When it comes to delivering a truly exceptional experience, there’s a lot we can learn from the world of sports. Consider UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden, who built not just winning teams but a winning culture. “You should never try to be better than someone else. You should always be learning from others,” he once said.
Wooden embodied that philosophy, drawing inspiration from great coaches and players of his era, like Wilt Chamberlain, and countless others. The result? Fans, students, and alums arguably enjoyed the best customer experience in college basketball during the 1960s and 1970s, as Wooden’s Bruins racked up 10 national titles — a record that still stands today.
Just as Wooden learned from those around him, business leaders can learn from their own wins and losses — and each other. After all, why reinvent the wheel when you can build on proven plays to achieve the key performance indicators (KPIs) that move your business forward? In this post, we’ll highlight five standout customer experience examples worth learning from right now.
Main Takeaways
- Delivering an exceptional customer experience is vital in today’s super competitive business world, whether you’re a major e-commerce retailer, hotel operator, or health system. If you fail to deliver, you’ll lose the loyalty of your customers and leak revenue.
- An exceptional customer experience is characterized by personalization and a well-mapped and friction-free customer journey.
- Companies that deliver a superior customer experience are customer-centric, embrace innovation, foster a culture of service, empower employees, and embrace technology.
- Technology, particularly AI-driven tools and automation, can help businesses streamline the customer journey and deliver personalization at scale, ultimately creating a superior customer experience.
Why a Great Customer Experience Matters
Customer experience (CX) captures all the conscious and subconscious thoughts and feelings a person has from the moment they first discover your brand. And make no mistake: The quality of your CX can make or break your business.
Our research shows 76% of customers will desert a brand after just one bad experience. Think about how that impacts a crucial KPI like customer acquisition cost (ouch). Meanwhile, research from Forrester shows the positive power of delivering a stellar customer experience. A great CX helps drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy, which helps increase sales and referrals.
Let’s explore how five world-class brands deliver exceptional customer experiences and see what lessons will resonate with your own team as you look to raise your CX game.
Excellent Customer Experience Examples for Your Business to Emulate
The following five companies consistently excel in customer experience because they are always working to differentiate themselves from the competition. Here’s a look at a few of the strategies they use to maintain a winning edge.
1. Amazon: The Gold Standard for Customer-Centric Innovation
Amazon goes to great lengths to make every customer experience feel personal. When you log in to Amazon, you’re invited to “pick up where you left off” or “buy again” with a single click. View a product, and you’ll see instant discounts along with personalized suggestions, like “frequently bought together” or “other brands you might like.”
Navigating Amazon’s website is almost too user-friendly — and that’s by design. The easier it is to browse, the easier it is to buy (and buy again).
Amazon’s recommendation engine works tirelessly to streamline the shopping experience, and this personalized approach extends beyond its website to devices like the Echo Show, powered by its AI voice assistant, Alexa.
2. DIRECTV: Leveraging AI for Seamless Customer Interactions
DIRECTV aims to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience for its customers, and it’s putting AI to work in a smart way to make that happen. The satellite TV provider uses Invoca PreSense to equip its agents with caller intent data based on customers’ pre-call digital activity.
Just before they answer a customer’s call, agents see a pop-up with pertinent details about the caller, including their name and the webpages they visited before picking up the phone. This information allows agents to greet customers personally and dive straight into addressing their issue. And the results speak for themselves: With help from PreSense, DIRECTV’s sales agents increased their rate of personalized greetings by 58% and boosted their close rates by 110%.
Using Invoca’s technology to enhance the customer experience has also helped DIRECTV to lower its customer acquisition costs. By integrating Invoca with its digital channels, the business has gained a clearer view of which ads and marketing assets are driving the most calls.
Want to see how PreSense can help your business? Check out this short video clip below:
3. Ritz-Carlton: Empowering Employees to Deliver Personalized Service
As a high-end hospitality brand, Ritz-Carlton pledges the “finest personal service and facilities for our guests.” It delivers on that promise by clearly communicating expectations to its employees and fostering a workplace culture emphasizing dignity, respect, and mutual service.
Ritz-Carlton also has the “$2,000 rule.” This policy empowers employees with a discretionary budget of up to $2,000 per guest — no manager approval needed — to resolve customer issues or simply enhance their experience.
By giving staff both the resources and the authority to act, Ritz-Carlton fosters a culture of proactive problem-solving that consistently exceeds customer expectations and creates a truly exceptional experience.
4. Banner Health: Reducing Patient Acquisition Costs Through Data-Driven Strategies
Banner Health is another company embracing Invoca’s AI to deliver a frictionless customer experience to new and existing patients alike.
Banner Health used data analytics from every inbound call tracked and recorded by Invoca to see how efficient its marketing campaigns were in attracting patients to make a medical appointment. Its marketing team took this a step further, improving personalization by segmenting new versus repeat patients and tailoring messaging for each group.
