When Dad brought the internet to my childhood home and explained what it could do, I knew I wanted to learn how to design a website. As an introverted tween, it seemed like the perfect way to express who I was, what I valued, and what I wanted to offer the world — all with the click of a button.
“We are a company that listens to our customers” or “We put the customer first” are phrases I’m sure you’ve heard often. These statements are a foundational promise in countless mission statements, website headlines, and choruses of customer service teams everywhere.
However, while most companies use some version of this messaging, only a few truly understand their customers.
HubSpot’s new research backs up my statement. The data show that 76% of customer service leaders do not have full-funnel visibility of their customers’ experience. The absence of this crucial data makes delighting customers difficult for these service leaders and their teams.
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To overcome this challenge, we dug into current customer service trends by surveying 1,537 service leaders globally to understand how they put customers first.
In this article:
Listening to customers is essential because customers have the power to make or break a company. Not giving an ear to customers is one reason sour customer stories exist with companies like ComCast, Snapchat, and Amazon.
A strong customer focus is critical for growth, as today’s consumers hold unprecedented power in the buying process.
According to our previous report, 76.2% of customer service professionals agree customers are more informed than they used to be. This uptick in consumer behavior is closely linked to the rise and popularity of social media. In fact, our latest consumer Trends Report shows 1 in 4 consumers prefer to discover new products through social media over any other channel.
Social media platforms provide extensive reach, and a single instance of feedback on products and services can impact the purchasing decisions of others. That’s why it’s unsurprising that 9% of our surveyed service leaders said social media is an effective customer service channel. By being on social media, these leaders can interface with customers where they hang out.
To sum up, customers today are smarter, have higher expectations, and — good or bad — are likely to share their experiences on social media or review sites where the feedback is permanent.
This power shift can be daunting if your product or service isn’t up to par. However, if you have a strong product and offer a great customer experience, this is an opportunity to leverage the customers’ power, turn them into advocates, and fuel your growth.
Before AI disrupted the tech landscape, the empowered consumer was interested in:
Thankfully, I’ve seen most companies adapt and make most of these available. However, companies must now prepare to meet the current and future needs of today’s buyers. When we asked our service leaders to chime in on this, two core themes emerged. Let’s take a look.
Many people questioned the emergence of AI in 2023. But by 2024, AI is still going strong. While many still wonder if AI is a fad, others have invested in it.
Our research shows AI is not fizzling away, as over 75% of customer service leaders use AI technology in their daily tasks. These leaders use AI because it’s versatile, efficient, and doesn’t have a hefty impact on their budget. Besides personalizing customer interactions and surpassing KPIs like retention and customer lifetime value, here are some benefits service leaders attribute to AI:
These benefits make over 80% of CRM leaders optimistic that customer service professionals will use AI by 2025.
According to these service leaders, AI is impactful because 59% said it decreased their customer service spending, while only 31% recorded an increase.
I believe this spending cut is what’s fueling 71% of CRM leaders to increase their AI investment in 2025. With such investment, 77% of CRM leaders believe AI will handle most ticket resolutions by 2025 and help address churn at its root — and sometimes preventing it altogether.
As a service professional, you can get the most from your investment by choosing a robust customer service software with AI at its core. HubSpot provides such AI technology in its Service Hub and gives you end-to-end customer journey visibility without driving up external costs.
Kaplan is one of several brands that have experienced the benefits of HubSpot’s Service Hub. With the AI features in Service Hub, Kaplan streamlined customer interactions and improved both service efficiency and customer satisfaction.
The outcome?
Learnings from the customer service leaders we surveyed show they face challenges with data silos, which leads to fragmented communication among sales, marketing, and CS teams. Both issues can cause increased support tickets, reduced CSAT — and worse: customer churn.
A robust customer relationship management (CRM) tool will fix these problems and unify all teams. With a CRM, service leaders have more visibility of their customer’s journey. Yet, only 68% of service leaders report using CRM software in their daily operations. This lack of adoption creates inefficiencies that can undermine team effectiveness.
One negative effect of not using a CRM is tool sprawl — where multiple disconnected tools are used across departments. This leads to constant switching between systems, wasting valuable time, and delaying ticket resolutions. A striking 74% of service leaders say tool sprawl slows down their teams, making it harder to respond to customer issues efficiently.
Combating these issues is easy. By using a unified CRM platform, service teams can eliminate silos, streamline processes, communicate faster, and enhance the customers’ experience. According to service leaders, CRM adoption is also vital for tackling tool sprawl in 2024 and beyond as they look to boost efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.
The easiest way to become more customer-centric is to open up and formalize listening channels. How do your customers want to communicate with you? Are you recording that data systematically? Are you asking the right questions?
Live chat is just one channel to capture customer insights — but it‘s popular for a reason and can help increase the amount of feedback you’re getting tremendously. It also delivers customers‘ answers in real time. It’s hard to underestimate how happy a quick answer can make a customer.
Live chat is even better with AI. Service leaders who use the HubSpot AI chatbot said they save an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes daily. This time saving is an enormous opportunity for many companies like Agicap, which saves 750 hours weekly and increases deal velocity by 20% with HubSpot’s AI. One way Agicap achieves this is by leveraging our free AI Chatbot AI Builder, which not only provides customer support but qualifies leads and books meetings.
Customer demand is aligned with the AI movement, as an AI Chatbot ranks as the most effective and most preferred customer service channel. Service leaders also say their CSAT levels rise with the presence of AI-powered customer support.
Opening your service team up to more incoming customer questions can be tricky. There is always a chance your team will get overwhelmed quickly, especially if you‘re growing. As such, it’s important to design the customer experience you want – one that’s great for your customers but also allows you to scale your team effectively.
Building a help desk will allow you to do this. A help desk combines different customer channels with a shared inbox, tickets, automation, and reporting to deliver the ideal customer experience. From our conversations with customers, over 85% of companies with a help desk system said it makes them more productive.
The best way to help savvy customers is to help them help themselves. According to service leaders, an astonishing 78% of customers prefer to solve their issues independently. Self-service solutions give your customers what they need to solve their problems. When done right, this creates a better customer experience and saves you and your customers time.
Here’s an analogy I like to use: Remember when you had to stop at a highway toll booth and hand your toll money to a human? That disruptive experience slowed traffic and created a hassle for everyone. Today, you can buy your own E-ZPass and cruise right through, which is a much better solution. A great knowledge base is the equivalent of an E-ZPass. Your customers can search Google for their answers (which they are used to doing anyway), find the information on your site, and then resolve the issue on their own time.
This DIY approach saves reps a lot of time, making it unsurprising that 64% of service leaders plan to increase their investment in self-service opportunities for customers in 2024.
Without a CRM, misalignment among teams, tool sprawl, and ineffective software will remain challenges that prevent you from knowing and delighting your customers. That said, investing in a CRM comes with several requirements.
According to our survey, one-third of service reps want their CRM software to track CSAT (31%) and retention (31%), with time spent per interaction and customer LTV closely following in their list of priorities. Not only do these key performance indicators support internal alignment (28%), but they are metrics executives would like to see.
When searching for a CRM, it’s essential to find one that’s robust enough for your company’s needs.
For example, 75% of service leaders using HubSpot say they increased retention in
2023 — a leading KPI for many organizations going into 2024 and beyond. Additionally, 53% of those using HubSpot reduced customer churn and pointed to better personalization, visibility, and collaboration opportunities as levers for preventing churn.
Sunsail provides travel experiences to 20+ breathtaking destinations from the British Virgin Islands and the wider Caribbean to the Mediterranean and the South Pacific. This service requires clients who will pay a premium and also requires exceptional customer service.
According to Stephen Kvedaras, the CRM Product Owner, “The journey to get customers on a yacht safely and seamlessly has the biggest impact on their experience.” The problem? Data silos due to tool sprawling. Kvedaras adds, “You need unified data to run the workflow and provide personalized service.”
As per our study, over three-fourths of customers are expecting a higher level of personalized interactions. That’s why to achieve this and better delight their customers, Sunsail ditched multiple tools like Zendesk and adopted the HubSpot Service Hub, Marketing Hub, and Sales Hub.
Apple is a global company that takes listening to customers seriously. I found they do this by collecting product feedback, website feedback, and responding to support tickets. They also run Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to gather customer feedback that gauges satisfaction and indicates their customers’ likelihood to become Apple advocates.
This approach to customer feedback has been embedded in the company from inception. As Steve Jobs once said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”
Listening to customers is an ethos at HubSpot. Like Apple, I like how this has been in the company’s culture since its inception. As Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot, said: to be customer-first, companies must focus on customers and not competitors.
HubSpot prioritizes the customer by listening to them via surveys, customer interviews, and feedback forms integrated into their website.
HubSpot also uses NPS surveys to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as in-app prompts to collect feedback on its app features. One treasure trove of feedback that I like is the HubSpot community forum, where HubSpot can easily gather data on top customer issues.
Most businesses are well-intentioned when they say they are customer-first, but it’s time to do more than just say it.
If you want to truly build your business around your customers, try surveying your customers, creating a customer code, and researching how other companies have successfully grown with a customer-first mindset.
Tightening your focus on customers and how they feel about your company/product/service is critical to your growth. Each customer can either become an advocate who drives leads to your business — or a thorn whose damaging reviews can affect your company.
Based on our findings, it’s clear that customers expect more, are harder to impress — and their voices are louder. Other service leaders are rising up to the challenge, and so should you. Put your customers first by committing to customer delight.
There are lots of reasons businesses today need to know how to register users on a website. It can be an important avenue for generating growth and repeat customers, even for some types of small businesses. From start-up apps to ecommerce businesses or community-based sites, many platforms rely on the ability to provide secure accounts for their visitors.
When I visit a website, I never consider the distance that content has to travel or the server where the website is stored. I only care that it loads fast, which is precisely why a CDN matters.
Building a customer experience strategy is about more than just meeting user expectations. Instead, it focuses on creating memorable interactions at every touchpoint. This helps users find value in your product or service — and ultimately, helps them become loyal customers.
It’s not easy creating a customer experience strategy, however, and you can quickly grow overwhelmed with so many moving parts. In my experience, breaking it down into necessary elements can make developing your strategy feel more digestible.
