

Making it easier for the customer to do business Deliver greater UX experiences for their customers

Credit: The CX Company

Is CX part of the agenda in your company?
Use this information to arm yourself in your next board meeting. You know how investment in CX will benefit your company. Now you know how to get everyone on board!