Customer Experience Consulting Services

A customer experience consultant finds where the customer and employee experience breaks down, then helps the business fix it. At Material, that work starts with research into how customers interact with the brand and how employees experience it. From there, our consultants build the customer experience strategy, the playbooks and training teams need to deliver it, and the measurement that keeps the experience improving.

User experience (UX) is one aspect of customer experience (CX). UX focuses exclusively on a consumer’s interactions with a particular product or digital touchpoint, such as a brand’s website or app. It looks at usability, accessibility, user interface (UI) design and other aspects of that channel. 

CX encompasses how consumers experience the brand via every touchpoint in their customer journey. Marketing, pricing, retail operations and customer service, along with UX, are among the elements considered. 

Customer experience consulting improves retention rates by identifying the key drop-off points, strategizing ways to improve them and helping implement those changes. Unsatisfactory customer experiences are a leading cause of customer churn. Because CX encompasses so many channels and functions, however, uncovering which pain points are contributing the most to churn is a challenge. A difficult-to-navigate app, an encounter with an unhelpful service rep or a product that arrives broken due to poor packaging — each of which occurs in a different stage of the customer journey and is handled by a different team — are just a few possible reasons customers leave a brand. 

Customer experience consulting leverages both quantitative and qualitative research to obtain a 360-degree view of the customer experience and the changes that would strengthen brand loyalty. Transactional data, website tracking and Net Promoter Scores are among the quantitative information researchers gather; focus groups and one-on-one interviews provide qualitative data.  

This research enables CX consultants to understand audience expectations and determine the next steps to help meet and exceed those expectations. 

You measure the ROI of customer experience consulting by setting a baseline on the metrics the work should move, then tracking those same metrics once changes go live. Choose metrics tied to business goals, like retention, customer satisfaction or cost to serve. At Material, our CX + EX measurement practice embeds feedback into day-to-day operations, so the results keep coming in after launch.

Outdated technology, data silos that impede personalization and inconsistent experiences across channels are common roadblocks to improving CX. Just as prevalent, if not more so, are gaps between consumer expectations and employee perceptions. At Material, we help organizations understand the links between CX and EX to forge stronger experiences for employees and customers alike. 

The entire organization must understand and buy into the necessary changes for the customer experience to improve. That requires involving employees at all levels, from gathering their input on current challenges and the ideal future-state, to training them in new procedures to sharing performance metrics. Clearly communicating the goals and metrics along with the reasons for change is vital, as is creating feedback loops for continual improvement. 

Because effective change management is critical to improving CX, our customer experience consulting team prioritizes employee education, internal communications and other services that ensure organizational alignment and successful implementation.  

Look for a customer experience agency that handles research, strategy and implementation. A strategy only pays off once employees have the guides and training to deliver it. When comparing customer experience agencies, ask how each one gathers customer insights, who builds those guides and training, and how progress gets measured after launch. At Material, our services cover each of those stages, including behavioral science research, customer experience guides, employee education and CX measurement.