I’m here to help you learn what building out your CX strategy entails, plus customer experience strategy best practices, and how to create it.
Table of Contents
So, what is customer experience management strategy? I’m glad you asked. Your customer experience strategy is an actionable plan to deliver a positive, meaningful experience across all touchpoints between your customers and your brand.
A successful customer experience strategy should take into account several important factors, such as:
When defining your customer experience strategy, include all departments, not just those in customer-facing roles. By incorporating feedback and insight across the company, you’ll find it easier to align the organization around the intended goal: Improving the customer experience and relationship.
Pro tip: Check out HubSpot’s collection of customer experience tools.
I’ve seen organizations make the mistake of believing that customer experience strategy is only relevant for customer-centric roles. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Customer experience impacts a company’s brand, operations, and financials. Here are three key benefits a customer experience strategy brings to the table.
Research shows that 54% of consumers would stop using a brand after just one negative experience. The worse a customer feels about your brand, the more likely they are to jump ship. McKinsey recounts the tale of one of its clients in the telecommunications industry: When it overhauled its customer experience, it cut churn rates by 75%.
This math isn’t hard, even for me. Longer-lasting customers and less churn equals more revenue. If you operate in an industry with a high customer lifetime value (CLV), one mistake could cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Instead, companies with high customer experience double their revenue growth, according to McKinsey. This isn’t an overnight solution — it can take five or more years of consistent excellence to have a dramatic effect. But the evidence is clear. Consumers are willing to pay more for products or services with a good experience and are also 15-25% more receptive to cross-selling.
Finally, customers who have a good experience are more likely to share on social media or word of mouth about your brand. CX professionals often measure this through the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which asks customers how likely they are to recommend a product or service. Those who had a good experience become promoters and contribute to a positive brand reputation and growth.
You can design your customer experience strategy practically by making a matrix of the state of your current customer journey. Use the template below to get started, and follow along with the rest of this post to complete it.
Before I delve into my top tips on how to create a customer experience strategy, I want to share key elements that contribute to a well-rounded CX strategy.
Start by reviewing your company‘s customer support baseline. The goal is to determine what’s working well for your business and where you can improve.
If you‘re unsure where to start, try checking your company’s help desk ticket data or call center data for key success metrics such as NPS, customer satisfaction score, and churn rate. If you’re scoring below expectations, dig deeper into the problem and figure out where exactly things are turning sour for your customers.
What I like: Looking at the data gives you firm, objective ground from which to start building (or re-building) your CX strategy.
Another crucial element of your customer experience strategy is a customer journey map. A customer journey map outlines all of the interactions between a customer and your business, including any pain points they encounter along the way. In my experience, this resource not only helps you identify friction within your customer experience, but helps you see how to improve it. It’s also useful to gain internal buy-in.
“A customer journey map is a tool in your toolkit as a CX leader to gain that customer understanding,” explains Jeannie Walters, CEO of Experience Investigator.
“But within your organization, it‘s also a way to invite various leaders to participate, to get them to really understand what’s happening. Journey mapping is a verb, not a noun. This is an action you take to get the insights to move forward.”
Pro tip: Check out examples and templates of customer journey maps for inspiration.
Once you know where you need to improve, the next step is sharing that information with your team and training your staff on new protocols. I know it‘s never fun letting your team know they’re falling short of expectations, especially when other groups in your department are hitting their numbers.
However, transparency reduces pushback against new policies and will encourage reps to improve their performance in the future.
Best for: Employee training has many benefits, including high engagement, great customer service, and more. You can even incentivize employee training.
Some customer expectations are predictable. For instance, your customers will always expect your team to be reliable and have a positive attitude. In addition to this, however, most customers will have multiple needs. In order to meet these needs, it’s essential that your team is flexible.
In some cases, it may be imperative to provide a speedy response. At other times, quality and clarity of support means more. It all depends on how the customer feels when they reach out to your business and how well your team can identify and adapt to their needs.
An effective customer experience strategy focuses on solving problems for the customer, whether those problems are anticipated or unexpected.
Customer success teams play a critical role in creating a frictionless customer experience. Not only do they plan for problems down the road but they also check in with customers routinely to ensure everything is going well post-purchase. In my experience, this proactive customer service reduces churn and strengthens your team’s relationship with your customer base.
Rather than requiring people to call your business whenever they need help, customers should be free to answer questions and solve problems independently with a self-serve support setup.
Self-service tools like knowledge bases and chatbots make it easier for customers to find solutions and reduce case volume for your reps. That saves your team some time to focus on the more complex issues requiring more troubleshooting expertise.
Best for: Fielding customer questions at all times, especially addressing simple, frequently asked questions so your team can focus on more complex customer requests.
If you want to truly understand what your customers want from your business, you have to ask and — more importantly — listen to them. Your customers are more likely to leave you a review if you ask at the right time, but you must take this feedback into genuine consideration and apply it to your strategy.
I also recommend you routinely collect feedback from your customers. Their needs change constantly, making it important to keep up-to-date information. Use an automated tool like HubSpot’s Customer Feedback software to collect feedback at critical touchpoints in your customer experience.
If you get complacent with your customer experience strategy, competitors in your industry will catch up and lure away your customers when you aren’t paying attention. The strategy that works this year may not work in future years as trends and consumer preferences change. Build in feedback to your post-purchase flows and incentivize customers to give feedback so you can track your performance over time.
Ready to build your customer experience strategy from the ground up? I’ll help you break down the five essential steps to create a frictionless customer experience.
Customer experience design is the process of designing a frictionless experience for the customer anytime they interact with a point of contact at an organization. It centers around improving processes that meet customers’ expectations and are easy and intuitive for them to follow and solve their problems.
Every product design process starts with the question, “Who are we designing for?” Turns out, it’s a great starting point for your CX strategy as well.
To chalk out an airtight CX plan, I recommend starting with an empathy map to understand your users. Each persona will have different needs and use cases. An in-depth assessment of these personas will reveal their desires, fears, and expectations.
“Empathy maps are a visualization that capture and communicate our understanding of a set of users,” shared Kate Kaplan, Insights Architect for Nielsen Norman Group. “There’s a traditional structure to empathy maps: four quadrants that capture what the user says, thinks, feels, and does.”
Through qualitative or quantitative means, capture your customers’ thoughts and emotions around your brand and product/service.
Conduct user interviews, listening sessions, and surveys to get a pulse of different personas. Translate your research inputs into the empathy map canvas.
Best for: The insights derived from empathy mapping can help in identifying and prioritizing user needs. I suggest creating cross-functional workflows for the design, product, and customer success teams to collaborate on using these insights to improve the CX.
Once you’ve mapped the ideal customer journey, analyze it properly to identify opportunities for enhancing your CX strategy.
Look for points of friction or areas where customer expectations aren‘t fulfilled. I also recommend checking if there’s scope for reducing unnecessary touchpoints to simplify your customer experience. Evaluating the time spent in different stages of the journey is crucial for streamlining the CX plan.
Most importantly, in my opinion, you need to find the crucial moments of truth in the customer journey — when users form a perception of your brand. These are the make-or-break moments in your CX. Optimize them to eliminate potential issues.
Lastly, assess all the transitions within your product when users change settings or switch devices. You’ll want to close the gap to make these transitions seamless.
Creating and fine-tuning your customer experience strategy is an ongoing process. But one way I’ve found to set solid foundations for your CX strategy is by implementing user feedback early in the process.
Embrace an iterative approach to building your customer experience and involve beta users to test your progress. Encourage and incentivize transparent feedback to make sure you’re moving forward in the right direction of creating a delightful CX.
Here are a few ways to collect feedback early on:
The bottom line is that it’s always better to modify your customer experience design as long as it takes your team to create the perfect one instead of deploying a problematic CX flow that frustrates users.
Given that your CX flow will change constantly, it’s important to set up systems to implement these changes quickly.
I recommend creating smooth workflows to maximize collaboration between all involved stakeholders and speed up the process. Leverage automation and AI tools to streamline the change management part of your customer experience strategy. This will also empower your team to spread enhancements at scale.
I think another critical step here is creating a culture of CX excellence. Train your employees to stay on top of customer expectations, present ideas for improvement, and drive innovation in product development. Enable your employees to support your customers.
Pro tip: Check out these AI tools for customer service to see if any can fit into your tech stack.
Building a CX strategy isn’t a one-and-done process. You have to constantly measure the ROI of your customer experience and shift gears when necessary.
As you gather insights, I find it best to connect them back to your overarching strategy.
“A lot of customer experience programs actually started with a measurement program or a feedback program, but they weren’t connected to that bigger strategy,” shares Walters. “This isn’t just setting up a customer feedback program or a day in the life of the customer. All of that is great, but it has to be tied back to the strategy.”
Customer success managers can collaborate with marketing and product teams to analyze user behavior, both within and outside the product. Not sure how you can find relevant insights about your customers? HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics platform is just the solution you need.
With this tool, you‘ll get granular visibility into the entire customer journey with real-time data on which campaigns or touchpoints are driving revenue. This data can also help you make smarter decisions — whether it’s for timing different aspects of your CX or for identifying the most crucial touchpoints.
To help you define a comprehensive, cohesive customer experience strategy, I’ll help you explore some of the best practices to keep in mind for your business.
Business communication plays a major role in shaping your customers‘ experience. If you’re not meeting customers where they are, you‘re missing out on an opportunity to engage them when they’re most interested or in need of help.
In my experience, to succeed in this area of customer experience means your business must first determine which channels your customers are most active on so you can adapt your approach and serve them there.
From there, it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with the channel — social, email, live chat, or something similar. Ask yourself: How are my customers communicating on this channel already? And how can I use this information to make my outreach feel more organic?
Reachability, in my opinion, can serve as a helpful competitive advantage if you execute it properly. It‘s important that your business has a handle on your customers’ preferred channels and is providing reliable, consistent service through them.
As customers become more empowered to discover solutions and information on their own via the internet and social media, the demand for increased service convenience grows. For businesses to remain in good standing with customers, they must prioritize start-to-finish online support.
Think about it: If a customer has a question on the weekend, why should they have to wait until Monday to reach out? Do you have a 24/7 live chat feature enabled to meet their Saturday needs? If you don‘t, you’re making a mistake.
