Why Customer Experience Still Matters in 2025
Nigerian consumers appreciate a good customer experience, but research shows that businesses often find it difficult to provide regularly high-quality interactions. A 2023 Report by Nigeria Customer Service Index (NCSI) indicated that Nigerian Businesses ranked poorly in customer service. Africa’s biggest economy getting a score of 61.8%, lower than its neighbor, Ghana, which had 73 percent.
More than 8,000 individuals provided information via an online survey. In nine different economic areas, respondents were asked to rank their experiences with customer service.
We all can remember a time we had a not so good experience from the customer service agent either virtually or in-person. Likewise little gesture we received that made our experience with a particular brand or business a non-forgettable experience.
Those little sometimes insignificant gestures make the biggest difference. In this article we’ll be taking a deep dive into what exactly customer experience is, why it matters and the competitive edge it can offer your business and put you in the top 1% of business in Nigeria well recognized for top notch customer experience.
What Is Customer Experience (CX)
Customer experience is the way customers feel about your business from the first point of awareness to the interactions that follow from purchase, use, and post-purchase support. It affects sales and customer loyalty and includes all interactions with your brand, such as chatting with your customer service representatives or using your website.
Customer experience describes all of the interactions that customers have with a company, as well as how they feel during such encounters.
Customers want to feel relevant to their favorite brands, and they want the firms they buy from to know and respect them. Businesses must make sure that their CX strategies can provide individualized, enjoyable encounters at every consumer touchpoint since CX has emerged as the primary competitive difference.
Customer Journey Mapping
Customer journey mapping also known as user journey mapping is a visual narrative of your consumers’ experiences with your business. By putting themselves in their customers’ shoes, firms can better understand their business from the customers’ point of view. It enables you to learn more about typical client problems and how to solve them.
Journey maps must be grounded in data-driven research and visually depict the various stages that customers go through based on a range of factors, such as customer sentiment, business objectives, and touchpoints, to produce effective visual maps that represent customers’ journeys through these channels.
Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping
Customer journey maps can offer useful information about a company’s sales funnel and customer service procedures, regardless of whether they highlight a specific set of interactions or show the complete brand-to-consumer connection.
On average, a positive customer experience can increase shareholder returns by up to three times. The following are some of the main advantages of a systematic, customer-focused map:
- Enhancing client experience: A customer journey map assists companies in identifying potential areas for customer experience optimization. By doing this, friction is decreased, customer happiness is raised, and brand loyalty is increased.
- Increasing customer retention: By identifying issues that could otherwise result in customer attrition, businesses can increase customer retention by identifying pain spots in the post purchase or support phase of the customer journey.
- Improved product development and Iteration: Knowledge gained from customer journeys can help design new features and enhancements that better suit the needs of customers.
- Improved marketing: Companies may develop focused campaigns that meet customers where they are by having a deeper grasp of the customer journey. This will increase engagement and conversion from marketing efforts.
- Knowing consumer psychology: A customer journey map offers more detailed information about how consumers feel, think, and act during their interactions with a brand. Organizations can gain a better understanding of consumer motivations, pain areas, and decision-making processes by mapping emotional responses at different phases. With the use of these data, businesses may produce more tailored and sympathetic experiences that appeal to consumers.
- Finding the Important Touch Points: A customer journey map assists companies in determining which touchpoints have the biggest influence on consumer choices and satisfaction. This enables companies to optimize high-impact interactions, cut out pointless stages, and prioritize resources to enhance the entire customer experience.
- Increasing competitive advantage: By enabling better customer experiences, a well-executed customer journey map can provide companies with a strategic advantage. A customer journey map can be used by a company to pinpoint areas in which rivals are lacking, provide less generic customer journey experience, or produce communications that are tailored to their ideal clientele.
