What is a CX maturity model?

Discovering how your customers feel about your brand is key to determining customer satisfaction.

A customer experience maturity model can help you learn how well your business is reaching your customers. It can also provide insights into how they feel about various interactions with your business. 

Let's dive into what a customer experience maturity model is and how it can benefit your business.

Providing the best customer experience (CX) possible is an important step in increasing brand satisfaction. It also boosts the likelihood of repeat customers. 

A CX maturity model helps you assess if your business is providing a strong CX that meets or exceeds your customers' expectations. You’ll also learn if you need to introduce various tools to provide an innovative customer experience. 

A CX maturity model is a five-stage process. Your business moves through it as you add innovative tools and strategies that improve your customers' overall experience. 

Static experience

The static experience stage describes the initial experience your customers have with your company prior to any CX maturity strategies. 

Your business can use the rest of the model to identify and respond to areas within your static experience that aren't providing an adequate customer experience. 

Automation

CX maturity generally begins with incorporating various types of automation to simplify certain processes and free up time and resources. 

This stage is the starting point for incorporating segmentation efforts from one-to-one data points and other basic data sources. 

Personalized messaging  

Once your business reaches the personalized messaging stage, you'll see how a CX maturity model can benefit your customers and business. 

You'll focus on better matching the preferences and circumstances of specific customers than more general marketing materials. This plays an important role in helping your business create better marketing content.

It's generally too early to attempt to create a full omnichannel marketing strategy at this stage. Instead, it's often more appropriate to focus heavily on one or two areas. 

Once you succeed during this stage, you can repeat similar strategies for additional channels. 

Advanced omnichannel

The advanced omnichannel stage builds upon your business's previous successes by incorporating various marketing channels. 

Focusing on reaching your customers in the way that works best for them is crucial. Additional marketing techniques include: 

• Email marketing

• Social media

• Other types of digital marketing

• In-store displays

• Billboards  

• TV advertisements

• Newspaper ads

Building your business's capacity to create marketing materials in many channels can take time. 

Still, the ROI of increasing your omnichannel marketing strategy can be significant. 

Data-driven omnichannel

The final stage of a CX maturity model uses machine learning and other tools to create the most personalized, targeted content possible. 

This stage incorporates various data types to enhance customer engagement, boost your business's capacity to meet KPIs, and improve future performance. 

A CX maturity model can assist your business with tracking, analyzing, and improving your customers' brand and product experience. 

Identify areas for improvement 

Knowing where your business can improve is just as important as understanding where you're doing well. A CX maturity model can help you identify gaps in your current strategies. 

Focus more of your time, effort, and other resources on finding ways to better meet your customers' expectations in these areas. 

Track your business's progress over time

Establishing your initial CX level is the first step in providing the best possible customer experience.

Tracking your progress over time can help you determine whether you're improving the areas that benefit your customers and your business. 

A CX maturity model makes it easier to identify where you're succeeding and lacking. You can also determine which areas provide a strong ROI and which simply aren't worth the money. 

Keep stakeholders informed

Businesses function best when stakeholders are always aware of everything they need to know.

A CX maturity model can make it easier to improve communication among leaders within your business and other supporters of your brand. 

Strong communication can build transparency and ensure everyone is on the same page. This can help your business run more efficiently. 

Understanding your CX maturity strategy is key if you want to see what business elements are performing at their best. 

It also clarifies which areas could benefit from improvement. 

Your business can analyze a wide range of data to determine your current CX maturity level, such as: 

• Surveys and other types of customer feedback

• Feedback from your employees about the customer response to changes

• Metrics on how customers feel about your current CX maturity

• Sales figures

Even a few of these insights can provide valuable details about the overall success of your CX maturity model. Combining these types of information can give you a complete picture of how well it is working.

Using a CX maturity model ensures you're delivering the best experience to your customers. This increases your chances of repeat business, which is much cheaper than trying to attract new customers.