I think something as simple as having a polished, up-to-date knowledge base makes all the difference in allowing customers to help themselves without needing to reach out to your team.
Customers are interested in building trust with the companies they do business with. Building trust requires consistency in your processes, policies, and actions from every team that influences the customer experience.
To help cultivate this culture of trust with your customers, I recommend you double-check that policies are up-to-date, reasonable, and carried out consistently across every scenario and buyer persona. (If you need help developing your buyer persona, you can use HubSpot’s free tool to do so.) You don’t want to have a situation where something like a return or exchange causes friction with your customers, making it difficult for them to make a purchase in the future.
No matter how much work goes into perfecting the back end of your customer experience, it’s important to remember that customers ultimately bought a product or service from your company. As a result, they expect it to be valuable and high-quality.
Refine your products and services based on customer feedback provided by an NPS survey, focus groups, or one-on-one customer calls. Solving the root of the issue with a product or service you sell can create a better customer experience overall. It doesn‘t matter how outstanding your customer experience strategy is if your product isn’t functional.
I think Nordstrom, a luxury department store known for its impeccable service, is a great example of offering customer experience tools aimed at improving purchasing convenience. Nordstrom allows their shoppers to order clothing with either curbside or in-store pickup.
It also notifies customers via optional texts, email, or store app notifications when their order is ready for pickup. Shoppers don’t have to wait and guess when their order is prepared. Instead, they provide a quick-and-easy — and ultimately, painless — customer experience.
This system solves convenience by allowing customers to try on clothes when and where it’s convenient for them. I like that it also gets people in the store, exposing them to thousands of other products they might be interested in purchasing.
But this is just one example of how your brand can leverage and invest in purchasing convenience as part of a customer experience strategy. Something as simple as having accurate pricing and packaging information on your website can effectively eliminate purchasing friction.
At the end of the day, you don’t want to make it difficult for people to give you their money.
Another thing that Nordstrom is using its new customer experience tool for? Data.
By learning about location and style preferences through the Nordstrom Reserve Online & Try On In-Store program, the retailer can incorporate personalization in a scalable way. And customers love personalization.
To provide the best possible customer experience, businesses should collect information throughout the customer relationship that can be used to provide relevant suggestions or more informed support in the future.
In the eyes of the customer, personalization (when done right) can serve as a sign of respect for their loyalty and business. It also signals that your business is interested in strengthening the relationship by continuously working to provide better service, suggestions, support, etc.
While there are many avenues for collecting and leveraging customer data, I think a simple solution such as a shared inbox for your customer success or service department is a great first step. By creating a transparent, universal space where folks can turn up past customer conversations or requests, you’re laying the foundation for more contextual communication and outreach.
Ever landed on a website that was a disaster to navigate on mobile? I have, and if you‘re anything like me, you didn’t stick around for very long.
Back in 2015, mobile internet use passed desktop use for the very first time. Since then, mobile usage continues to grow, making mobile optimization a high priority for businesses looking to provide a simple and seamless experience for customers and potential buyers.
In an effort to amp up your business‘s ease of use, I recommend focusing on simplifying website navigation for all browser types. After all, you can’t expect customers to wait until they get to a desktop to uncover the information they need, right?
A great example I’d like to reference here is Amazon. In my opinion, Amazon embodies simplicity and ease of use in its checkout process by enabling Amazon Prime members to buy an item with just one click:
Even more importantly, it also offers a quick and easy way to uncover product info and answers to common purchasing questions within the same screen:
Pro tip: If you need examples of outstanding mobile websites, I’ve got you covered. And if you need help figuring out how to optimize your website for mobile users, I’ve got you covered there, too.
When thinking about your approach to channel flexibility, I think “omni-channel” is the term to keep in mind.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, omni-channel is defined as an approach that provides customers with an integrated, seamless experience — even when moving from desktop to mobile or a social media channel to live support.
In an omni-channel world, the customer experience should be the same across platforms and channels — and it should contain proper context when applicable.
If you‘re looking to streamline channel flexibility as a key part of your customer experience strategy, get your team together to talk about what you want the customer experience to look, feel, and sound like across all channels. From there, you’ll have the common ground you need to begin employing a more fluid, contextual experience.
No business wants its service to feel robotic. But the truth is, as your business grows its customer base, it will be more difficult to provide the same personalized service that you did when you were only managing a handful of customers. That‘s not to say keeping your standards up is impossible, just that you’ll just need a little help. Luckily, artificial intelligence (AI) can help.
When used correctly, I think AI features add tremendous value to the customer experience and create incredible convenience for your customer support team. Our State of Service Report found that 75% of service leaders already use AI, and 83% say it makes it easier to respond to service requests.
For instance, a chatbot can field customer inquiries on your website when your agents are away. Even if the bot just redirects customers to your knowledge base, it still points them toward a potential solution and allows your company to be accessible 24/7.
AI can also help customer service and support reps to be more effective. In the HubSpot Service Hub, for instance, the software can summarize your voice conversation with suggested action points and allow you to tag a teammate.
Pro tip: HubSpot offers an AI-powered tool called ChatSpot which is free AI-powered assistant to help supercharge your work.
Proactive customer service doesn‘t just have to be the responsibility of your customer success team. Instead, everyone at your business can play a role in the customer’s experience after they purchase a product.
For customer service teams, reps can alert the customer success manager (CSM) if someone has reached out multiple times with complaints. Rather than expecting the CSM to spot this individual on their own, frontline reps can easily look at the customer‘s ticket history and recognize whether or not they’ve had continued issues with your brand.
What better way to learn about the customer experience than from their own social media?
Social listening is the monitoring of your brand’s social platform presence for direct mentions of your business. It can be used to observe trending topics in your industry, your competitors’ behavior, and hear if your customers’ needs are being fulfilled.
Using websites like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and more, you‘ll see what customers have to say about your company. I’ve found that if you’re attentive enough, you can discover the pain points in the customer journey and other insights that can positively impact the customer experience. You can also choose from several tools to track direct brand mentions for your business.
Employee training shouldn’t be a one-and-done part of their onboarding. Instead, I think it should happen routinely to make sure your staff is equipped to exceed expectations.
First, start with your culture by giving your employees the same stellar experience as you do your customers.
“We want to embed customer experience throughout the employee journey, blending our CX mission and messaging into the entire journey. If we can connect a great customer experience with an empowered and engaging employee experience, then everybody wins,” says Walters.
“Connecting a great customer experience with an empowered and engaging employee experience creates a virtuous cycle where everybody’s happy.”
I know it’s important to offer knowledge training about your product, but what about preparing them for the face-to-face customer experience? Routine team training can look like conducting role-play scenarios or simulations to see how each employee treats potential customers in different situations. Some role-play scenarios include:
What I like: Role-play training workshops give employees a chance to critique each other on what they’ve done well and where they can improve in their communication, attitude, and presentation of your product/service.
Building an excellent CX flow isn’t a game of guesswork or intuition. You have to strategically measure the impact of your customer experience strategy and make enhancements based on data-backed evidence.
That’s why you have to track how users are interacting with your product and analyze the effectiveness of your customer experience. Here are a few essential metrics to achieve this:
Tracking these core CX metrics gives you a pulse of your customers and flags any gaps you need to address in your experience.
You‘ve done the legwork to create a great customer experience. But as user needs evolve, you’ll have to invest more effort in optimizing this CX flow. Constantly evolving your strategy ensures your CX is aligned with expectations.
To optimize your CX, I recommend you establish feedback loops to regularly collect input from users. Whether it’s minor bugs or major inefficiencies in your product, give users a space to share their candid feedback whenever they want.
On top of this, you can also connect with power users to understand how your product is helping them achieve their goals. Use this conversation to identify pain points within the platform and map the scope for improvement.
Finally, remember to pay close attention to user sessions to find real-time insights on where users get stuck or feel confused.
These few tactics will give you much to work with to optimize your customer experience. Work with the design, engineering, and customer service team to eliminate all roadblocks and create a frictionless flow.
Rome wasn‘t built in a day — and you shouldn’t expect your customer experience strategy to be either.
My advice? Work on defining and streamlining your customer experience design, but do so under the notion that things will need to evolve as your business and customer base grows.
I’ve discovered that as I learn what it means to communicate with customers on their terms and collect data along the way, I find it’s easier to make informed decisions about my overall customer experience strategy. I hope you discover this, too!
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
The 2000s and 2010s were a great time to sell products and services online. Few people know this about me, but I used to sell handmade jewelry through eBay, which helped put me through university.
Back then, there were really only two customer requirements: I needed to guarantee the pieces were unique and provide fast delivery. I wouldn’t have to attract leads. They would find me themselves, send me a quick message, and click “buy.” The competition for certain services and products was so slim — or even non-existent.
This is so different from what I’m seeing today as a full-time freelance marketer. It takes weeks, if not months, to acquire new customers. And you have to be very persistent (and creative) to find and convince leads to choose you over others.
To win in today’s market, you need all decisions to be well-thought-out — and that’s what creating a customer acquisition funnel will help you with.
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A customer acquisition funnel is a path that a potential client goes through from learning about a company’s product or service to becoming (and, ideally, staying) a customer.
It has four main stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention, which I discuss further in this article. By knowing which phase a potential client is in, companies can tailor their marketing strategies, sales processes, and communication tone accordingly.
The reason why it’s called a funnel is because it resembles one. You start off with a broad group of potential clients, which becomes smaller and smaller as leads start learning about your offer and, ultimately, convert into clients.
As someone who runs a business, here are the top reasons why I believe it’s important to have a customer acquisition funnel.
Most humans understand things better if we can visualize them (I know I do). This is one of the perks of creating a customer acquisition funnel.
You can map out the different stages, explain their key characteristics, and create a code of conduct for your entire team. For example, they’ll know that they shouldn’t push for a sale when a lead is still familiarizing themselves with your brand — and, conversely, will know when it’s time to act.
Part of creating a customer acquisition funnel is about deciding on the criteria of when a lead is deemed ready to pass to the next stage. You’ll have a scoring system which will let you alert sales reps that a person is finally ready to talk business.