Examples of Good Customer Experience
It’s a long-held business principle that the experience a customer has can be more influential than the product they purchase. This philosophy has been the cornerstone of success for household names like Apple, Zappos, and Starbucks. These companies masterfully differentiated themselves not just by what they sell, but by creating an appealing and seamless customer experience. While they are prominent examples, this powerful strategy is also being effectively implemented in the B2B sector. Companies like Hotstar, Marathon, Bluestar, and Bose are actively integrating sophisticated software suites to ensure that their customer interactions are as excellent as their products.
What's The Difference Between Customer Experience and Customer Service
The terms “customer experience” and “customer service” are sometimes used interchangeably. Although they are related, they are not synonyms.
The act of helping or supporting consumers, whether via digital platforms or in-person interactions, is known as customer service. It is only a portion of the overall customer experience.
Customer service is reactive and predominantly occurs post-purchase. Customers typically initiate these interactions. Customer experience is proactive and happens at every stage of the customer journey. The business typically directs this strategy forward.
In this video below Patrick Bet David breaks downs the differences between customer service and customer experience.
How to improve your CX
The good news is that you can enhance customer experience (CX), and the first step in doing so is to prioritize the consumer in company decision-making. Improve your customer experience strategy by using these tips.
1. Understanding your customers
Understanding your customers is essential before thinking about investing in new technologies or putting new CX procedures into place. Take a customer-centric approach to your CX strategy, putting yourself in their shoes.
For instance, even if you have an excellent self-service system, you have wasted time and money on something that doesn’t appeal to your clients if all they want is to make purchases easy. Gain a thorough understanding of your clients and utilize that information to direct your CX initiatives.
- Establish feedback loops
client feedback loops occur when companies use client input to enhance their operations or goods. This can help identify what is effective and what requires development. Requesting feedback gives you important information about what your customers expect and how to better satisfy them. Responding to that input demonstrates to your clients that you respect their viewpoints.Businesses can also establish internal staff feedback loops that facilitate the collection and sharing of agent input, which can highlight any issues with providing excellent customer service. Issue resolution may be slowed down, for instance, by policies or procedures that don’t meet the needs of the client or by conflict amongst divided teams.
- Invest in Software that Enhances the Customer Experience
Modern customer experience (CX) software plays a pivotal role in strengthening relationships and fostering meaningful interactions. The right platform empowers businesses to:
- Gain deep insights into customer behavior through comprehensive data management, helping to identify potential escalations and reduce churn risks.
- Deliver personalized experiences by generating relevant, timely recommendations based on customer preferences and interactions.
- Engage seamlessly across channels, ensuring customers receive support where and when they need it—be it email, chat, phone, or social media.
As you evaluate solutions, prioritize platforms that offer robust AI features, scalability to grow with your business, and user-friendly interfaces for both teams and customers. Some leading tools in this space, like Zoho CRM, are known for combining these elements effectively—enabling businesses to craft connected, intelligent, and human-centric customer journeys.
- Educate your Team
Make sure your staff quickly catches up after making investments in AI or CX technology or altering internal procedures. They can deliver exceptional customer experiences more quickly if they grasp your new way of thinking. This can assist you in rapidly reaping the rewards of your modifications.5. Offer Personalization
One of the most important components of a successful CX is personalization. By offering well-chosen product recommendations, sending individualized communications such as birthday offers, and interacting with clients via their preferred contact mode, businesses may provide customized customer experience. Make sure to use technologies such as CX software. - Provide experiences that are proactive
A first-rate customer experience foresees the demands of clients and keeps ahead of issues before they become more serious or even occur. Being proactive fosters a distinctive, intimate experience that increases client loyalty and trust.7. Make use of analytics and data
Customer support team efficiency, overall customer satisfaction with business contacts, trends in consumer behavior, and more can all be detailed using data and analytics.Interpreting this data and its relevance to your organization is the first step in improving your product and procedures with the consumer in mind. This will help you comprehend the wants, pain spots, and future objectives of your customers. Any information gathered can be very helpful in enhancing the CX.