5 Ways Saudi Businesses Can Design the Best Customer Experience

What’s the best way for businesses in Saudi Arabia to deliver exceptional customer experience?

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.”  – Steve Jobs

Businesses and organizations in Saudi Arabia are looking at the bigger picture, the customer experience.

But they face a lack of information about what customer experience really involves, how much it matters to their business and how to design for it.

A common misconception we come across working with clients in Saudi Arabia is that CX = UX. Although Customer Experience (CX) does include the digital User Experience (UX), it isn’t solely based on a business’s performance online.

Note: To understand CX better, read our article on the importance of CX – Why Customer Experience Matters

Considering the scarcity of specialist customer experience agencies in Saudi Arabia, this misinformation is understandable.

With our full-service customer research and design capabilities, UXBERT Labs is one of the top customer experience agencies in Saudi Arabia. In addition to designing & implement great customer experiences, in our role as a leading Saudi customer experience agency we also educate businesses about CX.

Here’s a list of 5 ways businesses in Saudi Arabia can design the best customer experience –

Listen to Your Customers

A lot of business owners get caught up in the way they see and envision their business but forget to take a step back and listen to/think about the people who really matter – the customers.

Your customers have a lot to tell you, a lot of which could improve your customer experience.

Customers will tell you about the positive and negative experiences they’ve had with your service or product through various channels (digital & physical) and on the various points through these channels.

A suggestion that could improve your customer experience might come from the parking lot of your mall, your Facebook page, your service lines, from within your store, or your website; and if you’re not listening then it’s a lost opportunity.

Listening to customers isn’t just about getting ideas about changes that are needed in your products and services, they also help form stronger bonds with your customers.

To create a truly wonderful customer experience, you have to make your customers feel connected with your brand.

While a lot of the customer feedback wouldn’t find a place in your customer experience strategy directly, noting it down and responding to every customer enhances the image of your brand and makes them feel like their voices have been heard – creating that all-important social connection with your customers.

This “outside-in” view of your company, combined with a deep understanding of your customers, is how CX leaders lead.

Keep the Customer Experience Meaningful

Customer experiences only work when they are meaningful.

CX is meaningful to the customer when the experience serves not only the purpose of the organization but resolves the problem of the customer and keeps him satisfied.

A useful tool for understanding opportunities for how to develop meaningful customer experiences is by using a Customer Journey Map.

Customer journey maps help you to understand the complete, end-to-end experience customers have from their perspective and therefore identify what’s important to them and when. It’s a great way for ensuring the customer experience is consistent across all touchpoints and seamless through different transitions (marketing – support – sales – post sales).

Home Centre is a home furnishing company in Saudi Arabia. They came up with an innovative strategy to enhance customer experience and help create a positive image of the brand.

Customers who purchase worth SR1,000 at Home Centre stores across KSA are eligible for a free Careem ride back home. In addition, Home Centre customers can take advantage of attractive offers when they sign-up for Careem services, including a free first trip and a credit of SR40 added to their Careem account.

Providing services like these make customers feel like they are being taken care of.

When interacting with customers, responding to their suggestions or otherwise, remember that people want to deal with other people, not brands or companies. There’s nothing less personal than getting an email from a ‘brand’ with no personalization.

Unfortunately, only 17 percent of marketing leaders are going beyond basic transaction data to deliver personalized customer experience.

Utilizing customer preferences and purchase histories can help you know your customers and attend to them with a personal touch which goes a long way in improving customer experience.

Creating a customer journey map that takes into account every touchpoint while personalizing every interaction with your customers and looking at the cx through their eyes is what makes a customer experience memorable and meaningful.

Employee Experience: Educate Your Employees

Professionals today believe that Employee Experience is Customer Experience.

A study entitled “The Active Job Seeker Dilemma” found that 83% of HR leaders said “employee experience” is extremely important to their organization’s success as well as customer experience, and they are investing more in training (56%), improving their workspaces (51%), and giving more rewards (47%).  

Customers interact with your employees at multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey; they engage with employees to ask for information about your products, when making a purchase, when getting service and support, and when talking to billing or accounts.

Educating and empowering your employees, while also providing them the best employee experience will improve and ensure quality cx.

Employee training programs dedicated to showing employees how to deal with customers will improve how well they interact with customers while incentives such as bonuses can motivate your employees to provide top-notch customer service which transcends into an overall great customer experience.

Having workspaces and work environments that help employees enjoy their work is equally important in enhancing the employee experience which in turn improves the customer experience.

Your employees will always be the ones directly dealing with your customers.

Enhance the Digital User Experience

20.29 Million. That’s the number of people online in Saudi Arabia.

The sheer number of users who can hear about your brand online makes it absolutely necessary for your organization to have a digital presence with great user experience, as UX is a major part of the customer experience.

User experience helps shape your organization’s perception in your customer’s mind.

Having a bad experience on any of your online channels could lead users away from your organization, affect sales and associate a negative image with your brand in the user’s mind.

Good UX is the difference between a casual visitor and a paying customer. It leads to increased satisfaction, which leads to increased credibility and trust – both of which are vital ingredients in customer experience.

To read about how companies in Saudi Arabia can design should know about when designing for the User Experience follow this link – Designing An Arabic User Experience 

Actually Use the Insights

One of the largest hurdles in improving CX comes after all the groundwork for its improvement has been done.

Acting on the insights is where most companies fail when trying to create great customer experiences.

Only 33% of companies analyze customer insight across organizational boundaries (Source: Forrester).

Data collected from customers, in person, in the form of surveys, suggestions or feedbacks, and in the form of customer data: demographic, psychographic behavioral, etc. must be analyzed and presented to decision makers in small consumable chunks that highlight all the important findings that need to be worked upon.

Businesses in Saudi Arabia can design the best customer experience if executives in their company follow these insights and take actionable steps because we all know that the customer experience is what can make or break a business in today’s competitive market.

Read about the omnichannel customer experience here – 4 Facts About the Omni-Channel Customer Experience 

At UXBERT Labs we specialize in using scientific UCD processes to design world-class innovative and beautiful experiences. Hosting Saudi Arabia’s first commercial and state-of-the-art Usability Lab, and a team CX Researchers, Designers and Developers on-site in our Riyadh office, we’ll help you create customer experiences that make your business stand out and keep your customers coming back. If you have a project you’d like to work with us on, get in touch at hello@uxbert.com