Think of potential clients taking certain actions like visiting pricing pages, using a free trial heavily day after day, participating in a webinar, etc.
If leads drop out at a certain stage or even after viewing a specific asset, you can examine the reasons.
For example, let’s say that you speak to leads who drop out from the pricing page. You find out that they decided to buy from competitors because it was hard to tell what was included in your offer. Knowing this, you could work on a more transparent pricing strategy.
Having a customer acquisition funnel gives you the comfort of some predictability in an economy that has been all but predictable these past few years.
Over time, you’ll be able to see how many leads you’ve generated in the previous quarter (or any other relevant period), how many of them went on to each consecutive stage, and who eventually converted.
Additionally, since the customer acquisition funnel also covers post-purchase activities, you’ll see how much you currently make from return buyers and what potential there is to generate sales through cross-selling and upselling to existing customers.
If you search online, you’ll see that there are different versions of customer acquisition funnels. The reason for this is that some businesses adjust it to fit their unique circumstances or industry.
For the sake of this piece, I decided to show you universal categorization, which all these variations come from.
This stage begins when someone first learns about your product or service and ends once you’ve been able to make them consider buying from you.
It takes a variety of tactics to generate that genuine interest, which is why some sources break the awareness stage into two smaller phases: discovery and interest.
The “discovery” part is like getting your foot in the door. Your goal is to make them notice your offer through channels like traditional or social media, content marketing, or paid ads, to name a few options.
Once they’ve interacted with your message and want to find out more, you’re in the “interest” substage. Your goal here is to build their engagement through relevant (and non-salesy!) content, for example, by having them sign up for a newsletter or follow you on social media.
Just like the first stage, this one is also commonly broken down into smaller ones, i.e., “research” and “intent.”
In the first substage, your potential client begins looking for more information about your offer. They might start off by reading testimonials on your page or looking at comparisons, like this Hootsuite vs. Loomly example.
But, after that, they’ll want to turn to third parties for a 100% non-biased opinion, too. They might search for opinions through branded hashtags on social media or on comparison sites like G2 if you’re in B2B. If the opinions are flattering, this will propel them into the “intent” phase.
This late-consideration stage is when things get particularly interesting. How so? It’s a make-it-or-break-it moment, where the lead is almost certain that you’re a good fit for their needs. But the ‘almost’ part means that they need that final argument to take action.
Companies that identify this critical moment correctly usually reach out with a great proposal like a free demo (or free samples) to convince leads to give the product a try. I was surprised to see that only 4% of SaaS businesses don’t offer a free tryout — it certainly hints at something!
This is where your leads are ready to become customers. It can take them just a few seconds if you’re an ecommerce store, and all it takes is to finalize their purchase.
But, if you offer B2B services, it could be a bit more complex, like adjusting the offer to your client’s needs. Here’s where your sales team should be proactive and show their dedication to making the clients happy.
Yes, retention is an integral part of the acquisition funnel, which makes it different from the classic, three-stage sales funnel which ends with the conversion itself.
This is the end of the sales process but the start of the (hopefully long-term) post-purchase phase. You want to keep your clients satisfied and engaged with your product to secure recurring revenue for your business. Think of offering special discounts and superb customer service. Many businesses also introduce a referral program to get new clients through recommendations and keep customer acquisition costs low.
Now that we’re clear on the theory, it’s time for some practice.
Here are the steps I recommend taking, along with examples of actions you could set up to keep leads moving through the funnel.
Before you ideate your acquisition strategy, you need to identify your buyer personas and segment them into groups (that is, if you haven’t done that already).
Think of who your ideal customers are based on data like demographics, psychographics, and their common goals and pain points. I recommend looking at your existing clients, if possible, and checking what common traits your long-term, high-value customers share.
You need to be clear on whom you’re targeting (and where they can be found) as you’ll tailor your entire funnel for these different potential customer groups.
Consider different channels, both online and offline, where you could cast your net and generate leads. The exact channels will vary based on whether you’re in B2B or B2C, but you could consider:
Once you have the audience’s attention, focus on deepening their interest. What works for your buyer persona? Try answering the following, to the best of your knowledge:
This will help you decide whether you would be better off sending personalized tips via email, sharing free assets, or maybe building social proof by sharing user reviews in your content. If you do the latter, just make sure you don’t push for a sale.
Think of how you can make your competitors pale in comparison to what you offer. Remember how I said you should give customers a gentle nudge at this point? Give the following tactics a thought:
Now that you’ve encouraged leads to become customers, your main priority is to make it as easy as possible. Be sure to add a clear, visible CTA: “buy now,” followed by a simple checkout process. Remove any unnecessary steps or information to create an enjoyable checkout experience and avoid anything coming in the way.
Now’s the time to keep your customers engaged to retain them. This part is where your customer service and product teams will have the most influence. For starters, make sure to:
Now, let’s see how this could play out in a realistic scenario. We’re going to put ourselves in the shoes of an online fitness coaching business.
Your buyer persona is someone between 30-55 years, who leads a sedentary lifestyle and suffers from a — quite literal — pain point, i.e., back problems. These individuals want to strengthen their core with an at-home routine.
You publish a blog post titled, “10 Best At-Home, Zero Equipment Exercises to Alleviate Back Pain.” You run a short video ad on Instagram, referring to their struggle, and redirect them to the article for a solution. It’s the first time they’ve ever visited your site — or heard about you.
On the blog, a pop-up appears offering a free “7-Day At-Home Workout Plan” in exchange for the visitor’s email address. After signing up, the person receives a series of emails, one per day, with valuable content such as daily workout tips and nutrition advice. The lead becomes convinced that you’re trustworthy.
On the 8th day, the potential customer gets an offer to join a free webinar with a Q&A session, titled “How to stay motivated in your workouts.” To secure more participants, you run retargeting ads on social media. This way, you remind those who clicked on the webinar page but didn’t sign up for the free, no-strings-attached event.
During the webinar, the fitness coach answers all questions and explains how their premium fitness program works.
At the end, attendees get a limited-time 20% discount for a 12-week personalized fitness coaching program, along with a link. This creates a sense of urgency.
Leads are taken to a simple checkout process. It’s free of any distractions like banners or competing CTAs that could stop them from converting.
New clients receive an onboarding email with a video from their coach, introducing them to a private Slack community and a personalized workout dashboard. They also get a link to a calendar where they can schedule their first 1:1 session with the coach.
After completing the first month of the training, they get a 50% discount for a meal plan and a discount code for supplements from partner brands, which complements their fitness journey.
They are also encouraged to join a referral program where they earn $50 for every friend they refer who signs up for the program.
And there it is — just one of the routes leads could take to become happy customers.
If you want to ideate your potential acquisition journeys, HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates will be a great starting point.
Your work on the funnel doesn’t end with the stages I’ve mentioned above. As customers’ needs change and new competitors appear on the market, what works today might not work in a few months. That’s why you need to constantly refine your funnel.
How? Here is a list of some great tactics from customer acquisition experts and my own experiences.
I’ll start off with one of my personal favorites, which some customer acquisition specialists refer to as “hinting at the promised land.” It’s about figuring out how you can give a taste of your product, whether digital or physical, to someone who is still far from putting it in their basket.
I believe that Ahrefs can be a perfect source of inspiration. A few years ago, the SaaS company decided to make some of its features free to use on their website, without any opt-in.
The company lets you check three things: How many backlinks your website has, its authority score, and if you have any broken links. All you have to do is enter your website’s URL. Ahrefs shows you the information and tells you that there’s much more on a paid plan, encouraging you to give it a try.
This lets them build leads’ confidence in their product’s value, increasing the likelihood that visitors will eventually become customers.
Pro tip: If you offer a physical product, I recommend taking a look at Sephora’s virtual try-on feature. Like Ahrefs, it lets you see a real-life product applied to you.
Getting testimonials from real (unpaid) users is a tip I recommend to all businesses. Yet, I believe there are three groups that can benefit in particular, i.e., those who offer a product that:
Leads searching for such solutions don’t want to take any chances that what they buy won’t work for their goals.
Greta Maiocchi, head of marketing and admissions at Open Institute of Technology (OPIT), says that their organization knew this and decided to take endorsements to a higher level. They not only display testimonials on their site but also let potential clients get in touch with alumni.
But how did they get there? Maiocchi says that OPIT first reorganized its customer engagement strategy. “We discovered that our rich learning environment, with benefits like weekly professor meetings and access to tutors, was our rewarding differentiator,” she says.
OPIT started accentuating these perks right from the first interaction with leads, effectively addressing the online learning apprehensions of their target group. “Additionally, we gave a personalized touch by connecting potential students with alumni to give them a real-life glimpse into OPIT.”
This resulted in a 30% rise in conversion rate for the institute, and this happened during the initial inquiry stage itself, Maiocchi adds.
Based on her experiences, Maiocchi sums up: “It’s not about overhauling the entire funnel structure; sometimes, nuanced changes can provide exceptional results.”
I recommend using user analytics and usability testing tools because they will shorten the time it takes to understand what’s behind your conversion numbers. You’ll see which parts of your website, emails, or other assets get the most clicks and reads and where they drop out.
This is something I’ve experienced first-hand.
Several years ago, I worked as a content marketer at a SaaS company that decided to include free assets to encourage signups to a freemium plan.
There was a library of 25 free templates, traffic looked great, and the average user session duration was quite long, which hinted that they interacted with the page content. But, for some reason, conversions weren’t impressive.
To figure out the reason, we set up a session recording tool and saw that the reason was rather prosaic.
There was a pop-up that was set up cross-site by sales, which activated halfway through the page. This drew the leads’ attention away from the templates. After excluding these pages from the ongoing campaign, leads began clicking on relevant CTAs and signing up for the freemium plan.
Did you know that, while 81% of brands believe that they have a “good” or “excellent” customer engagement strategy, only 62% of consumers agree?
I think this number is a wake-up call, and companies should make it a habit of asking clients for their opinions.
Sergey Taver, marketing manager of Precision Watches, agrees with me. As a company offering premium products, the brand is very proactive in gathering feedback that would help them maintain the highest customer experience standards.
“One unique strategy we’ve implemented is utilizing customer feedback effectively to enhance our service offerings,” Taver says. “We actively seek feedback and recommendations through email follow-ups after purchases. This procedure demonstrates our dedication to client satisfaction and points out areas in which we may improve.”