The results were impressive: a 35% increase in phone conversions and a 74% decrease in customer acquisition costs. Banner Health also used insights from phone data to refine its ad bidding strategy — cutting spend on underperforming campaigns and ads targeting loyal patients. It also doubled down on efforts that successfully attract new patients.
5. Apple: Designing Intuitive Experiences That Delight Customers
Apple has prioritized the customer experience from day one, which is a major reason it enjoys such a large and fiercely loyal global customer base. CX is woven into every touchpoint, from product packaging to the sleek designs of the iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods — and especially the seamless integration between these devices.
Apple’s emphasis on the customer experience extends to its brick-and-mortar stores, which are elegantly designed and luxuriously appointed. (The new Apple Miami Worldcenter, which opened in January, reportedly cost $12 million to build.) Inside each store, the experience continues with a Genius Bar offering one-on-one customer support, which you can book in advance through the Apple Store app or Apple’s website. For a truly seamless omnichannel customer experience, you can also call or chat with support online.
Best Practices and Tips for Improving the Customer Experience
Amazon, Apple, Banner Health, DIRECTV, and Ritz-Carlton are all exceptional brands that put customer experience at the heart of everything they do. They make it a priority — and they consistently deliver. You can do the same by learning from their strategies and adopting these five best practices to improve your approach to CX.
1. Personalize Every Interaction
Personalization is the not-so-secret sauce of a winning customer experience strategy. The best brands use large-scale data analysis to personalize interactions and messaging based on a customer’s past purchases, online and offline behavior (like web browsing or phone calls), and even feedback from surveys.
You can set the stage for this kind of personalized experience in the contact center, a crucial touchpoint, by using tools like Invoca PreSense, which passes context from a caller’s online activity to the agent handling their call.
2. Act on Customer Feedback in Real Time
Customer feedback is a valuable window into the customer experience, so make sure you keep that window open wide at all times. Gather feedback at key touchpoints along the customer journey through satisfaction surveys and review requests.
Go deeper by extracting voice of the customer insights from phone calls at scale using AI-driven conversation analytics. Then, put that feedback to work: Incorporate actionable data into your CX strategy and fine-tune your messaging based on what your customers are telling you.
3. Empower Frontline Employees
Delivering a positive customer experience isn’t always easy for employees. The better you support them, the better they will be at supporting your customers and their needs. Empower your employees by providing the right tools and allowing them to use their initiative so they can resolve customer problems quickly for a better customer experience.
While empathy and initiative can’t always be trained directly, you can strengthen these qualities by giving constructive feedback through automated quality management. You can also use phone call recordings as coaching tools, giving employees constructive feedback based on real-world examples.Finally, make sure to follow up on training by recognizing and rewarding service that elevates the customer experience and reinforces your brand values.
4. Optimize the Entire Customer Journey, Not Just Single Touchpoints
Don’t focus your CX strategy solely on specific friction points. Instead, visualize the entire customer journey — from first awareness to the potential end of the relationship — by developing a comprehensive customer journey map. This broader view can help you identify and address friction points. It also reveals where you’re most likely to convert customers, so you can direct more resources toward those high-value touchpoints.
You can further optimize the journey by maintaining consistent messaging across all channels. Consider using an AI-powered revenue execution platform, such as Invoca, to bridge the gap between digital and phone interactions and deliver a seamless omnichannel experience.
5. Leverage Automation to Scale Quality Interactions
Streamline your CX strategy by using automation and AI tools that support, but don’t replace, personalized interactions. For example, intelligent call routing can automatically direct incoming calls based on intent gathered from a caller’s pre-call digital activity.
Connecting the caller to the right agent not only smooths the customer journey but also makes the experience feel more personal. It helps your team, too. Automating repetitive tasks frees them to focus on high-value interactions, further enhancing the customer experience.
Enhance Customer Experience Through Actionable Insights with Invoca
If you want your business to stand out, you need to deliver an exceptional CX. The examples above illustrate how it’s done. (And if you want more, check out this post!)
Take a page from these brands’ playbooks. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And if your aim is to build a winning customer experience strategy worthy of John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty, Invoca can help. Our AI-powered conversation analytics tools deliver actionable insights to help you personalize experiences at scale and improve the entire customer journey, both online and offline.
Additional Reading
To learn more about how Invoca’s AI-driven quality intelligence tools can help you deliver a great customer experience, see these additional resources:
- Customer Experience Optimization: What You Need to Know
- Creating an Omnichannel Customer Journey: Top Strategies
- AI for the Customer Experience: Benefits, Challenges, and 10 Examples
When you’re ready, book a free demo with our team to see for yourself how Invoca can transform your customer experience strategy.