Taver told me that Precision Watches implemented quite a few changes based on their customer feedback, including virtual one-on-one consultations with their watch specialists.
“This change in our practices has resulted in a 25% rise in client engagement and a 15% increase in repeat business. Clients value the customized experience because it builds confidence and loyalty,” he concludes.
The more diverse your conversion strategies and user acquisition channels, the more likely your clients are to have different expectations of what onboarding should look like.
Simon Lee, CEO at Glance, told me that they’ve created personalized onboarding sequences using behavioral segmentation as a response to this expectation.
“Instead of sending all new leads through the same general funnel, we first divided users by their engagement with our platform.
For instance, people who enrolled through a product demo got a highly visual, feature-centric onboarding sequence,” Lee says. “In contrast, users enrolled through an educational piece got a benefits-oriented onboarding sequence.”
Lee told me that the approach led to a 27% activation rate uplift and an 18% churn reduction in the first three months of the intervention.
“The lesson here is that onboarding has a material impact on user learning and retention. When customized, users learn and engage more quickly and stick around longer,” he explains.
With so many options to try out, it can be tempting to keep adding new strategies or tactics into your funnel. That’s fine, as long as they don’t accidentally introduce user confusion or contradict one another. Sometimes, you can find more value in cutting steps.
Rain Yang, founder and CEO at WoodenAve, told me how they’ve been able to boost conversions by simplifying their user acquisition process.
He says that the brand turned to a “frictionless onboarding and value-first follow-up strategy to fix lead drop-offs happening right before they completed signup.”
Instead of adding new steps to improve the funnel, WoddenAve focused on removing unnecessary friction by simplifying the application process. Yang told me that, following this change, the brand saw a 20% increase in completed sign-ups within 30 days.
But it didn’t end there. Yang says that the company also worked to improve the post-onboarding experience to prevent customers from falling into the “post-sign-up abyss.”
“We employed a value-first follow-up strategy, sending personalized insights, like projected credit score improvements, based on their data. We built trust early on by focusing on their current needs instead of trying to sell them things. This led to a 15% rise in first-time loan applications,” Yang says.
Yang concluded with a piece of advice that stuck with me: “Don’t just invite customers into the door; show them why they should stay.”
Building an effective customer acquisition funnel can feel complex at first. The good news is once you and the entire organization understand its purpose and learn to put the customer’s perspective in the front seat, you might see a great return.
My advice is to stay inquisitive about your clients needs and about the purpose of each and every action your business takes to win customers. Review each stage of the funnel regularly, organize brainstorming sessions, and track data through the entire process.
Here’s to seeing more conversions and long-lasting relationships with clients.
Your click helps us gather results. We’ll learn what other service professionals think and let you know just as soon as we’re done crunching the numbers.
If you’re still wondering what the answer to this week’s poll is, check back next week for the results. But if you just can’t wait until then, you might be able to find an answer in this blog post.
“How likely are you to recommend this product or service to a friend or colleague?”
You’ve seen the question in post-purchase emails, pop-up surveys, and at the bottom of receipts. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey is one of the most common customer surveys used by marketers and data teams — and for good reason. The question is simple, but the insights can be rich.
I’ve found the NPS survey to be one of the most powerful tools a marketing or sales team can use to resonate more with their target market. It doesn’t have to be another item on your to-do list, either. You can use AI for every step of the process.
![→ Download Now: Customer Service Metrics Calculator [Free Tool]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/e24dc302-9dc2-466f-a5ca-ab4e08633c0f.png)
By leveraging AI to prioritize NPS collection and analysis, companies can improve the experience for their customers without draining time or budget. I’ll share the types of NPS analysis, the reasons to conduct it (and why you should be using AI), and how to run an AI-powered NPS analysis.
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Here are three reasons why I think NPS is a great metric to analyze.
NPS gives you an opportunity to address — and lower — churn rates. When you know why your customers are dissatisfied, it’s easier to make changes to keep future customers on the line. Not to mention, studies show that 70% of detractors will return if you fix a problem they’ve complained about.
NPS also gives you some insight on what makes customers loyal to your company. Analyzing positive feedback helps you understand what delights your customers so you can double-down on retention-increasing behaviors.
Promoters, by definition, are advocates for your brand. When you take time to learn about what makes a promoter at your company, you can expect growth by referral and advocacy. And you want referrals — people are four times more likely to purchase when a friend has referred them.
NPS is a widely used metric on a global scale across industries. This makes it easy to benchmark your success against competitors. By comparing your NPS with industry standards, you can gauge how well you are doing in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty, and predict your growth in comparison to your competitors.
There are three main types of net promoter analysis: survey, sentiment, and score. To get the best use out of your NPS collection, I recommend analyzing your results using each of the three methods.
The focus of survey analysis is about quantitative data. In a net promoter survey, customers respond to their experience with your organization on a scale of 0-10. They are generally answering the question, “How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?”
The responses are then sorted into three categories:
Once you’ve received your survey responses, you can use this information to find average customer satisfaction. You can also relate the scores to other variables from your survey, like the product they ordered, their demographics, their time as a customer, and more.
NPS surveys usually include opportunities for customers to leave written feedback. In sentiment analysis, you’ll also take a look at the qualitative feedback to identify key themes or topics mentioned. Sentiment analysis is a far more in-depth way of making sense of NPS surveys and, most often, you’ll need an AI tool to assist you.
Sentiment analysis is a type of text analysis that categorizes feedback from the comments and makes sense of the intention, or “sentiment,” of the customer. Some takeaways from sentiment analysis might include:
Janet Gehrmann, the co-founder of Scoop Analytics, shed some light on the value of sentiment analysis.
“One of the advantages of AI is the sheer amount of data it can process, including sentiment data,” said Gehrmann. “I know several companies that have used different AI tools to analyze customer feedback sentiment and identify positive, neutral, and negative responses. It’s not only quicker than manual methods — it’s also more accurate.”
The Net Promoter Score is a single quantitative measure that represents overall customer loyalty and satisfaction within your organization. Rather than averaging all the net promoter scores you collect, the final score is a result of subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. This is the score you’ll use for competitive benchmarking.
Pro tip: HubSpot makes it easy to find your net promoter score with the Customer Service Metrics Calculator. This free Excel template helps you calculate your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), your NPS, and more.
Absolutely it can! AI can be used in quite a few different ways — to facilitate NPS collection, to analyze results, and to make recommendations. I’ll walk you through all the use cases.
Caleb Gonsalves, a customer success leader and consultant, leverages AI to send thoughtful follow-ups to customers who interact with his surveys.
“For anyone that responds to my survey, I always ensure they get a thank you tailored to the level of response,” he shared.
“If they’re a detractor, they’ll get personal outreach in an earnest attempt to document and remediate any issues they might be having. AI has dramatically improved the speed in which I can craft and tailor responses. It’s not a game changer per se (yet) but those incremental minutes sure do add up.”
Before you can jump into your AI-powered NPS surveys, you’ll have to narrow down what you’re looking for in an NPS tool. I recommend defining what you need for the following qualities prior to shopping around for the right software:
If you’re not sure what you’re looking for in a tool, I suggest leveraging a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to help you narrow down the right tool for your organization.
To gather NPS scores, you’ll need a survey in place. Instead of wasting hours creating questions, selecting answer formats, and sending surveys by hand, you can use your AI tool to streamline the process.
HubSpot’s Customer Feedback Software can help you create the most effective NPS survey. Incorporate a variety of question types to measure multiple KPIs about customer experience. Then, send your survey via web link or email to start gathering your data.
In order to use AI to interpret your results, you’ll have to sync your survey results with the model. This can happen in real-time or after collection, depending on the survey tool you’re using and the analytics tool you’re integrating.
Your AI model may be built into your survey tool or it could be a separate software. If you are using different tools, I recommend you ensure your survey and analytics tools integrate with each other before you send out your surveys.
Now that you have your data, start by calculating the net promoter score with the following formula:
NPS = % Promoters – % Detractors
This will give you the baseline to understand overall customer satisfaction. You can use this number for benchmarking against competitors or historical analysis of your own company’s performance.
While the net promoter score gives some valuable insight on its own, I think the most effective way to take advantage of your NPS data is by using AI for deeper analytics. Use an AI model for:
Once you’ve done your analysis, you’ll want to convert the facts and figures into something that your team can make sense of. Use your AI tool’s dashboard to display NPS trends, sentiment distribution, and key topics discussed in feedback.
Use your analysis to identify pain points and present your findings to your team, highlighting what needs to change within your organization to improve overall customer satisfaction. For example, if one region is less satisfied than another, I might consider reallocating additional customer success team members to that region.
In my experience, data is the most useful when you’re continuously monitoring it. I recommend paying attention to the impact of any changes that you’re making, asking, “What do the NPS scores look like over time and have the changes we’ve made had an impact?” Make sure to add your data into your AI models on a regular basis for the most accurate, updated output.
As a marketer, I’m still amazed at the way AI is integrating itself into my daily life. The availability of AI means that I can gain valuable, deep insights about an organization without having to spend days preparing surveys. I don’t need to be a survey expert and I don’t have to bring in data teams to make sense of the results. The tool does it for me.
But this doesn’t frighten me — I’m not worried about getting replaced or booted out because of a robot. AI tools can speed up so many parts of my job so I can get to the important work faster: improving the experience for my customers.
The first time I discovered the true power of a solid customer acquisition strategy, my freelance business was struggling to attract the right leads. I knew something had to change.
After countless hours of research and trying different approaches, I found a way to bring in new customers and keep them coming back. The solution? Investing in the right customer acquisition strategy.
In this guide, I‘ll show you how to build a flexible and effective acquisition strategy. You’ll learn the basics of customer acquisition, how to reduce the cost of gaining new customers, and how to make the most of your loyal ones.
Keep reading or use the chapter links below to jump ahead.
Customer acquisition is important for businesses of any age and size. It allows your business to:
Being able to systematically attract and convert new customers keeps companies healthy and growing — and investors happy.
The purpose of customer acquisition is to find a repeatable, methodical way of attracting customers to your business. Sure, you can wait for customers to naturally come to you, but that won’t guarantee you can increase — or even maintain — profits over time.
Instead, I use specific techniques to get potential customers to take action. My goal is to create a systematic, sustainable strategy to acquire new customers and grow revenue for my business.
In many respects, this process sounds like marketing: you’re looking for ways to showcase your brand and connect with customers. But there’s a difference between the two.
Marketing aims to build awareness, while customer acquisition looks to drive action. For example, let’s say you run a Facebook ad aimed at your target market. Metrics will help determine if your effort is working — you can track how many people have shared your ad, commented on it, etc. That’s marketing.
Meanwhile, acquisition speaks to what happens after potential customers click through to your page or receive your emails. If they’re willing to take action by purchasing your products or services, that’s acquisition. Put simply?
Marketing drives recognition. Acquisition drives revenue.
Now, you might be wondering, “What’s the difference between lead generation and customer acquisition?”
Let’s break it down.
In the business world, we typically visualize the customer journey with a funnel or a similar graphic that highlights the stages in the buying process and the prospect’s mindset.
As consumers move through the funnel to become buyers, they:
To simplify the process, lead generation typically happens at the top of the funnel, lead acquisition happens in the middle, and lead conversion happens at the bottom.
And customer acquisition typically refers to the funnel as a whole.
Here’s another way to visualize it, in a less funnel-like fashion:
Picture this process as moving through phases like “attract,” “convert,” and “close.” Here, strangers become visitors, morph into leads, and finally, transform into customers.
Take it further: For a more in-depth dive, I recommend checking out this free course from HubSpot Academy to better understand conversion strategies.
In some organizations, when we talk about customer acquisition, we‘re really focusing on the top and middle of the funnel, blending lead generation and acquisition. The reason? The bottom of the funnel — where conversion happens — often demands more tailored strategies like lead scoring and closing techniques. That’s why I recommend tracking everything with a robust marketing analytics tool.
Pro tip: By monitoring marketing efforts across all channels, I can pinpoint my top revenue sources and identify the strategies for drawing the most qualified leads. This enables me to fine-tune my approach, optimizing the cost of acquiring customers.
For the sake of this post, let’s assume customer acquisition encompasses the whole funnel.
Acquisition marketing is different from other marketing because it specifically targets those consumers who have become aware of your brand and are considering making a purchase.
Digital acquisition marketing uses online channels — like organic search, social media, and display ads — to reel in new customers. A killer digital acquisition strategy needs your marketing and customer service teams to be on the same wavelength.
Your marketing team is responsible for developing and releasing new promotional materials that may spark interest in new customers. But it’s your customer service team that has a direct line to your current customers—and your current customers can be some of your best marketers.
When visitors land on your website, they‘ll passively browse the content your marketing team crafted and might decide to buy. But if they hop onto your live chat, they’ll chat directly with your service team. The same goes for social media inquiries, where your customer support reps take the reins.
In short, your customer service team can attract and retain customers just as well as your marketing team. That’s why acquisition marketing isn’t just about the marketing team.
Before we discuss retention through your customer service team, however, let’s talk about some customer acquisition channels that your marketing team can use to capture potential customers’ interest and convert them.
Customer acquisition methods can be broken up into a variety of different types: paid and free, inbound and outbound, etc.
Below, I’ll review some common methods of acquiring new customers. You can employ all of them — some at smaller scales, some at larger scales.
Organic search is all about showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google or Bing. Organic search marketing aims to get you high up on these lists.
To leverage organic search as a customer acquisition channel, you must invest in search engine optimization (SEO). SEO, like social media, complements content marketing efforts by optimizing your content so it’s more easily found by your target audience.
Here’s how I think about it:
When I Google something, I usually click on one of the first results. That’s the power of SEO — creating content that lands high on the SERPs and draws clicks.
What’s more, I don’t have to guess how to use organic search for my customer acquisition plans. I can use tools like Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs to find the best keywords for my business and create content that attracts potential new customers.
Paid search marketing, pay-per-click, or PPC, is advertising on search engines themselves. Plus, with platforms like Google Ads, I can place ads directly in search results and even on partner websites.
Instead of waiting for my content to climb the organic ranks, I can pay for it to appear alongside the top search results, increasing my chances of being seen. To make sure my content and ads perform their best, I rely on tools like Google Keyword Planner and Microsoft Advertising.
When it comes to social media marketing, I have two paths: organic and paid.
Organic social media is my go-to for boosting brand awareness, shaping my company’s personality, and sharing content I’ve published elsewhere, like blog posts or videos. It also lets me capitalize on the “virality” factor, encouraging my customers and followers to help spread the word about my business.
If I have the budget and know where my audience hangs out, paid social media can be a great option. It’s a surefire way to get my content in front of the right people without waiting to build a huge following. (But don’t get me wrong — that’s important, too!
For example, sponsored posts on Facebook, X, or Instagram get my content seen by more people. Like this one:
Plus, Facebook Lead Ads allow me to gather valuable customer information like email addresses and names. This can make the difference between a casual follower and a lead. So, if building my list is a priority, this method might be perfect for me.
Pro tip: To keep everything organized, I use a social media content calendar. Download a free guide and template from HubSpot to get started with yours!
I love how email turns all that customer info we gather into a powerful tool. Building an email list lets us connect with our customers directly, making it easier to convert them.
Email marketing might seem old-fashioned, but it’s still a highly effective way to stay in front of your customers and promote quality content, product information, and discounts and events.
Whether it’s a birthday wish or a valuable promo, email is a great way to connect with our audience. It’s a direct line to their inbox, bypassing the noise of social media and search engines. Outside of direct sales, I believe nothing beats email marketing for getting personal with our customers.
Pro tip: Download our free beginner’s guide to email marketing to learn how to execute and measure successful email marketing campaigns.
I’ve found that tapping into an existing customer base is a goldmine for new leads. Customer referrals are incredibly powerful for acquiring new clients. And while I can’t force referrals, I can certainly encourage them.
Creating a referral program is a surefire way to bring in new business through your customers. Offering incentives — whether credit, physical gifts, or monetary rewards — is usually the best way to motivate a customer to share about your company (and compensate them in return). If a referral is valuable to me, offering something valuable in return makes sense.
For B2C companies, I’ve seen that a structured, incentive-based program works wonders. B2B businesses might find more success asking for direct referrals. Whatever referral strategy you choose, I always make sure to provide value first. When customers are delighted with our service, they can’t help but share it.
I love using events like conferences, webinars, and trade shows to connect with potential customers.
Most events these days are virtual, making customer acquisition a breeze since attendees register with their email addresses. Plus, virtual events are fun and convenient — I can connect with prospects and sponsors from my couch. If you’re new to this channel, I recommend starting with a small webinar or virtual summit or renting a booth at a larger event.
I’ve also learned not to underestimate traditional advertising channels like TV, radio, and print media. They’re particularly great if you’re a local business or a large company with the budget for multi-city campaigns.
I always make sure to target ads carefully and understand the audience of each publisher. You can usually get this info from the publisher’s media buying guide, which will also outline the ad dimensions and other requirements.
Now that I’ve covered the various channels you can use for your customer acquisition plan, let’s discuss specific strategies for each one.
When creating a customer acquisition plan, I mix various strategies to get my desired result.
SEO isn’t an exact science, but there are some tried-and-true methods to help your content rank better. The goal is to make your content indexable — easily readable and understandable by search engines.
Here’s how you can boost your content’s “indexability”:
Of course, there’s much more to SEO, but these basics will get you started.
According to HubSpot’s The State of Marketing Report, having direct experience is extremely valuable for SEO. This knowledge allows you to offer practical tools and gather useful data. Such tools and firsthand data are effective for generating leads — you can easily use and adjust them to fit your own needs.
Content marketing is an effective customer acquisition method for all types of businesses. Creating new, exciting, and relevant content is a highly effective way to snag your audience’s attention and send them to your website.
In a world of false advertising and diminishing trust, content marketing offers a genuine approach: “I love what I do and want to share my expertise with you — for free.”
And who doesn’t like that?
The beauty of content marketing is that there’s no wrong type of content. The core is to connect with and convert your audience. Each piece should be relevant and include a clear call to action. Remember, content marketing is as much about content promotion as it is about content creation.
Blogging is a highly recommended acquisition method for businesses of all sizes, industries, and audience types.
It lets you explore different topics, showcase your industry knowledge, and build authority with your readers. Blogging also provides ongoing opportunities to engage your audience — whether through a bookmarkable graphic, a question in the comments, or a compelling call-to-action.
Pro tip: Make sure you have the resources to sustain your blog. Writers can be employees, freelancers, or guest contributors. A graphic designer and editor can help optimize your content for both search engines and readers. Adding a blog to your website is usually straightforward, depending on your hosting platform.
Free resource: Save time creating blog posts with six free templates.
Social media can be a powerful tool, but it requires a solid strategy.
Here are some key questions to consider:
If these questions seem intimidating, don’t fret. Posting organically on social media may seem like shouting into a void. The key is accessing the right networks — and this all comes back to a well-defined audience.
For example, Pinterest isn’t useful if your target is mainly men, as only 22% of men use it. But if you’re targeting millennials, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat should be part of your strategy.
Pro tip: Consider using HubSpot’s social media management tools to curate and post content on your networks.
Video content is complex to produce, but with affordable high-quality cameras and plenty of freelancers, it’s easier than ever.
Video marketing, when done right, focuses on quality content. The production process involves script writing, editing, production, and sometimes animation. You can outsource these tasks to freelancers or agencies. While video tends to be more expensive, it’s worth it for your best content ideas.
Video content is highly versatile. Promote it through search display ads, organic social posts, and paid social ads. Embed videos in blog posts and web pages to engage readers and increase conversion chances.
If you don’t have a video budget, consider creating a Slideshare as a visual alternative.
Free resource: Download this ultimate video starter pack to get resources and tips to kickstart your video marketing strategy.
What you send isn’t the only important part of email marketing. It’s also helpful to keep an eye on list behavior and retarget your emails accordingly.
For example, when you get a new subscriber, it’s safe to assume that the consumer is interested in your company and wants to learn more. If they don’t respond to the first few emails you send, however, you’ll want to adjust your strategy and A/B test different calls-to-action.
Notice which links get the most clicks to understand what grabs your subscribers‘ attention. And if someone unsubscribes, that’s valuable feedback on your email content.
Sponsored advertising can run the gamut from paid ads on the SERPs to influencer posts on social media.
No matter the channel you choose, these ads help you generate awareness about your products and services and attract new audiences to your brand. You can play with different types of sponsored content, such as sponsored search results, sponsored product mentions, and paid blog posts on related publications.
One powerful customer acquisition tactic? Turning your satisfied customers into promoters.
Here’s how you can empower your customers to promote your business and help you save time and money on other acquisition methods.
I call this the viral loop — it’s when your customers share content that leads their followers back to your business. Create Click to Tweet links so your customers can easily share social posts, and ensure each piece of published content has options to share via email or social media.
Pro tip: The more convenient promotion is for your customers, the more likely they’ll engage.
Gated content, like ebooks, guides, templates, and white papers, is a clever way to gather leads. By offering valuable resources, you ask readers to exchange their emails and names to access the content. This tactic fits seamlessly with any customer acquisition channel. You can optimize the content’s landing page for search engines or promote it on social media ads.
This strategy walks the line between SEO, content marketing, and conversion rate optimization, helping you turn your blog into a lead-generation machine. Just remember, the content must stay gated — don’t let it be indexed and found online for free. Otherwise, potential leads might just search for it without giving you their email.
Your product’s pricing strategy is another powerhouse for customer acquisition. Whether you push it through TV ads, customer referrals, or let it shine on its own, pricing can be a magnet for new customers. If your competitors‘ prices are sky-high or they don’t match your model, you’re in a sweet spot.
Freemium software, for example, draws in budget-conscious users who might later upgrade to a paid plan. Free tools attract anyone looking to try before they buy. If you sell consumer products, “Buy One, Get One Free” will have a horde of customers clicking “Add to cart,” expanding your customer base without much work.
Consider the following specific pricing strategies:
I’ve found that these customer acquisition methods work best when combined. For example, I can use social media to promote SEO-optimized content that includes a call-to-action for joining an email list. That might sound a bit long-winded, but you get the idea.
By mixing and experimenting with various customer acquisition strategies, I can learn more about my audience and introduce new tactics to my current strategy. No matter which strategies I choose, I always leave room for analysis, improvement, and change — because I never know when customers might stop responding to my methods or leave altogether.
You’ve heard the buzzword: customer acquisition cost.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost associated with bringing a new customer or client to your business, such as marketing costs, events, and advertising. It’s typically calculated for a specific campaign or window of time.
CAC is important because it assigns real value to your marketing efforts and allows you to measure your ROI — a metric inquired about by CEOs, managers, and investors alike.
High-level customer acquisition cost is calculated by dividing marketing costs associated with a specific campaign or effort by the number of customers acquired from that campaign.
CAC = MC / CA
Here:
To get a precise look at CAC, include all marketing-related costs. Think beyond just campaign spend — add marketing salaries, software, and even the cost of the office supplies used to create those lengthy contracts.
This CAC formula looks like this: CAC = (MC + W + S + OS + OH) / CA.
Here:
A simple CAC metric might apply to a single campaign, but for a deeper analysis, use this formula over a specific time frame, like a month or a fiscal year. For example, if Company A spent $10,000 on customer acquisition in Q4 2021 and gained 100 customers, the CAC would be $100.
I’ve found that CAC can be a fickle metric and shouldn’t be the only number I use to evaluate my marketing efforts. Why? Well, here are a few things that could throw off the value and application of my CAC:
Regardless, I also know that CAC is a critical number to calculate—and recalculate—when acquiring new customers and employing new acquisition methods.
Here’s the simple truth I know about marketing: You can always do better. You can always reach new audiences, market with better messages, and reduce associated costs.
Now, depending on your outlook, this could be good or bad news.
There’s always something to learn and always something to improve upon. Better yet, you aren’t stuck with a subpar metric that your executives or investors aren’t quite happy about.
If you’re looking to improve your CAC, here are a few ways to minimize the cost of acquiring new customers:
Every business needs new customers to grow and succeed. Whether you’re a company of five or 5,000, having a roadmap for customer acquisition is a smart move.
Here are a few steps I take to build a strong customer acquisition roadmap:
I always think long-term. A sustainable customer acquisition strategy is one that works in the long run. This means the investments I make — whether money, time, or human resources — can be maintained for the foreseeable future.
For example, if I plan to acquire new customers through a blog, I ensure I have the tools and resources to keep producing content beyond just a few posts. This continuous effort brings in organic traffic for months or even years.
Inbound marketing excels here because it creates sustainable traffic, offering a steady source of new customers. Compare this to ads, which are effective only as long as they’re live.
I‘m also adaptable. Marketing and sales are constantly evolving, as are customer behaviors. Salespeople were once the gatekeepers of product information, but that’s changed.
Today, consumers trust advice from family and friends over businesses. If my acquisition strategy relies solely on salespeople, I could be in trouble. Keeping my strategy flexible ensures I’m ready to pivot with market trends.
I‘ve realized not all consumers are my best consumers, and targeting the wrong people will only waste precious resources. That’s why, before investing in any acquisition methods, I define my target audience.
This helps me eliminate unnecessary or wasted efforts and highlights specific needs or desires that certain channels can meet. For example, if I’m targeting Gen Z, creating videos might be key, given that 1 in 6 teens use YouTube and TikTok almost every day.
For a targeted strategy, I take a step back and figure out what’s best for my business, resources, and audience. This approach leads to real responses to my customer acquisition efforts.
I’ve found that diversifying my customer acquisition strategy is crucial.
When I mix things up and use different acquisition methods, I reach new audiences and generate fresh leads more effectively. Plus, having multiple channels balances the risk. If one starts to flop (for instance, the salespeople example from before), I can reallocate my funds to what’s working better.
While acquiring new customers is great, keeping them around is even better.
Knowing which types of customers stick with me the longest helps refine my strategy. Customer lifetime value (LTV) gives me the net profit I can expect from a customer over their lifetime. This metric is gold for understanding my customers and how they interact with my business. It also helps gauge the effectiveness of my marketing and support efforts, influencing decisions across the board.
Sure, customers with high LTV might cost more to acquire, but they bring in more revenue, give valuable feedback, and are likely to refer others. The good news is that calculating customer LTV isn’t that difficult. I start by defining metrics like average purchase value and frequency. Even rough estimates can help predict the revenue a customer will bring over time.
Pairing LTV with CAC tells me how long it takes to recover my investment in new customers and how to allocate my budget more effectively.
No matter how hard I try, sometimes customers leave. It‘s just part of the business. But let’s dive into something crucial: Churn.
Customer churn represents the percentage of customers that peel away from your business and opt-out of your products or services. It’s also referred to as customer attrition or turnover.
When I lose customers, my instinct before was to go out and find new ones. This has led me to spend more on acquiring customers as churn rates rise, which is when I thought of flipping the script?
Instead of using new customer acquisition to patch up the churn problem, I started focusing on reducing churn itself. By addressing the root cause — unsatisfied customers — I can now avoid the “band-aid” solution of constantly seeking new ones.
Think about it: happy, retained customers can actually help attract new ones. Instead of always looking outward for replacements, I can look inward, improving customer service and retention.
Remember how I discussed the marketing funnel in the first section?
While it’s great for visualizing how customers come to know and buy from us, it misses one key element: the role of my current (and past) customers in driving future business.
Enter the “flywheel,” a concept popularized by HubSpot.
It illustrates how a business gains momentum when everyone is focused on delivering a remarkable customer experience. Happy customers bring in referrals and repeat sales, creating a self-sustaining cycle.
This is customer retention in action. Instead of spending big bucks to replace lost customers, I invest in keeping them happy. It’s a cost-effective strategy.
Note that customer retention strategies will vary depending on your business model, audience, and resources. But the goal remains the same: to keep your customers delighted so they keep coming back — and bring others with them.
Now that you know what makes an amazing customer acquisition strategy, let’s talk about some companies that are doing it well.
Who doesn’t love a freebie? Many top brands, like Dropbox, Slack, and HubSpot, lure in customers with a freemium model. One of my go-tos is Otter.ai, an AI transcription tool I use for capturing ideas, stories, and meeting notes. Otter’s free plan is pretty generous — 300 monthly transcription minutes and 30 minutes per conversation.
Honestly, I don’t see myself upgrading anytime soon. More importantly, by getting a taste of the Otter product, I can now better explain it to other people and companies — folks who may upgrade after hearing about it from me. So, Otter’s freemium model not only tempts me to upgrade but also turns me into a walking, talking advertisement for them.
Email marketing is a valuable way to routinely engage with leads and keep your brand and product top-of-mind. This applies whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or an individual freelance writer, like Kaleigh Moore.
Kaleigh has also been sending a bi-monthly email newsletter for five years, full of freelancing and writing tips and stories for her audience. Recently, she developed some high-value digital products based on her own experiences, and guess what channel she tapped to get them in front of potential buyers? Email.
By converting her website visitors and blog readers to email subscribers, Kaleigh successfully acquired new leads — and, now, customers for her new products.
Okay, I might be a little biased here, but HubSpot is a pro at using gated content for customer acquisition. We churn out tons of new content offers every year—e-books, templates, worksheets, you name it. This “gated content” requires users to enter their emails to access it.
Another interesting example of this is interactive content acquisition, such as HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool. By “gamifying” the persona creation process, HubSpot successfully captures the information of people interested in making their own buyer personas.
SEO is growing in popularity among marketers, and it makes sense. 29% of marketers actively use content marketing, and 50% of marketers plan on increasing their investment in content marketing in 2024.
The key is smart resource allocation, whether you build an in-house content team or outsource. Freelance SEO copywriter Chima Mmeje is a pro at this. She helps SaaS clients like Skillshare and Wix climb the search engine ranks by creating topic clusters, conducting keyword research,
Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any company, big or small. Giving up on marketing to new customers is never an option, no matter the cost. But I’ve learned that the key to growth isn’t just with the marketing or sales team — it’s with the customer service team and the customers themselves.
The companies that succeed put their customers in the spotlight, focusing on both acquisition and retention. When I set up my acquisition strategy correctly, I saw not only a lower customer acquisition cost but also an increase in customer lifetime value.
For me, customer acquisition is about finding the right customers who stick around and help bring in more. I stopped seeing customer acquisition as a one-way funnel and started picturing it as a flywheel — constantly working to bring new customers on board and ensuring they succeed once they’ve joined. When customers thrive, they naturally go to work on your behalf.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
I hate to break it to you, but your brand’s customer service can make or break your company. To me, there is nothing worse than being put on hold when I need help with something — only for a support agent to drop the ball on responding or a chatbot to fail to connect me to a live agent.
Logically, I know there are other customer inquiries than just mine. I also know that customer support representatives are busy people. That’s why I think it’s a great idea that more and more companies are opting to use generative AI to streamline and improve the quality of customer service.
In this post, we’ll define AI customer support, discuss its uses in customer support processes, and share tips from customer services experts on how to implement AI into your workflows.
Table of Contents
AI customer support uses artificial intelligence, such as natural language processing and machine learning, to automate certain support-related tasks, like responding to customer inquiries and scheduling appointments.
AI can vastly improve customer service response times, helping to improve the customer experience and create brand loyalty. In fact, 79% of customer service professionals say AI and automation improve their support strategy.
While some aspects of the customer support role require human-to-human interaction, AI-enabled software can provide better analytics so you and your team can improve your workflows and support services based on how your customers interact with and feel about your brand.
AI can be integrated into nearly every aspect of customer support. Not sold yet? I’ll show you a few use cases of generative AI to improve customer service so you can learn what might be a good fit for you and your team.
Chatbots might just be one of the most popular applications of AI in customer service, and you’ve likely had personal experience with them. AI-powered chatbots are trained using company and industry data. This means when a customer interacts with the bot, the bot can anticipate and provide the best possible response to their query.
Mongoose, an engagement platform for higher education, uses a chatbot, Otto, to engage with customers and potential leads. Otto starts the conversation by asking if the visitor uses the platform and, depending on the answer, offers suggestions for new conversation topics.
I like to use chatbots like this to guide conversations, convert leads, or start initial support tickets.
I think of virtual assistants as the cool cousins of a chatbot. Some AI-powered chatbots are limited in features, meaning they can only suggest new learning topics for users. AI virtual assistants step it up a notch and aid in customer support by providing customers assistance with things like scheduling appointments, placing orders, or providing tracking information.
Dom, Domino’s ordering assistant, is a perfect example of using a virtual assistant to help customers. Using Dom, pizza lovers can quickly order their favorite pie or easily browse the menu for new ordering ideas. I’m one of those people who eat with her eyes, so being able to see a cooked dish while using Dom also helps in my decision-making.
If you’re an iPhone user like me, you know all about the usefulness of Siri. Siri and Alexa are AI-powered voice assistants that every day users can use to complete certain tasks, like sending text messages or setting reminders. When it comes to customer support, businesses can use the same kind of technology to support callers, especially if all other phone lines are busy.
Voice assistants aid in customer service by helping customers do certain tasks like setting up service appointments, paying their bills, or checking the status of their orders. I use Xfinity as an internet service provider.
The few times I have had to call and report a problem, I’ve noticed Xfinity uses a voice assistant to greet their customers initially, and depending on their inquiry, it will connect them to a live agent who can further assist them.
If you’re part of a customer support team, you know your inbox is constantly flooded with customer support requests. It can take some time to sort through emails to find high-priority messages. Even though your team is on top of responding to all customer requests, some important tickets can fall through the cracks.
AI email responders help solve that issue. Email responders analyze customer communications, sort them based on priority, and can suggest replies to help you and your team automate responses.
Generative AI can improve customer service in many ways, but one of the best uses of this technology is uncovering customer insights. Adding AI to your CRM, like HubSpot AI, can help you understand your customers’ behaviors and how they interact with your brand. When you know how and why they interact with your brand, you’re better able to provide targeted support.
Plus, if your support agents understand customer sentiment before interacting and troubleshooting with a customer, they’re better able to tailor their delivery to ease tensions and maintain a positive customer-brand relationship.
Now that you know how AI can be used in customer support, let’s look at the best way to implement it.
Because there are various uses for AI in customer support, you need to make a plan and do a little research before implementing new software into your customer support processes. The wrong tool can cause a headache for your support team — or worse, cause issues for your clients.
To get a better idea of how to implement an AI tool into customer support, I talked with some customer service experts. Here’s what they suggest you do if you want to use generative AI to improve customer service.
Before I start anything new, whether that’s an exercise program or a business initiative, I find it helpful to define my goals. The same goes for using AI customer support tools. You need to define which of your customer support processes you can streamline with AI and which should be handled by a customer service rep.
Lasandra Barksdale, founder and principal of Kompass Customer Solutions, says to ask yourself this question: “Does this technology enhance our connection to our customers or increase the gap?”
Take some time to reflect on this question, brainstorm ideas, and ask for input from your team. Your team members can provide valuable insight into which of their job functions you can use AI to automate. From there, establish a timeline to implement new software.
Next, you’ll want to gather and analyze customer support data. You should look at things like:
If you have the ability to conduct sentiment analysis, you should do that during this step, too. Be sure to also ask your team about any common customer pain points and complaints.
By now, you should have a good idea of areas of improvement within your customer service processes. Take some time to research the various tools on the market that can help alleviate some of your customer service challenges.
For example if you need to work on faster response times, consider implementing an AI autoresponder tool for emails and support tickets. Or, if you’re losing visitors on your website, consider adding an AI chatbot to increase engagement.
Once you’ve chosen your AI tool and paid for a subscription to the service, you’ll need to spend some time training your bot. This means you’ll upload your company and customer data to the tool.
Barksdales also told me, “You have to feed your AI the right data. You have to train it with real customer interactions by feeding it diverse datasets that reflect the real questions and concerns our customers have, not just the ideal ones. To do this well, you have to make sure you have feedback loops set up to make sure learning is ongoing. This will keep your AI put to date on customer needs and ensure that it evolves as your customers do.”
To get the best, most accurate responses from your AI software, be sure to clean your data and remove any junk parameters before uploading it to the software. Bad data could lead to inappropriate responses. Take some time to train it using various tones and interaction styles — this way, you can be sure your AI tool can pick up on various sentiments.
After you’ve trained your tool using your company and customer data, it’s time to test it. Listen to me when I say this: you do not want to prematurely launch your AI tool. Launching your tool before your team fully understands how to best use it is a recipe for disaster.
Instead, assign members of your support team to be superusers. Give them early access to the tool and ask them to test it according to how they plan to use it in their everyday role.
Be sure to track appropriate performance metrics,too. Smitha Baliga, CEO and COO of TeleDirect Communications, told me that measuring effectiveness can vary by organization, but it’s generally accepted as best practice to measure the following data points:
Tracking these metrics while testing can ensure your AI tool supports your customer service efforts, not hinder them.
If your AI tool is customer-facing, you might need to announce the launch of your AI tool. This could be an email or a social media post to let your customers know they might see a new chatbot or a virtual assistant on your website. Be sure to set up a user experience survey, so you can gather customer feedback and opinions.
And, for good measure, if the tool is not customer-facing but is rep-facing, like an analytics tool or an autoresponder, you’ll want to ask your team for feedback, too.
Use the feedback from your customers and team members to make changes to continue to improve your workflows.
Adding AI to your support processes can be a game-changer for your customers and your support team. Depending on the tool, you can increase response rates, decrease negative interactions, and mitigate tense situations by gaining a deeper understanding of the customer and their concerns through analytical insights.
I asked a few customer support experts for their best tips on using AI in customer support. Here’s what they told me.
Understanding your customers and their needs is a top priority for your business, but especially for your customer support reps who are looking to implement an AI tool.
Bobby Hakimi, chief product officer and co-founder of Convoso, told me, “Review everyday customer needs, pain points, and expectations at each stage, and identify critical touchpoints where the AI will interact with customers. Train the model to recognize customer segments and tailor responses to those segments.”
With the launch of any new software, there will be challenges to overcome. It’s inevitable.
Edward Tian, CEO of GTPZero, said the biggest challenge with using AI in customer support is that AI simply can’t handle every single inquiry.
“When you use it in place of real customer support agents, there will be times in which the technology can’t help the customer,” he explained. “That can then increase frustration on the customer’s end because now they’ve wasted time trying to use this tech service, when they could have just contacted a customer support agent directly. So, when AI for customer service works, it’s really great, but when it doesn’t work, the outcome is worse.”
AI is good, but it can’t properly handle every customer inquiry or interaction. Some customers need specialized support, and you need to train your AI tool to recognize these situations.
Hakimi suggested, “Train the AI on when to escalate by recognizing when a query is too complex or sensitive and needs to be routed to a human agent. Build a path to a seamless transfer of the conversion, delivering the context and relevant information to the agent.”
Speaking of delivering content and information to a live agent, Barksdale had a tip for that, too. She said to ensure seamless transitions between AI and human agents you should consider the customer journey.
Barksdale said, “There‘s a big difference in needing to call a life insurance company because you can’t access the website versus after a family member has passed. Identify the moments that matter in each journey and make sure that high-emotion interactions are handled by a human. This requires well-defined triggers and a clear understanding of when AI should pass the baton to a human.”
Barksdale’s last tip is to measure the success of AI in customer support.
Barksdale told me, “You have to measure more than just response times, but also focus on CSAT scores and resolution rates of complex issues. Make sure to do A/B testing and pre- and post-implementation analysis to understand whether AI is directly impacting metrics or if other factors are influencing the results. At the end of the day, it’s about how well AI complements your customer support team.”
Generative AI in customer support is more than just adding a chatbot to your website to catch customer interactions. Sure, chatbots are a great use of generative AI, but there are other ways to use it to support your customer support initiatives — especially if you want to improve every aspect of your customer experience.
AI tools can help your team better understand your customers and their feelings, while also filtering out higher priority support tickets. That helps you can ensure you’re taking care of customer needs when they arise. Just be sure to follow the advice of our experts when implementing an AI tool, so you know it helps improve your processes, not make them worse.
